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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx

Gittens on economic growth and wellbeing « Previous | |Next »
February 22, 2006

Ross Gittens is normally seen as engaged in a debunking of neo--liberal economics. He questions those who maintain not only that 'those who participate in the economy (and enjoy the consumerist fruits of their labour) are much happier' than the unemployed, but that a higher standard of living leads to happiness.

As Ross Gittens points out:

The dominant view among our politicians, economists and business people is that society's central goal should be economic growth. Keep our material standard of living rising and the rest will look after itself.

For sure. Economic growth is held to be an unqualified good. It is beyond question. You cannot be negative about economic growth and rising living standards. It's a big positive. Being employed is better (leads to more happiness) than being unemployed, does it not ?

However, Gittens observes that it is just not that simple. He asks:

But if ever-rising living standards are the key to our contentment, there are just a few telltale signs that all may not be well. Why, now we're so much wealthier than we were, do we have more trouble, rather than less, with divorce, drugs, crime, depression and suicide?

The reason for this deterioration in the quality of our everyday lives? Gittens turns to Professor Martin Seligman, of the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia, and author of Authentic Happiness and The Optimistic Child, for some answers.

Gittens says:
First, the rise of individualism - what he [Seligman] calls "the big I and the small we"...Second, the depredations of the self-esteem movement. This is the notion that the job of parents and teachers is to make children feel well about themselves...Third, the rise of victimology. Increasingly, we're encouraged to blame our problems on someone else - our parents, the government, The System - rather than accepting responsibility and finding ways to overcome them....Fourth, the growth in "short cuts to happiness". We're encouraged to do all manner of things that bring instant pleasure but require almost no effort on our part: junk food, television, drugs, shopping, loveless sex, spectator sport, chocolate and more.
Gitten concludes by saying that he doesn't think it unfair or irrelevant to acknowledge the social problems that accompany our much-trumpeted economic success. Tis a reasonable argument.

The argument would be that in a competitive society a preoccupation with status and wealth drives many of us to become workaholics in order to acquire status objects that soon lose their gloss. We remain dissatisfied with a market solution to happiness. The real rewards of life, relationships and family are unable to be enjoyed because of stress and lack of time. So even if economic growth could go on forever, (and it can't as it's not ecologically sustainable) it still wouldn't make us happy.

This is Mark Latham territory is it not? In the Latham Diaries he says:

While the middle class in Australia has expereienced the assets and wealth of an unprecedented economic boom, its social balance sheet has moved in the opposite direction. The treadmill of work and the endless accummulation of material goods have not necessarily made people happier. In many cases, they have denied them the time and pleasures of family life, replacing strong and loving social relationships with feelings of stress and alienation.
(pp.12-13)
Hence the bitter and savage middle class trade off in an increasingly globalised market economy: the greater financial wealth comes at the expense of social capital. Hence social exclusion, Latham argues,
...needs to be understood as more than just financial poverty; it also involves the poverty of soceity, the exclusion of many affluent Australians from strong and trusting personal reltaionships. These changes represent a huge shift in the structure of society. The market economy has expanded, while community life has been downsized.

What is highlighted by this argument is the importance of civil society and its difference from a market economy.


| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:58 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)
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The white picket fence of suburbia in the 1950s has given way to the Mcmansion of today. Both stand for the utilitarian view that economic growth can, and should, be endless and bring ever increasing human happiness. Tandberg The Australian evokes the ... [Read More]

 
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