Economic Growth is a Racket

Nationally renowned retired physics professor Albert Bartlett told an interviewer in 2005 that he suspected that economic growth "has never paid for itself. It's a racket."

But what a racket it is. Every candidate for Congress, the presidency and down to the mayors of towns and cities big and small know that they have to promise growth to get elected and re-elected. The same is true for businesspeople of all stripes: they have to either make sales go up or explain why they are momentarily down and then, if that is the case, they are also expected to have a way to ensure increased revenues and profits in the future. But look, I don't want to single out politicians and businesspeople, because the concept of growth has been supported by the vast majority of our economists and never questioned by the vast majority of ordinary Americans. Furthermore, historically speaking, we've been able to maintain growth in our population and our gross domestic product and in other measures over the last several decades.

On the other hand, math and logic tell us that growth cannot go on forever. (I mean, people cannot keep using more and more resources on the surface of a finite planet Earth...sooner or later it will have to stop, right?)

Anyway, you don't have to take my word for it, get it from the accomplished physics professor, Al Bartlett:


The description for this video on the YouTube site reads:

Two million views for an old codger giving a lecture about arithmetic? What's going on? You'll have to watch just to see what is so damn amazing about what he (Albert Bartlett) has to say.