Does Growth Matter?
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 17 March 2020
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The rate of social and technological change in the 20th century was unarguably frenetic. A key measure used by politicians, economists and journalists in that time has been GDP growth. But is Growth as a pointer still fit for purpose? And should all countries still aspire to achieve growth? Is the world on a longer-term slowdown? Would that be a bad thing? And as the shock of coronavirus echoes through communities and economies around the world, will our conceptions of value and cost be redefined?
Anne McElvoy discusses economic futures, with Danny Dorling, demographer, writer, professor of Geography at Oxford University, and author of forthcoming "Slowdown:The end of the Great Acceleration - and Why It's Good for the Planet, the Economy, and Our Lives", which is published in April. http://www.dannydorling.org/ and also www.worldmapper.org
Petr Barton writes and teaches economics in Prague, and is Chief Economist at Natland Investment Group. The webtool discussed in this programme can be found at https://coronavirus.clevermaps.io/
Richard Davies has been senior advisor to the UK Treasury, and the Bank of England and has been Economics Editor at The Economist. He teaches at the LSE and his recent book, "Extreme Economies", is published by Penguin.
Producer Alex Mansfield
Transcript
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| 0:32.1 | This is the BBC Arts and Ideas podcast. In a moment, a chat about the challenges of deep economic forecasting |
| 0:38.8 | in these extraordinary times, even without the coronavirus pandemic weighing in. But before that, |
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| 1:25.0 | Hello, well, here at Freethinking, we plan our programmes in advance, what they're going to be about, who might come on, and what questions we'll try to tackle. |
| 1:34.6 | Clearly, our crystal ball was a bit cloudy. This show was to be themed around ideas about the future, as a potty of international thinkers was due to meet in London for something called FutureFest in a few days' time. |
| 1:47.7 | In particular, we were going to talk about what new economic models might look like, how they're managed and to what end. |
| 1:55.4 | Like so many public events at this time, FutureFest has now been postponed, but we decided to have a go at the same |
| 2:02.2 | topic anyway with our own distinguished panel of guests. So what is the future of economic |
| 2:08.4 | growth when stock markets are taking unprecedented beatings? Businesses are struggling, if they're still |
| 2:14.2 | open at all, and a rising number of people are ill or even dying. |
| 2:19.2 | Coronavirus is a massive shock hit to the global economy. |
| 2:23.2 | So how will growth fare? |
| 2:24.9 | What is it exactly? |
| 2:26.4 | And has it been a false god to economists and politicians alike? |
... |
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