ABSTRACT
This chapter debates on the growth-antigrowth theme has become a fashionable pastime over certain years. There are two aspects to the debate that may be treated separately, though they will become linked in any policy conclusion: first, whether continued economic growth is physically possible and, second, whether it is desirable. A rise in the prices of depleting resources acts to reduce living standards through a rise in the cost of living at some rate that depends on physical factors and on economic institutions. Some significant events, good or bad, may have quite tenuous links with economic and technological growth, though, indeed, they may be mitigated or aggravated. Familiar to economists, it argues more strongly against continued economic growth if only because it is one for which the economist can propose no remedy consistent with such growth. The chapter refers to what is known in the jargon as the relative income hypothesis or, more facetiously, the Jones effect.
