The Pros And Cons Of Economic Growth

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12. Imagine a balloon being blown endlessly. You know what happens, right? It pops. Now, imagine our planet as this balloon and our economic growth fueled by GDP as the helium being blown into our earth unceasingly. What do you think might happen? Our planet won’t be blown into pieces as a normal balloon would, but the living biodiversity within its planetary boundaries can collapse. Massive numbers of plants and animal species become extinct, intense weather changes result to severe catastrophes, and complex systems head to rising inequalities. So, is economic growth bad? Not entirely, because we have lived in the generation where capitalism is the main way to have food to eat. But, we must look at the bigger picture. Underneath this economic growth, there are the embedded environmental and societal structures that move our markets. How are they affected? Normally, we perceive higher GDP growth as an opportunity. More people break through the poverty line as new job opportunities enable them to increase their income. According to the World Bank, 10.7 percent of the world’s population lived on less than $ 1.90/day in 2013 compared to 35 percent in 1990. Indeed, the results of economic growth resulted to…show more content…
And families being displaced attest that the money given to them as a compensation cannot replace the lives they have lived in their lands for many years (Tilt, 2015). Other than this, because local governments from the Global South would grab opportunities to expand their GDP, they would plant monocultured crops for export to the Global North instead of distributing it to their own population. The worst part is sometimes these monocultured crops are not meant for eating but for agrofuels. So, instead of eradicating poverty through economic growth, it is economic growth that fuels more inequality and
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