Creating global prosperity without economic growth
Japan: The World’s First Post-Growth Economy?
One of the problems with the post-growth movement is that it can
appear theoretical. More of the ideas have been tried than you might
think, but certainly they haven’t all been tried at once as a deliberate
strategy. No matter how confident we might be, we lack proof that a
post-growth economy is possible.
Or do we? Perhaps the world already has a post-growth society, albeit
an unintentional one.
Here’s what Japan’s GDP has been up to for the
last twenty years:
As far as economists are concerned, this is a tragedy and a disaster.
How the mighty have fallen. Japan’s GDP is essentially unchanged since
the early nineties, its share of global GDP falling from 17 to just 4%. last year to become the world’s second largest economy, and now it
limps along as a economic failed state, a cautionary tale for students
of capitalism.
And yet, the lights are still on, everything still works. Literacy is
high, and crime is low. Life expectancy is better than almost anywhere
on earth – 82 years to the US’ 78. The trains run to the second.
Unemployment is only 5%, and levels of inequality are enviable. growth matches America’s at 0.7% over the past decade. It’s hardly a
basket case. In fact, it is living proof that growth isn’t necessary to
deliver a high standard of living.
That’s not to say that Japan is to be envied or emulated. A legacy of failed stimulus ideas has left it with,
and the future is as uncertain as it is anywhere. Neither is it a
steady-state economy in the way that matters most – in its materials.
Japan consumes considerably more than a one-planet share and is not
sustainable in that sense.
The point is that for well over a decade, one of the world’s most
important economies hasn’t grown. And at the end of that stint, it’s
still a great place to live.
So maybe Japan isn’t a failure. Maybe it’s just ahead of its time –
not ‘stagnating’, but settling into the plateau of ‘enough’.
After 15 years of fretting, maybe it’s time Japan embraced its
post-growth state and told the economists where to stick their theories.
Professor Norihiro Kato recently suggested that Japanese youth culture
was doing just that, downsizing and taking a more measured approach to
consumerism. Japan’s population had already levelled off, he noted. He
even suggested Japan was . “Japan is a small country” people are saying, “and we’re O.K. with small. It is, perhaps, a sort of maturity.”
The Economist declared this “one of the saddest things I’ve read in a long time” in an article entitled ‘‘, but the Economist has not yet entered the 21st century. Kato’s comments certainly struck a chord with others. Environmnental campaigner Junko Edahiro agreed that young Japanese are beginning to aspire to “a kind of prosperity not based on resources.” You might expect that from ,
but how about this from the Financial Times: “If the business of a
state is to project economic vigour, then Japan is failing badly” .
“But if it is to keep its citizens employed, safe, economically
comfortable and living longer lives, it is not making such a terrible
hash of things.”
Japan, whether it likes it or not, is the world’s first post-growth
economy. It won’t be the last, and I suspect several other countries are
dropping onto a growth plateau, perhaps including the UK. If so, let’s
work with it. Japan proves that growth isn’t necessary to safeguard the
things that matter most in life. There’s nothing to fear in levelling
out, and if the alternative is boom and bust, then the plateau is a far
safer place to be.
(cross-posted at )
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Jeremy grew up in Madagascar and went to school in Kenya, and his international background has given him a passion for global issues and a compulsion to write about them. This he does, working three days a week for a small publisher, and dividing the rest of his time between writing and activism, reading books, growing vegetables, and boring his wife with post-growth economics. Jeremy lives in Luton, just north of London, where he is a founding member of Transition Luton, part of the Transition Towns network, a grassroots community response to climate change and peak oil.
Jeremy has written 9 posts on .
February 1, 2011
February 1, 2011}