Growth is unsustainable

Lets define growth as

Growth = change in GDP or GNP (GDP -imports, +exports)

But growth could occur if money spent on disasters, pollution, fighting crime, job-less growth or creating value by consuming natural assets.

3% growth is x2 in 23years, 10% is x2 in 7 years. Each x2 consumes as much resources as sum of all previous periods.

This is at the heart of why growth is unsustainable.

We are consuming nature's resources and creating emissions 44% faster than nature can regenerate and reabsorb the waste. It take the earth 18 months to produce the ecological services that we need in one year. So we need 3.4 earths.

So growth is not possible.

But governments still plan expenditure on basis that the economy keeps growing (no growth means shortfall in income and reduced public spending - same is true for saving for pensions).

A lot is the damage caused by weakly regulated banks chasing maximum rates of growth through speculation.

Economies put legal obligations on public listed companies to grow, give returns to shareholders is the priority of management.

They can take your money to wherever is the highest rate of return. Money is lent with interest, economies based on loans with interest have built-in growth.