The lefty Europeans who want to deliberately shrink the economy

&gt; It turns out voters do not much like stagnation; the newish premier, Giorgia Meloni, rails against “Greta Thunberg’s ideology” killing jobs.<p>What an absurd oversimplification. It does not even tackles the issue that most of the growth goes to very few people. There is also the idea that with redistribution of wealth most people will have more even with a smaller economy. But that are the kind of ideas that The Economist does not want in the mind of their readers.<p>&gt; But they too readily dismiss the obvious solution, which is to green the economy, not throttle it.<p>The writer cannot even imagine a world where people consumes less.<p>All the article can be summarized as: &quot;The system works for the owner of this magazine, do not change it&quot;.

&gt;<i>The rudimentary machine crunched the data and spouted a grim answer: given ecological constraints, the highest standard of living possible was one stagnating at half the American level of the time. Anything beyond that risked imminent disaster, a “sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity”.</i><p>Given our climate mess, and increasing economic and resource fighting mess, they weren&#x27;t that far off. Of course we did went over it, bringing this to non-sustainable levels...

&quot;At a three-day “Beyond Growth” conference held at the European Parliament in Brussels this week (and organised by 20 mainly left-leaning MEPs), an audience of youngsters whooped and cheered as speakers proclaimed that, this time, the limits of growth really have been reached. Driven by ecological concerns and riled by social injustice, to them the question is no longer how to mitigate the effects of human activity, for example by investing in green technologies.&quot;<p>Not just regular MPs, it gets much, much worse:<p>Von der Leyen: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;vonderleyen&#x2F;status&#x2F;1658022320827518977" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;vonderleyen&#x2F;status&#x2F;1658022320827518977</a><p>The president of the European Parliament: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;timparrique&#x2F;status&#x2F;1658009279754915840" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;timparrique&#x2F;status&#x2F;1658009279754915840</a><p>Palling around with Hickel and Vandana Shiva:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;ERC_Research&#x2F;status&#x2F;1657835551901270023" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;ERC_Research&#x2F;status&#x2F;1657835551901270023</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;ICTA_UAB&#x2F;status&#x2F;1655860218868252672" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;ICTA_UAB&#x2F;status&#x2F;1655860218868252672</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;AndreasShrugged&#x2F;status&#x2F;1658396104625463297" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;AndreasShrugged&#x2F;status&#x2F;16583961046254632...</a>

The tone of the article is so condescending it makes me think of the <i>Don&#x27;t Look Up</i> movie. The same point of view could have been developed with more respect to people&#x27;s fear of what is <i>actually happening</i>.

Apparently they believe that the Malthusian growth model is right <i>this time around</i>, and they have some ideas about what to do next.<p>&gt; [S]ome form of “de-growth”—décroissance, in the original French—is necessary today to avoid societal collapse.<p>And how do they mean to implement this?<p>&gt; “We need to determine democratically what kind of production we need to be doing,” and nix the rest, one participant advocated. Panels of citizens can advise what is wasteful and what is socially desirable.<p>Oh.<p>I feel like that economic model has already been tried.

I feel very pesimestic about the whole situation. Shrinking our economy will obviously hurt standards of living massively, but it also seem inevitable. I also wonder how this will affect society. Lefties seem to think we will live as hippies or enlightened Soviets, but it seems more likely that we will regress into conservative authoritarianism. The only hope we have is that we continue to innovate and learn to do more with less.

Does installing insulation in homes &quot;grow&quot; or &quot;shrink&quot; the economy?<p>What about cars with better mpg?

Just look at the UK, people cheering at their own economic failure. Perfect example of a country in practice. And don&#x27;t mean Brexit.