Salon meeting Nov 15th

Is Unfettered Growth Possible or Desirable?

Monday 15 November 2010 - The Carriageworks, Millennium Square, Leeds
The Millennium Room, 6:30pm (for a 6:45pm start) to 8:15pm.

Economics writer Daniel Ben-Ami and UK Green Party founder-member Clive Lord will discuss the limits and desirability of economic growth.

Since the Industrial Revolution, economic growth has generally been seen as good and desirable. However, over the last forty years, the growth of the economy and the spread of prosperity have increasingly been seen as problematic rather than positive. While some are still willing to defend economic growth, highlighting the gains it has brought to humanity in terms of material wealth, technological progress, increased life expectancy and personal consumption, others see economic growth as encouraging greed, damaging the environment, causing unhappiness and widening social inequalities.

So, does economic growth offer solutions to the problems of the world, or is it one of them? Are their limits to growth, whether natural, social, economic or moral, or are possibilities limitless? Isn’t the pursuit of happiness more important than the acquisition of wealth? And as the world copes with the latest recession, is continuous economic growth even possible?

Whether you’re pro-growth or a growth-sceptic, come and join what promises to be a lively debate.

Speakers

Daniel Ben-Ami is a London-based journalist and author specialising in economics and finance. He is a regular contributor to Spiked-Online, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Sunday Telegraph and The Sunday Times. He is the author of Cowardly Capitalism: The myth of the global financial casino (2001), which was recommended by the Baker Library of Harvard Business school was awarded the, and his latest book Ferraris For All: In defence of economic progress (2010), described as ‘a rejoinder to the growth sceptics’, which will be available on the night.

Clive Lord was a founder member of PEOPLE, later the Ecology Party and, since 1973, the UK Green Party. Clive is a retired probation officer, and has stood for the Green Party in every General Election since 1974, every local election since 1980, and European elections in 1984, 1989 and 1994. He’s an occasional writer for the Green Party website and is also the author of A Citizen’s Income: A Foundation for a Sustainable World (Jon Carpenter, 2003), which amongst other things, looks at the dynamics driving globalisation and explains why the major players can never recognise when to stop, or know how to.
Readings

Hitting back at growth sceptics, by Andrew Milligan, FundStrategy, 23 August 2010
Growth sceptics selling the economy short, by Daniel Ben-Ami, The Australian, 26 July 2010
Why more is really more, by Sean Collins, Spiked Review of Books, Issue, No.35, June 2010
Growth Isn’t Possible: Why we need a new economic direction, New Economics Foundation, January 2010
Bjorn Lomborg – Hero or Villain? by Clive Lord, Green Party website