Given that assumptions of quantitativegrowth are pervasive in our society andhave been present for many generations,it is perhaps not surprising that growth isnot widely understood to be a transientphenomenon. Early thinkers on the physicaleconomy, such as Adam Smith, ThomasMalthus, David Ricardo and John Stuart Millsaw the growth phase as just that: a phase9

economists

“In spite of the high cost of rescuing the banks and the rising inequality across society revealed by the recession, the shrinking of the state has continued, led by the vain hope that markets will find a way of bringing a miraculous revival if left to themselves. History has shown that this is the wrong moment for that. Yet the current economic orthodoxy, incapable of explaining the crashes, holds on to an interpretation of how the economy functions that ignores the role of technology and the accumulated learning of the other social sciences. It has taken refuge in increasingly complex mathematical models, as if economics were more closely akin to physics. Worse still, these economists and many of their critics are still waging the ideological battles of the 1960s and 1980s, without realising that we are now in a completely different context—one that has more in common with the 1930s … If the advanced world governments stay on the current austerity path, they will wait forever for the market to do the right thing for growth and social well-being …