Just how will we have growth, ever again?

Tom Calver has a useful piece on where economic growth might come from. And, yes, OK. But it’s possible to look at this at a different level of detail.

By definition economic growth is one of three things - doing more of the same old, doing new things or doing old things in new ways. Loading costs onto - but not value added - any of these is not economic growth. It is, in fact, degrowth. Because we measure growth by value added. Therefore if we add costs but not value then that is a substraction from value added and not growth but its opposite, degrowth.

At which point:

EPR is designed to make businesses pay the full cost of collecting, sorting, recycling and disposing of packaging waste linked to their products. That includes everything from cardboard boxes and glass jars to plastic wrappers and paper sleeves.

Under the rules being phased in, any business with a turnover of more than £2 million that puts more than 50 tonnes of packaging on the UK market each year will need to report detailed data about what they use and pay corresponding fees.

We already have a system. Folk buy stuff, put the wrappings in the rubbish and the council comes around and empties the bins. It works. It’s also, get this, cheap. Cheap compared to every producer in the country having to keep detailed records of anything plus the necessary army of bureaucrats to chase, test, monitor and inform upon that data.

That is, one of the reasons we gain no economic growth is that the pecksniffs keep imposing degrowth upon us. Which thus gives us one of those clues as to how to regain economic growth. Stop doing damn fool things. But then this is all politics and how likely is an absence of damn fool things from that system?

Tim Worstall