Since 1940, economists, investors, and politicians have been obsessed with economic “growth,” labeling Gross Domestic Product of 0.5 percent as “bad,” and anything above 2.5 percent GDP as “good.” But low growth wasn’t always an economic pariah. Years ago, for example, TV stations in the U.S. were happy to show a five percent annual growth (mostly to compensate for more costly programming). Today, if a station doesn’t show a 25 percent yearly growth, the unit is considered “stagnant,” non-performing, or a “burden,” even though it is still making money.
Recently, Disney’s shares fell 7.75 percent because, in the fourth quarter of 2025 (which ended in late September), it reported flat revenue of $22.46 billion. This is despite the fact that profit was 8.4 percent above analysts’ estimates, and operating margin was 15.5 percent, up from 12.6 percent in the same quarter last year.
The questions now are: How far can this growth (or better yet, this GDP growth) concept go, and does GDP growth also fuel inflation, which in turn diminishes the growth benefits?
These questions were asked by the 43-year-old academic Jason Hickel, a former member of the U.K. Labour Party, in his 2021 book, Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World. In 2025, another academic, this time the American Christopher F. Jones from Arizona, expanded on it in the book, The Invention of Infinite Growth.
Actually, the “degrowth” concept was created in 1972 by Austrian-French social philosopher Gerald Hors (1923-2007), who used the pen name Andre Gorz, but it only recently became a “movement.”
This it is because economists have started to recognize that there are natural limits to perpetual growth. Unfortunately, this topic has moved from the economic platform to the political sphere. So, this “degrowth” movement, i.e., decoupling the economy from continuous growth, is seen as politically progressive, which is a topic not looked upon kindly in North America, but well accepted in Europe and Japan, where degrowth is seen less as a regression and more as a reallocation of economic resources.
But degrowth can work for both progressives (as in reducing the number of cars on the road by investing in mass transit, and therefore from an environmental point of view) and conservatives (by optimizing resources and reducing bureaucracy by moving from the concept of “why” to “how” in order to facilitate something).
Degrowth can also offer social solutions, like less time working and more time for the family, which could satisfy both progressives and conservatives in job creation.
Indeed, as American economist Matt Orsagh has said, “Degrowth isn’t a replacement for capitalism.”
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