The Economy can't keep on growing forever

Economies can't keep on growing forever. It's unrealistic and unreasonable to expect them to.

We shouldn't be pinning all our hopes of prosperity and personal wellbeing on ceaseless economic growth.

If a developed nation can't keep churning out a continual rate of [per capita] economic growth, that doesn't in any way mean that something is wrong.

 

Actually, an economy can grow forever providing it is based on healthy fundamentals. That being said, our economy is not based on healthy fundamentals, it is based on debt. A debt based economy is doomed to bubble and bust cycles due to the fact you are pulling purchasing forward using future earnings. Debt based economies are designed to benefit monopolies and banking interests at the expense of working classes.

 

An economy grows with corrections.

 

Except for sawtooth fluctuations in short-term cycles, GDP has been growing since the Great Depression. Of course, no one can predict 'forever'? But why is it 'unrealistic or unreasonable' to expect continued growth? We have population growth...we have developing nations...we have expanded markets...the US should be able to compete in our specialized areas...we have new technologies presenting new opportunities. Please tell us what you believe the downside risks are? GDP is but one factor; how about employment, unemployment, compensation, savings, tax policy, inflation, cost of living, currency valuation, etc.? My guess is 97% of the public don't know our current GDP and it's forecast...most people care about the factors that impact them directly in their lives...

 

wrong as always. as productivity grew from the stone age forward so did the economy, and gene editing promises to make us 1000 times more capable.

 

debt to buy a house or new factory is generally a very good thing that increases our standard of living, despite the bubbles and bursts.

 

as I said car buyers and home buyers and those who get to buy the cheap goods from huge new factories all benefit from debt

 

True, ed, and equally true is the need for a regulated capitalistic economy.

 

Wrong, paying 3 times the cost of a house is in no ones benefit except the banks. Business financing is different, in that the burden of debt is transferred to the customers, but ultimately some one has to pay.

Only a fool believes it is possible to borrow your way to prosperity.....

 

Wrong again, your thinking is the reason the majority of people in the US are effectively living in a state of perpetual bankruptcy.
A few missed paychecks and they are pushing a shopping cart as the million of current homeless can attest.
Go ahead, charge your way to prosperity, there is plenty of room on the sidewalks...

 

It is true that in a finite system an economy cannot grow forever. This is not a debate, but a fact dictated by the physical laws of matter and energy conservation.

To grow forever, the system will have to be infinite. If the universe is infinite, this is still a possibility.

However, even with infinite matter, growth will eventually stop when the universe dies the thermodynamic heat death, i.e. all matter and energy has reached the point of maximal distribution, or maximal entropy.

So, yes, economists (and politicians, and the general population, who is spoonfed through propaganda that economic growth is good) are deluding themselves if they think that economic growth will never stop.

 

The human race can't keep living forever, but until the end everybody got to eat.

 

So you believe that only the rich should own a house? Where do people live while they save the money for a house?

 

You rent. Concentrate 100% on making money. Then you buy a fixer when you can afford it. You watch and learn about the housing cycles. Buy cheap when the cycle is at the lower end of the cycle, and invest sweat. Lot's of sweat. If you do have to take on debt, make it short term. Learn to live below your income level.

If you want to get ahead, you have to have a plan. If you want to be a debt slave, all it takes is your signature.

Most people want to live above their income, and think debt allows that. They sacrifice the long game for short term ego, and their own impatient desires.

 

Moreover, when the Wealth derived is so obviously manipulated to favor a particular group of moneyed-interests, the system is warped and unfair ...

 

So instead of buying a house and building equity (wealth) in that house, your idea is to rent and have nothing at the end? Also, in most cases rent is more expensive than a mortgage.

 

Rent is never more expensive than ownership. That financial model cannot work. Building equity is no sure thing. There is also a scenario known as negative equity. If buying RE was more profitable than lending money, the banks would do it. What I am saying is that 30 years of debt where you pay 3X the original purchase price is no way to make money.
Now if you save a big down, and pay off the mortgage in 10 years or less, and you are in an area where RE is appreciating, then it is a more reasonable expectation to expect financial advantage.

 

If rent is always cheaper than ownership you are claiming landlords are renting at a loss. That's simply not true.

As for the rest of your response, theres really no possible way to make sense of what you think you are saying. But hey, if you think owning property is a bad thing, I'm not going to try to change your mind.

 

Whoa! Come down to earth, Sparky. The capitalist economy cannot grow forever, . . . in fact it can't grow much farther than where it is, because a 2.5 or 3% compounded annual growth is not sustainable. You can prove this to yourself with a spreadsheet.

 

For the next few decades, the US can actually encourage a higher rate of immigration, who are both workers and consumers, and couple this with US technology and automation, etc., along with developing nations worldwide for exports, and this could increase GDP for a long time to come...

 

HEAVEN HELP AMERICA

From the World Economic Outlook (of the IMF here):

As I never tire of saying, in a country where Manufacturing jobs have seriously diminished, we must GET OUR ACT TOGETHER. The dominance of Services Employment is irreversible. The US must get its act together.

Which means what? That Services Employment has a higher necessity for better educated workers. Which means further that Tertiary Education in America must become free, gratis and for nothing. As is today secondary-school education!

We, as a nation, are going through the same excruciating process that brought about free secondary-school education in local schools. This same evolution, now a century later, must happen in localized postsecondary state-schools that accept students with only a token tuition fee.

Say, less than $1000 per school year. Just such a program was Bernie's idea adopted by Hillary, and look what we've got instead!

The Dorkman "Blondie" and his insistence on a wall with Mexico. Heaven help America because it does not seem able to help itself ...

 

With today's corporate size and growth needs, I wonder if a US population increase of any size could help. It's not so much the need to sustain production and sales as it is a problem of maintaining an annual compounded growth rate of 2.5% - 3%. That growth eats up more and more profit share and creates the exploding wealth and income disparity we're seeing. Two or three percent doesn't sound like much until you project it over 100 - 150 years. Then you see the unsustainable upward spike it produces in the later years.

 

My comments were about GDP growth for the long term and now you're talking about Trump and education? With the current status of US industry, GDP growth can continue for a long time with the right decisions. Peckerwood Trump is another topic which won't change until he is long gone...

 

And it will turn a 4-year-college degree into the new high school diploma. That's already taken place to some degree.
You're not going to be able to solve the underlying issue in the economy with more credentialism.

 

Trump's 3-4% GDP growth is fantasy and not worth discussing. Trump actually has zero GDP growth if you remove the $1+ trillion in deficit spending. Why not aim for 2% for the long term? And I maintain increased immigration is one of the options to sustain and growth GDP...