Growth

Daniel Susskind argues that economic growth should be redirected rather than abandoned, so that it better reflects what people truly value. Over the past two centuries, he notes, growth has lifted billions out of poverty and made lives healthier and far longer. Its price has been steep: widening inequality, destabilizing technologies and environmental destruction. Faced with that damage, some now call for degrowth, a deliberate shrinking of economies. Susskind shows that growth was barely discussed until the latter half of the twentieth century, and that the steady discovery of new ideas is what ended thousands of years of stagnation. He also insists that trade-offs must be faced, and that choosing less growth for other goals is a moral decision.

Barack Obama included it among his favorite books of 2024.