Reckoning with Neoclassical Ideas about Growth

Deep Thought's declaration that answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything was "42", was more interesting

The Open Society Foundation publishes a Substack blog The Ideas Letter, and they asked me to write an assessment of a new book by Kings College London and Oxford University economist Daniel Susskind, entitled Growth: A Reckoning.

I won’t opine too much about it here, since you can read my review on The Ideas Letter instead:

Reckoning with Growth

But this will give you a flavour of my reaction:

Why did this remarkable change occur? The obvious answer is the Industrial Revolution. But, Susskind asks, why did the Industrial Revolution have this impact, why did it occur when it did (the 1750s), and why did it occur where it did (in Scotland). Channelling Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979), Susskind asked "What is the Answer to the Great Question about Growth, Prosperity, and Everything?” 

I hope that fans of Hitchhiker’s will forgive me for saying that Susskind’s answer to this ultimate economic question is almost as disappointing as the giant computer Deep Thought’s declaration that “The Answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything”  was “Forty-two.” Susskind’s answer for what enabled growth to take off in the 1750s, in Scotland, is “ideas.” 

Please do read this post and share it around. Though the book is not as aggravating as anything written by William Nordhaus or Richard Tol, it once again confirms that the last people on the planet to understand growth, let alone its ecological consequences, are Neoclassical economists.