Name: The growth delusion
ISBN: 9780525572503

The growth delusion

"A provocative critique of the pieties and fallacies of our obsession with economic growth We live in a society in which a priesthood of economists, wielding impenetrable mathematical formulas, set the framework for public debate. Ultimately, it is the perceived health of the economy which determines how much we can spend on our schools, highways, and defense; economists decide how much unemployment is acceptable and whether it is right to print money or bail out profligate banks. The backlash we are currently witnessing suggests that people are turning against the experts and their faulty understanding of our lives. Despite decades of steady economic growth, many citizens feel more pessimistic than ever, and are voting for candidates who voice undisguised contempt for the technocratic elite. For too long, economics has relied on a language which fails to resonate with people's lived experience, and we are now living with the consequences. In this powerful, incisive book, David Pilling reveals the hidden biases of economic orthodoxy and explores the alternatives to GDP, from measures of wealth, equality, and sustainability to measures of subjective wellbeing. Authoritative, provocative, and eye-opening,The Growth Delusion offers witty and unexpected insights into how our society can respond to the needs of real people instead of pursuing growth at any cost"-- "A provocative critique of the pieties and fallacies of our obsession with economic growth"

What Hacker News says

theozaurusJan 2026

The book the 'Growth Delusion' has some great examples on this as well. To quote the FTs[1] review of the book.

"The official protocols define the scope of GDP as measuring all monetised activity between willing parties in a given period. It is a pragmatic definition, but leads to some counterintuitive results. The sale of stolen goods for cash contributes positively to GDP, for example — so theft is good for growth. A parent’s housework and childcare, however, being unpaid, are excluded — resulting, by one recent evaluation, in a $3.8 trillion underestimate of the size of the US economy."

I vaguely remember a similar one around traffic jams as well.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/b6182440-f21e-11e7-bb7d-c3edfe974...

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lamenameNov 2022

The Growth Delusion covers the pros, the cons, & the alternatives

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36130581-the-growth-delu...

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lamenameJan 2021

Consider reading The Growth Delusion by David Pilling https://www.amazon.com/Growth-Delusion-Poverty-Well-Being-Na...

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wppickMar 2019

This sounds like a "leadership" problem. I put leadership in quotes because there is a difference between leadership and management, so I'd say it's more of a management problem (with a lack of leadership).

Check out the books "The Growth Delusion" by David Pilling and "The Tyranny of Metrics" by Jerry Muller if you're interested in this topic.

I think this could potentially be a foundational problem in some western countries. Does a focus on GDP growth serve the people of the country, or does it serve someone else like (potentially foreign) shareholders?

Things like a mother staying home and taking care of her child instead of sending it to daycare, cooking meals at home versus buying from a restaurant both don't show up in GDP. The example in the article is breaking windows and having to pay to get them fixed. Doesn't really seem like a great measure of wealth to me...

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spodekMar 2018

I recently finished reading Affluence Without Abundance, about bushmen in Southern Africa https://www.amazon.com/Affluence-Without-Abundance-Disappear.... Their culture survived stably without growth for over 100,000 years. They enjoyed more leisure time with less work than us.

By contrast, in under 250 years since Adam Smith our culture's growth is trashing the planet in nearly every place we measure. The Growth Delusion develops and documents problems with growth further https://www.amazon.com/Growth-Delusion-Poverty-Well-Being-Na....

Many times we make an advance like, say, anesthetics, growth leads to things like opioid epidemics.

You can live how you want, but you may want to reconsider what sounds like an unqualified faith in a pattern that may have worked when we had a lot of empty planet to expand into, but creates problems when we learn that we don't any more.

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spodekFeb 2018

People believe you need growth, but you don't and there are major problems with it.

I just read and recommend The Growth Delusion https://www.amazon.com/Growth-Delusion-Poverty-Well-Being-Na..., which talked about problems with growth and alternatives to its most common measure, GDP.

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