This article discusses the relationship between resource scarcity, long-term economic growth and the sustainability of the material wellbeing of people around the world.
The article begins as follows:
Assuming no important wars and no important increase in population, the economic problem may be solved, or be at least within sight of solution, within a hundred years. This means that the economic problem is not—if we look into the future—the permanent problem of the human race.—John Maynard Keynes (1)
In 1930, John Maynard Keynes wrote that the solution to “the economic problem” of scarcity was within reach. Keynes pointed out that even as the Great Depression was beginning the US and Europe were far richer than they had been before the Industrial Revolution. If the world economy grew at just 2% a year, we would be nearly 8 times richer by 2030. That would be enough, Keynes thought, to finally free the human race from the “struggle for subsistence.”
Billions of people struggle for subsistence today. Nevertheless, Keynes’ prediction was probably not far wrong. The approximately 7 billion members of the human race already produce around $70 trillion dollars worth of goods and services every year. That means that as a species we produce about $10,000 of value a year for every person on the planet. That may not be much by the standards of rich countries, but it is certainly enough to meet the most basic needs of every living human being. It’s around 4 times more than we produced in 1930 (see here for one estimate of how global per capita income has grown). At this rate we’ll reach Keynes target only 20 years later than he thought.
The remainder of the article is available in Anthropocene blog.
Image credit: Bionet
