Prosperity Without Growth

The economy is our servant, not our master.

“The idea of a non-growing economy may be anathema to an economist. But the idea of a continually growing economy is anathema to an ecologist.” — Tim Jackson

I recently re-read Prosperity Without Growth, by Professor Tim Jackson. The first edition was originally released as a report by the Sustainable Development Commission. The study rapidly became the most downloaded report in the Commission’s nine-year history when it was published in 2009. Later that year a reworked version was published as a book, and the following year Tim Jackson spoke at TED. A new, significantly revised and expanded version came out in 2017, so if you haven’t read it recently, you might want to revisit it.

The main thrust of the book is that economic growth has only limited capacity to deliver wellbeing, but huge capacity to trash the planet, so we need to strike a balance between a thriving economy and thriving humans, recognising that one is not synonymous with the other. Let’s take a look at his argument in a bit more detail.

“Prosperity itself — as the Latin roots of the English word reveal — is about hope. Hope for the future, hope for our children, hope for ourselves.”

So it’s only in later years that prosperity has come to be equated with financial wealth. Jackson reminds…