The Economic Growth Trap

Wim Naudé

Chapter Chapter 2 in The Economic Decline of the West, 2025, pp 21-54 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This chapter describes the economic Growth Trap wherein the West has fallen. It explains why and how neoliberal capitalism depends on everlasting economic growth. This has resulted in ecological overshoot, of which climate change is a symptom. The Growth Trap has also fostered socio-political instability, rising inequality, job insecurity, and ruptured the social fabric. This chapter also introduces the Great Stagnation, which, since the 1970s, has been slowly ending the Great Take-Off and Great Acceleration described in Chap. 1. While the Great Stagnation could reduce ecological overshoot in the West, the increasingly zero-sum economy that it is resulting in brings its own hazards. More specifically, as this book shows, under the pressure of the Growth Trap, the Great Stagnation will accentuate the dangers of the decline in oil, the rise of the Oligarchy and of the Permanent War Economy. It creates a dilemma of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” as far as economic growth is concerned.

Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-82299-5_2

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-82299-5_2

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