This is wonderful, Everald!

But it seems to sit in strong contrast to your pursuance of economic growth as espoused in past articles, not least in the massive opening up of the north and the creation of the great Australian foodbowl, with an enormous increase in population therein.

Clive Hamilton has been over this ground with his wellbeing manifesto and genuine progress indicator: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genuine_progress_indicator.

It is not just the absurd measure that we call GDP that needs a total and urgent reworking, it is our fetish with growth. Or I should say; our absolute obsession with it!

The maddest thing of all is that we aren’t just pursuing the supply side of the equation, but the demand side as well!! This just promulgates the continuous growth spiral, without it leading to any real gains!

GDP is so utterly flawed as to indicate that things are going well for as long as we have high growth, regardless of whether it is driven by a constantly rapidly increasing demand for everything or by an increase in primary resource exploitation, better value-adding, etc. In other words: regardless of what the average per-capita gain (or loss) is, even as determined by conventional short-term measures!

continued

So Everald, we need to sort out what is the good fraction of growth and what is the bad side, and work towards eliminating the bad side.

In short, we need to greatly reduce population growth.

You talk about world population, but you don’t seem to grasp the importance of this in Australia.

Then with a much lower rate of population growth, and heading directly towards a stable population, we will have the financial wherewithal to significantly improve many of the components of Gross Domestic Prosperity that you list.

But with continued very high immigration, we won’t be able to, because the national budget will continue to be dominated by the need to duplicate infrastructure and services for ever-more people and fix up existing I & S that is under ever-increasing pressure and demand.

Thus, stabilising population in Australia has got EVERYTHING to do with your desire for us to change the terrible Gross Domestic Product indicator into a meaning broad-ranging Gross Domestic Prosperity indicator.

In fact, it simply can’t happen until we get it through our thick heads that a stable population, or at least one that is growing at a very much slower rate, is an essential prerequisite!

Well, it could and or, should. We live on an already quite grossly overpopulated planet; so it is just madness to persist with a mad economic mantra, that can't succeed without more growth and an ever widening gap between the haves and the have nots; and or, even more poverty and want.
Think, in New york city alone, there are 390,000 millionaires and seventy billionaires.
Along with many millions who live with daily want and or unmet need! The only way these rich people are going to get richer, is if the people on the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder have more!
You'd think an intelligent administration, would find a way of putting all those extra trillions they're printing, into the poorest hands; who in turn, would have no other choice but to spend, adding on a hitherto unknown scale, to economy building discretionary spending!
We're flat out like a lizard drinking, trying to feed 7 billion, what is it going to be like trying to feed 9 billion, with far less water, energy and arable land.
Where are these additional people going to live, and how are we going to feed them, without going to war over quite massively shrinking resources, energy and or water!?
We have no other choice than to tackle and end poverty in all its forms and guises, if we would create an economy that serves us, rather than enslaving most of us, who are the poorer for it.
If we focus on alleviating poverty, as an economic tool, we won't need to keep on with the madness of population growth, as the key driver of economic growth!
Rhrosty.

Excellent article though I agree with Ludwig and Rhosty too. I happen to be more pessimistic about our future. I worry that the combined effects of climate change, resource scarcity and population growth will cause very real problems within a fairly short time. Famine looms in many places, especially if there is an extreme weather event (drought, flood, cyclone) in one of the major food exporting nations. We have to pull out all stops now to rein in greenhouse gas emissions to stop us going above 2 degrees warming. Even then it will be difficult slowing population growth without nature doing it for us.

Yet another dog-in-the-manger, I'm-all-right-Jack review of how the world is going to hell in a handbasket, thanks to all those other people being the cause of our downfall.

Mr Compton is not the problem, of course, as he is i) already born, ii) living in one of the most affluent corners of the world, with everything going for him and iii) not going to be around much longer anyway. So he is ideally placed to lecture everyone else on what they should and should not do about it.

Even the starting premise is open to some questions:

"A fundamental and urgent reason for the change is that the world is now grossly overpopulated. Seven billion of us now occupy the planet, rising to 9.5 billion in 2050. When I was born in 1931, there was a population of two billion and, even then, this was considered to be too many."

Ok. First question - if the world is currently "overpopulated", how come everyone on the planet today enjoys a longer life, better medicines, greater affluence, greater mobility etc. than they did in 1931?

Second question (and this could be a tough one) - to what extent this increased affluence, better health etc. attributable to the increased population? After all, we each share in a much larger world economy than we did back in 1931, and it did not just magically appear, you know. It was the result of real work, performed by real people, in real time. To pretend that we could maintain the same level of economic performance with fewer people is to be in a permanent state of denial.

It is easy to forget that the world is actually made up of individual people, and not just a bunch of numbers to be played around with.

More economic illiteracy from Everald

There is no “trickle down” theory of economics. This is a slogan invented to misrepresent the view that growth is good the poor.

No economist would disagree that Gross Domestic Product is an imperfect and limited measure of economic wellbeing. But, there is no measure which captures all dimensions of prosperity. Rather than discard it, let’s leave it in its proper place as one tool among the many needed to build a comprehensive picture of prosperity.

Everald says, “What is clearly evident is that even a very basic living standard will not be achieved just by striving to significantly increase the productivity of every nation.” Really? No country has EVER moved from poverty decent living standards without raising productivity. There is no magic formula.

He also says, “When I was born in 1931, there was a population of two billion and, even then, this was considered to be too many”. Since both population and living standards have risen hugely since then, those who believed in over-population in 1931 were clearly wrong. As they are now.

The idea of a General Domestic Prosperity index is not new. The UN compiles a basic version with its Human Development Index (comprising literacy, life expectancy and per capita GDP). A few years ago, the Australia Institute attempted something similar with its Genuine Progress Indicator. The problem is, these measures are always subjective and imprecise, because there is no common metric by which to measure the different components. Is an increase in literacy worth more or less than a rise in life expectancy? At what point is this offset by a rise in the crime rate, or loss of habitat of an endangered species?

This is why the ABS, for example, tracks lots of economic, social and environmental indicators in its series “measures of Australia’s progress”, but makes no attempt to combine these into a single index.

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/1370.0.55.001

“Stability in economics, politics and social interaction” is the matra of a reactionary. It only result will be to be ensure that no genuine progress of any sort is possible.