La Dolce Mailbag

Degrowth, Chinese growth, and the economics of vacation homes

Back from Italy soon — it’s been a fantastic trip, but vacation can’t last forever.

BD Anders: Have recent developments changed your prior generous evaluation of Joe Manchin and his negotiation style?

Yes.

Genevieve: Thoughts on the degrowth interview in the New York Times yesterday? “This Pioneering Economist Says Our Obsession With Growth Must End.” Herman Daly is very critical of G.D.P. as a metric.

There are a lot of problems with degrowth as a movement, and I think their obsession with critiques of GDP underscores how conceptually weak degrowth is.

You can come up with a lot of contrived scenarios where GDP fails to track broader concepts of well-being. But if you look at the international correlates of GDP with almost anything, they are very strong. The only important exception to the “GDP is good” rule of thumb is that it doesn’t account for the value of leisure time. So enslaving people is bad and allowing people to retire is good even though an exclusive focus on GDP might not s…