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I’m also going to have take issue with: “Almost every bit of progress--socially, morally, in terms of happiness and longevity, aesthetically, WHATEVER YOU LIKE--is a direct or indirect product of economic growth.”
This is a little extreme, don’t you think? Let’s take life expectancy. If economic growth is the foundation of all goodness, how are we to explain the large disparities in life expectancy between equally rich countries? How do we explain how a place like Kerala, an Indian province with a per capita GDP of about $1000, has a life expectancy nearly as high as the United States? Kerala has certainly benefited from technological and scientific advances pioneered in rich countries, but to explain Kerala’s high life expectancy entirely in terms of those benefits strikes me as implausible.
Now, I also think economic growth is great, good, and wonderful with cherries on top. But my point is that what matters most isn’t growth simpliciter, but the policy and institutional environment in which growth occurs. That’s where these progressive come in. While they may be horribly wrong in the particulars, they want to change our institutional and policy environment in order to make growth more just or beneficial or whatever. That strikes me as a coherent and non-redundant enterprise. Whether the specific policies they advance are desirable is another question.
It's not implausible at all to attribute life expectancy in Kerala in terms of growth. There is no other plausible explanation. The explanation is technological, and the technology is a result (and cause) of growth elsewhere.
The most beneficialgrowth is the fastest growth. If we slow down growth in the west, then people in lower growth countries die. It's as simple as that.
Your presumption in psychoanalyzing those who suffered in Katrina is breathtaking. Those who did not hotfoot it by any means necessary out of New Orleans made an incorrect choice, as it turns out. But there's no reason to think that they did not make it rationally given the resources that they had, the information that they had regarding Katrina's path, and their past experience with other storms. They did not have the benefit of your splendid hindsight about exactly where Katrina is going to hit and exactly how far they would have to go to be safe. Let me remind you that most of those who suffered were poor black people -- I doubt their past experience of the government lead them to complacently loll around in the face of of a deadly storm waiting for the federal cavalry to roll in for them. Among those trapped in the superdome were also a number of middle-classed English tourists. Hardly a good fit for your theory that those who were trapped were only trapped because of learned helplessness caused by welfare as opposed to, say, the lack of cars. As far as I know (and I was in England when Katrina hit, so there was quite a lot of attention on those stranded Brits), none of them did the boyscout thing, took initiative, and hiked the hell out of New Orleans. Oh, I forget. There's a government in the U.K. too. That must be where they picked up the crippling dependency cootie.
Oh, and your reply to Javier hardly addressed his points. At the risk of being redundant, let me ask you again: If growth and growth alone can be the engine driving all things worthwhile, why is there not a linear relationship between the wealth of the nation (as measured by the GDP) and the health of the nation (as measured by life expectancy)?
Not to keep beating on this, but if what you say were the case, then why don't much richer countries have a comparable life expectancy? For example, Brazil is about 5 times richer than Kerala and yet has about an 8 year lower life expectancy. The straightforward explanation is that Kerala's institutions and policies are much more effective at promoting a high life expectancy than Brazil's. I agree with you that growth matters a great deal--especially in the long run--but so do alot of other things.
My point about growth is that about all the enhancements in terms of medical technology are a function of growth. Difference in distributional structure in health outcomes is massively swamped by differences in GDP per head. I'm sure you can see the pattern in this:
http://www.nationmaster.com/plot/eco_gdp_cap/hea_lif_exp_at_bir_tot_pop/all
Anyway, take any system of health distribution you like, and compare life expectancy now vs twenty years ago, and I think you'll see that the effect of wealth and technology thanks to growth within the same system over time is a lot bigger than the difference between different systems of distribution at the same time. You'll totally blow me away if you show me otherwise.
Within any society, if you have more money, you'll tend to live longer. And growth raises world income/wealth. So there is a very very clear linear relationship between world average wealth and world average life expectancy. Read Fogel's The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death to get a feel for the hugeness of the effect.
If you're going to be dogmatic about anything, be dogmatic about the goodness of economic growth. There is not even a close runner up in terms of human well-being, except maybe for things like the scientific method, which are so good largely because they helped deliver growth.
Ah, it's always good to be able to use that Philosophy degree.
I remind you sir, of the bell curve. People on the high side are a bit foolish to believe that the way people get on the low side is by "learning."
Then I got to know people outside my university educated cohort, and tried to help some of them, tried to explalin that it was pretty easy to get ahead.
Some of them can't. Maybe it's an anger problem that makes them get mad and quit at every job they ever had. Maybe it's just a perenial lack of worry that makes them treat each job as unserious until they blow it off, or vis versa.
You see people repeat those things, time and again, and you lose a bit of your free market idealism. Some people need help, and don't need gain their "helplessness" by learning it.
But dude, c'mon, there's a heck of a lot more going on about Chartes's aesthetic eminence than just the means (economics) which, indeed, granted, are/were totally indespensible for it's having been built. I'd wholeheartedly recommend you have a look at political philosopher Pierre Manent's phenomenal exposition of these themes (though certainly not of Chartes nor of architecture specifically, though its totally implicit) in _The City of Man_. Or, taking another big step back, Paul Rahe's _Republic's Ancient and Modern_ (first volume). If you read these, you'll see why the economic interpretation (explanation) of Western civilization's cultures/political structures, while incredibly instructive and illuminating in very decisive respects, is ultimately sorely inadequate.
The largest and most majestic buildings in our cities are centers of commerce and money making.
--"Shulamite" (http://waitingforelijah.blogspot.com).