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<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.morganhilltimes.com/opinion/257297-what-is-growth-good-for">http://www.morganhilltimes.com/opinion/257297-what-is-growth-good-for</a><br>
<br>
<span class="style9">What is 'growth' good for</span><br>
<div class="style3" style10=""><span class="style3 style10">7:17 PM</span><br>
<span class="style3 style10"> By </span><a
href="mailto:editor@morganhilltimes.com" class="style3 style10">Wes
Rolley</a></div>
<br>
<span class="style3 style11">The
word "growth" begins to take on its positive connotation from our very
early days. My mother used to stand me against the closet door and
measure my growth with a ruler and a pencil. As each new line moved
ever upward, it was all goodness … as in "Oh my goodness, how you have
grown."<br>
<br>
Eventually, it became "What are you going to do with
yourself when you grow up?" Still the implication was that eventually I
would do something positive, would arrive at a time and place where it
all fit and things were all right with the world.<br>
<br>
Unfortunately
I stopped growing before I could challenge our 6-foot, 7-inch center on
the Flagstaff High School basketball team. One career choice eliminated
due to a lack of growth.<br>
<br>
When I eventually got into the business
world, it was still all about growth. How were we to grow the business?
We measured our progress as growth in earnings per share, in the stock
price and our own success in the growth of our bank accounts or its
reflection in conspicuous consumption.<br>
<br>
The idea that growth is
good is even reinforced by our architecture that measures achievement
in terms, not of usability or aesthetic appeal, but simply in of how
many feet does it reach into the sky. So, skylines grow, ever larger
but somehow less romantic unless you have been reading Ayn Rand.<br>
<br>
Even
our biggest crooks, like Bernie Madoff, create Ponzi schemes that seem
to grow their investor's wealth while only enriching the schemer. It
might be understandable if it had only been Madoff, but his is only one
in a long string of acts of greed.<br>
<br>
It is almost axiomatic that a
politician must bow before the gods of growth. Republicans will tell
you that we have to reduce taxes so the economy can grow. The Obama
administration tells you that they will stimulate the economy so that
the economy can grow.<br>
<br>
According to Bloomberg News Service, Obama
told them that "If we are growing at a robust rate, then we can pay for
the government that we need without having to raise taxes."<br>
<br>
This
is exactly the situation that we have in California where both our
state and local governments rely on the fees related to growth and the
taxation that they will bring in the future to pay for the services
that we currently demand of our government.<br>
<br>
The writer Edward
Abbey reminded us that "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology
of a cancer." Abbey was accused of being many things: a desert
anarchist, an environmentalist, a gadfly, arrogant, self-centered,
bigoted, a national treasure. What he did do was to chronicle the
overwhelming urge we have to dominate the untamed American West and to
use whatever is there to fuel our need to grow.<br>
<br>
It should not be
the automatic goal of our government to grow the economy nor should it
be the goal of government to continue growing. Just as a cancer will
eventually take all of our energy to sustain its insatiable expansion,
so growing government will eventually take all of our monetary
resources and growing the economy will eventually take all of our
natural resources. The end result of all of this will be collapse and
possibly the death of our civilization.<br>
<br>
This continual chasing
the chimera of growth is an economic Ponzi scheme and we are reaping
the consequences. Coupled with a legislature that cannot compromise,
the collapse was inevitable.<br>
<br>
There are alternative visions of
the future that need to be considered. They are based not on growth,
but rather the idea of sustainability. We need to be planning not for
today, or tomorrow, but to start asking the questions of what type of
world we are going to leave for our grandchildren.<br>
<br>
One part of that effort comes from the Center for a Sustainable Economy.<br>
<br>
For
example, they seek not to figure out how much money can be made by
clear cutting our redwoods, but rather provides the framework for
analyzing the net public benefit of forest restoration.<br>
<br>
California's
current Legislature is locked in battle between two un-bending
political policies, Republicans who take vows to never, ever allow a
new tax and Democrats who insist that they need to pay for providing a
social safety net for the public. Both work for and rely on a continued
pattern of growth as if that were progress.<br>
<br>
It is time that we
seek solutions elsewhere. For the economy, we need to make
sustainability our goal, rather than growth. We need not to be doing
more, but to focus our energies on doing better. For politics, only the
Green Party makes sustainability a part of their platform. It is time
to think of our future, one where, as Thomas Friedman wrote, "Green is
the new Red, White and Blue."</span><br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="80">--
"Anytime you have an opportunity to make things better and you don't, then you are wasting your time on this Earth" Roberto Clemente
Wes Rolley
17211 Quail Court, Morgan Hill, CA 95037
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.refpub.com/">http://www.refpub.com/</a> -- Tel: 408.778.3024</pre>
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