We’ve designed an economy that is dependent upon endless growth. We’ve also designed an economy that generates incremental profits by constantly increasing productivity. One of the reasons we’re now experiencing a “jobless recovery” is that large companies keep figuring out how to be more productive using less people.
Endless growth is unhealthy and unsustainable. Cancer is perhaps the best analogy to endless growth. It grows until it kills the body that hosts it.
Tim Jackson is a thought leader in challenging both growth and productivity. He currently serves as economics commissioner on the UK government’s Sustainable Development Commission and is director of RESOLVE, the Research group on Lifestyles, Values and Environment. He is also the author of the influential book Prosperity Without Growth, one of my favorite books. You can watch his TED talk here.
Jackson recently wrote in a New York Times Op-Ed piece:
“Ever-increasing productivity means that if our economies don’t continue to expand, we risk putting people out of work. If more is possible each passing year with each working hour, then either output has to increase or else there is less work to go around. Like it or not, we find ourselves hooked on growth.”
Jackson dares to say that in certain segments of our economy, we shouldn’t even want increased productivity. The caring professions are a good example: medicine, social work, and education and not necessarily enhanced by greater productivity, especially when it means seeing more patients per hour, more cases for each social worker, or larger class sizes.
Jackson goes on to explain:
“Instead of imposing meaningless productivity targets, we should be aiming to enhance and protect not only the value of the care but also the experience of the caregiver.
The care and concern of one human being for another is a peculiar ‘commodity.’ It can’t be stockpiled. It becomes degraded through trade. It isn’t delivered by machines. Its quality rests entirely on the attention paid by one person to another. Even to speak of reducing the time involved is to misunderstand its value.
Care is not the only profession deserving renewed attention as a source of economic employment. Craft is another. It is the accuracy and detail inherent in crafted goods that endows them with lasting value. It is the time and attention paid by the carpenter, the seamstress and the tailor that makes this detail possible. The same is true of the cultural sector: it is the time spent practicing, rehearsing and performing that gives music, for instance, its enduring appeal. What — aside from meaningless noise — would be gained by asking the New York Philharmonic to play Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony faster and faster each year?”
Transitioning to a low-productivity economy won’t happen without careful design. It requires careful attention to incentives — we will need lower taxes on labor and higher taxes on resource consumption and pollution. We must be willing to invest in skills and training to build an economy of “care, craft and culture.” We can have full employment; we can restore the value of work and provide more people with self-respect that comes from dignified and fulfilling work.