Why does the economy always have to grow? What's wrong with a steady economy...

Why does the economy always have to grow? What's wrong with a steady economy? Is it because capitalism is a Ponzi scheme?

Yes, and you'll eventually reach a point where it stops growing and the entire system collapses. We're almost to that point.

Because the economy is not zero sum; someone's gain is not someone's loss. Multiple parties can benefit from transactions. They wouldn't happen otherwise (free of nefarious third party intervention).

Your choices are growth or death. The world never stops changing around you.

It needs to grow because it encourages people to invest in our economy, expecting greater returns. If the economy remained stagnant, there would be no reason for investment spending and our GDP will decline.

Why would you be against a higher standard of living?

SPBP. FP is yet another economic illiterate, like OP

Not an argument retard

No, its not. Second post is the argument, retard.

He's probably a fascist or a traditionalist who believes in tradition is beyond imperative over anything else. Basically imperial China. It's not good to be stagnant, OP, China remained that way for almost one thousand years. Literally no progress at all, just chinks in farms and a little war skirmish here and there.

It doesn't.

Proof: Alchemy
Law of Equivalent Exchange

he's illiterate, remember?

Because of the stock market and publicly owned corporations and the laws that govern them

I was being generous as he only seemed economically illiterate. Guess I should reconsider.

if the economy doesn't grow inflation gradually eats up the value of property and (((loans)))

>Law of Equivalent Exchange
petrodollar

>reach a point where it stops growing
Implying that growth is real and not manufactured by government. Look towards Canada's GDP numbers and prepare to be WOWed at how AMAZING the economy is doing!

Meanwhile, news stories of large manufacturing plants shutting down, nothing is replacing it.

something something fiat currency is needed for a modern economy something about it being unable to be based on anything with a stagnant value tldr we're all gonna die

>Why does the economy always have to grow? What's wrong with a steady economy?

If you are worried about how growth is somehow consuming more resources, then you need to know a little more about growth.

Imagine you are an inventor. You see that everybody is using copper paperweights. They are useful, and every time somebody takes more copper out the ground and fashions it into a paperweight, we have some economic growth, as people do useful things for each other, which in turn allows them to do even more useful things, like write litigious letters about the inadequate safety record at the copper quarry.

You look at those paperweights and say "surely we could do something more useful with this crap". You hammer one of these things out, turn it into a pile of wires which are assembled via a micro-fabricator and holy shit you have just invented the microprocessor.

You begin to buy the copper paperweights and turn them into more processors. People start buying the processors and start writing litigious letters on computers about your health and safety record at the fabrication plant.

You have just created an enormous amount of economic growth. Even though you didn't extract more resources, you used your smarts to create more value in the system. Instead of a lump of copper helping one person write a letter, you have made it so that 1000 people can write letters.

This is why a company like Google creates such enormous growth. Imagine taking all the dumb questions people ask, feeding it into a bunch of copper wires, sorting out the useful answers to the useless answers, and giving you what you want. That's worth money.

But what's worth an inordinately greater amount of money is being able to do that twice as efficiently, and for that you don't need twice as many resources, but a smarter way of doing it.

And so this is why growth is exponential despite not demanding an exponential amount of resources.

Pollution and littering aren't demanded by growth (much).

hurrr we should try to compete with countries with no environmental regulations and slave tier wages instead of focusing on fields where we have a comparative advantage

Cause if you don't, somebody will.
Also bad shit has been known to happen historically to underdeveloped countries

Economic growth and the ensuing inflation are the easiest way to ensure a constant wealth distribution. When it grows fast and every hand is needed, everybody can get wealthy. But when it stays the same for a long time (in medieval times for example) gravity will pull all the money, land and influence towards the nobels

Simple population growth means that for everyone to stay even, the economy needs to grow.

If the economy grows a lot, then many people can move up financially.

Remember, while the economy is not a zero-sum game, wealth is. That is, if everyone gains $2000 suddenly, their relative wealth to each other stays the same, and all that changes is the prices of everything sold goes up because your money supply increased but you still have the same amount of goods and services sold. BUT, if only 50% of everyone gains $2000, the people that did not get that money got poorer because the money supply went up, but the money that have did not. Thus they lose purchasing power, compared to those that got the bonus $2000.

Our money is debt. It has interest. Also yes, Ponzi scheme entitlements.

Our economy grows because the system literally creates money.

Because populations grow.

>Why does the economy always have to grow?

Firstly, because the population grows. If the economy fails to keep up with that then it's less for more. Secondly, where populations is less than replacement, typically about 2.1, you have faster growth of the aged population, people who are less and even unproductive and who tend to be consumers of gov't health and welfare benefits.

You're missing the point you colossal faggot. The economy, money is a form of control. The numbers are cooked to impress dimwits like you into thinking the government is doing a good job.

>The numbers are cooked to impress dimwits like you into thinking the government is doing a good job.

This is especially true for how unemployment is calculated. On the flipside, developing countries under report growth and other figures so they can maintain access to preferential loans, grants, and trade advantages.