The Poverty of Growth
Obsession with growth is enriching elites and killing the planet. That’s the message of this week’s guest, Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights and author of The Poverty of Growth. Highlights include:
Why poverty is about more than low income and how unequal economic growth creates greater social exclusion and status anxiety for the majority of people that growth leaves behind;
How global trade practices benefit corporations over workers, especially in low-income countries, driving inequality and limiting worker protections;
Why ‘green growth’ is a myth and that economic growth continues to be tied to both resource depletion and environmental damage;
How the commodification of life drives consumption and inequality, with more services that were once free or communal now privatized, creating a need for income rather than creating greater wellbeing;
How adopting norms of sufficiency could shift economies to focus on collective wellbeing and fair resource distribution over perpetual growth.