From what I've heard and read, Costa Rica has done excellent work in this direction.
GDP is low compared to many developed countries. But they have an innovative health care system that provides good outcomes with limited resources, inexpensive but healthy diet featuring rice and beans and fresh fruits and vegetables, a devotion to environmental preservation, and energy production almost entirely from renewables with bans on oil and gas exploration.
For these and other reasons, they are one of the Blue Zones where a surprisingly high number of people live to be over 100 years old.
The other factor in Costa Rica is political stability and low military spending. After their civil war in 1949, they constitutionally abolished the military (Article 12) which not only prevents military juntas from emerging but also enables spending on healthcare in a low GDP country.
There's a striking irony in sharing a degrowth article with an audience of well-paid developers whose daily resource use might match months of consumption for someone below the poverty line. Not implying everyone fits this mold—there are exceptions. Still, it's valuable food for thought. Thanks for posting.
Well-paid is the keyword. I think it's safe to say programmers earn more than average people. From my observations people usually spend proportionally to what they earn.
EDIT:
To make it more clear, I think resource use almost perfectly correlates with spending. One might argue, "But spending on services like plumbers, waiters or therapists doesn't directly consume resources." Yet, when you pay someone for their time, they use that money to buy food, housing, or services from others. This chain continues recursively, ultimately leading to resource consumption.
Yes, let’s just pillage and plunder the planet until the Amazon is gone and we’ve driven every species to extinction. Hurrah for capitalism and eternal growth.
I my opinion, a lot of poverty continues because of terrible politics. Many areas could have economic growth, but are restricted by authoritarianism, corruption, and a lack of rule of law that make investments and productivity growth impossible. Without a stable non-corrupt government, there is no way for economic improvement even if you had a lot of money to spend because it won't make it to where it's needed.
I would add that the terrible politics doesn't need to be local. There are a large number of international norms that benefit the already-wealthy, at the expense of the poor, for example, by supporting authoritarians in other countries.
Part of the problem is the misallocation of productivity. Let's face facts no one needs one more iPhone or whatever gadget but everyone needs good healthcare or whatever basic need. Our current economic system is geared towards providing what in essence are luxury goods, items that we don't need for a happy and healthy life. If our economic system would work towards making basics the priority we would be better off all over the world. That would mean that somehow producing food, or whatever basic need, for everyone would be way more economically attractive and entrepreneurs would create more companies in the food production realm rather than gadgets that ultimately end up in the trash polluting our environment.
> Post-capitalist approaches are therefore needed,
The authors refuse to elaborate on this claim with specifics. Instead they provide generic statements such as
> We need to actively plan to shift productive capacities away from capital accumulation
and
> To reclaim productive capacities for national development, governments need to use progressive industrial and fiscal policy, public works programmes...
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The first named author wrote an Editorial in the Guardian entitled "Forget 'developing' poor countries, it's time to 'de-develop' rich countries"[0].
I can see where this particular research(er) is headed and with all due respect, I have no interest in following it through to the eventual completion which he makes clear in his editorial in Montly Review (a self-described Socialist magazine) where he eventually comes to the conclusion that Capitalism has done nothing to raise people out of global poverty[1]
> In sum, the narrative that the rise of capitalism drove progress against extreme poverty is not supported by empirical evidence. On the contrary, the rise of capitalism was associated with a notable decline in human welfare
It's abundantly clear this is a preconceived outcome with a paper written around proving it
It's interesting to see how defensive people get about capitalism when other economic systems are mentioned. If capitalism is so great, then argue its strengths. It should be able to withstand the criticism that comes its way without having to attack other systems or the critic's background.
FWIW, I agree that capitalism has helped drive progress and increase human welfare in the past, but I no longer agree that it's currently raising human welfare, even if it's still helping to drive progress. I also think that what we have in the USA is not pure capitalism anyway and without acknowledging that, a real discussion will never be had. A form of socialism already exists here, and people seem to like it.
You may or may not be correct, but I'd say, citation needed.
It's not self-evident that life is such a zero-sum game that more people necessarily means fewer resources to go around; I'd even venture that the last hundred years of development suggests the opposite.
It's quite possible that more people enables a slew of network effects (such as technology improvements due to more minds attacking a problem, say) that improves everyone's living standards.
Tongue in cheek comment about large countries with already under replacement TFR needing to limit emissions when western countries with net immigration are typically elevating consumption of each immigrant to western standards which is equivalent to multiple per capita emissions of world average.
GDP is low compared to many developed countries. But they have an innovative health care system that provides good outcomes with limited resources, inexpensive but healthy diet featuring rice and beans and fresh fruits and vegetables, a devotion to environmental preservation, and energy production almost entirely from renewables with bans on oil and gas exploration.
For these and other reasons, they are one of the Blue Zones where a surprisingly high number of people live to be over 100 years old.