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Do We Need Economic Growth?

BBC World Service | Newshour Extra with Tim Jackson, Annie Quick, Daniel Benami and Jared Bernstein
November 2017

CC-BY-SA 2.0 :: bryansjs / flickr.com

We are told again and again that GDP growth is good for the economy; it is said to lift people out of poverty, provides jobs and investment, and improves lives. While there is general agreement about the need for growth in the developing world, what about the costs of growth in the rich world? Is growth accelerating environmental damage? Is it causing greater inequality?

Owen Bennett Jones is joined by Tim Jackson from the Centre for  the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity; Daniel Ben-Ami, Journalist; Jared Bernstein, economic adviser to President Barack Obama; and Annie Quick of the New Economics Foundation, to discuss who really benefits from growth and whether we can have prosperity without it.

The podcast is available on the BBC website.

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