ABSTRACT
The idea that economies and societies move in a circle is not attractive to the modern West. We march forward, and ever faster: that is our vision of progress, and it is supported by our measures of economic growth. Two centuries ago, in Britain of the Industrial Revolution, national income per head rose by less than 1 per cent per year. Now such a growth rate, sustained over a decade, would be regarded as shameful stagnation in any western country. Our concept of cycles in national income has been adjusted accordingly: ‘downswings’ are defined as periods of deceleration, of slower growth; they do not often involve an actual decline in national income. Our cycles are ‘growth cycles’.
