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Thread: Malthus, Marx, and Modern Growth

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    Malthus, Marx, and Modern Growth

    Malthus and Marx were wrong, but will capitalism continue to improve man's lot. In the following I snip out a discussion of problems facing continued growth in developed countries and jump to the conclusion.


    Malthus, Marx, and Modern Growth

    The promise that each generation will be better off than the last is a fundamental tenet of modern society. By and large, most advanced economies have fulfilled this promise, with living standards rising over recent generations, despite setbacks from wars and financial crises.

    In the developing world, too, the vast majority of people have started to experience sustained improvement in living standards and are rapidly developing similar growth expectations. But will future generations, particularly in advanced economies, realize such expectations? Though the likely answer is yes, the downside risks seem higher than they did a few decades ago.

    So far, every prediction in the modern era that mankind’s lot will worsen, from Thomas Malthus to Karl Marx, has turned out to be spectacularly wrong. Technological progress has trumped obstacles to economic growth. Periodic political rebalancing, sometimes peaceful, sometimes not, has ensured that the vast majority of people have benefited, albeit some far more than others.

    As a result, Malthus’s concerns about mass starvation have failed to materialize in any peaceful capitalist economy. And, despite a disconcerting fall in labor’s share of income in recent decades, the long-run picture still defies Marx’s prediction that capitalism would prove immiserating for workers. Living standards around the world continue to rise.

    <snip>

    Capitalist economies have been spectacularly efficient at enabling growing consumption of private goods, at least over the long run. When it comes to public goods – such as education, the environment, health care, and equal opportunity – the record is not quite as impressive, and the political obstacles to improvement have seemed to grow as capitalist economies have matured.

    Will each future generation continue to enjoy a better quality of life than its immediate predecessor? In developing countries that have not yet reached the technological frontier, the answer is almost certainly yes. In advanced economies, though the answer should still be yes, the challenges are becoming formidable.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    waltky's Avatar Senior Member
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    Granny says, "Dat's right - dat's the Donald Makin' America Great Again...

    US Economic Growth Better Than First Thought
    March 28, 2018 - The U.S. economy grew a bit faster than first thought in the last few months of 2017, expanding at an annual rate of 2.9 percent, beating the earlier estimate by several tenths of a percent.
    Wednesday's report from the Commerce Department showed the improvement came in part from stronger consumer spending. The new figures are a routine revision made as more complete data becomes available.


    A shopper makes a purchase at the J.C. Penney department store in North Riverside, Illinois


    The fourth-quarter figures added to several quarters of solid growth which saw the world's largest economy expand 2.3 percent in 2017, which is significantly stronger than the prior year. Some economists have been revising their forecasts for growth in 2018 following a major tax cut and plans to increase government spending over the next two years.

    The stimulus from lower taxes and higher spending at a time of full employment is raising some concerns about inflation, and that is expected to prompt the U.S. central bank to continue raising interest rates. The Federal Reserve tries to keep inflation from rising so high or so fast that it damages the economy by using higher interest rates to cool economic activity.

    https://www.voanews.com/a/us-economi...7/4320625.html

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