Professor at ICTA-UAB and Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE • Author of THE DIVIDE and LESS IS MORE • Global inequality, political economy and ecological economics
Jason Hickel
Loading...
We don't. This is massively inefficient and unnecessary. Instead, we can use industrial policy and public finance to target necessary innovations directly.
Why do we need to increase *aggregate* production, indiscriminately, from an already very high level, in order to get these specific innovations? Why do we need continued growth in fast fashion and industrial beef in order to innovate better energy systems and medicines?
And this does not require high-income countries to achieve even higher levels of GDP. It can be done right now.
How? By leveraging industrial policy and public finance.
I recently heard a leading public figure claim that high-income countries need more GDP growth in order to increase innovation in things like renewables, EVs, and life-saving medicine.
This makes little sense:
