Includes bibliographical references and index

Over the past two centuries, economic growth has freed billions from the struggle for subsistence. Yet prosperity has come at a price: environmental destruction, desolation of local cultures, the emergence of vast inequalities. Many respond that now is the time to shrink our economic footprint. But Daniel Susskind argues that such “degrowth” would be folly. Instead, we must keep growth but redirect it, making it better reflect our values.

Growth: A History and a Reckoning shows how policymaking in the second half of the twentieth century came to revolve around a single-minded quest for greater GDP. The growth obsession has been met with the assertion that “we cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet.” Susskind shows, though, that growth is a product not of resource exploitation but of new ideas. In that sense, growth really can be infinite.