Growth Fetish (2003) by Clive Charles Hamilton.pdf

This is a hugely stimulating and thoughtful contribution to the increasingly important debate about economic growth. Clive Hamilton strips bare the intellectual inadequacies of the so-called 'Third Way', and focuses on the one question politicians are too afraid to answer: if people aren't getting any happier as they go on getting richer, why do we continue to trash the planet and turn people into consumptive zombies in pursuit of economic growth? There is a conspiracy of silence about all this which simply has to be broken. (Jonathon Porritt, Chairman of the British government's Sustainable Development Commission)

Where Hamilton takes the argument forward is with his view that the overwhelming majority of people in the rich countries have passed the point where additional material wealth gives them any benefit at all. .... His book, Growth Fetish, takes this to its logical conclusion, arguing that advanced economies, obsessed with increasing gross domestic product, should chill out. .... We'll carry on consuming -- however miserable it makes us. (David Smith, Sunday Times)

Anyone tired of current cant about growth and resistant to the blandishments of consumerism will welcome this radical analysis of conventional economics. Paradigm shift is usually painful, but this one is a positive pleasure. (Sir Crispin Tickell, Chancellor of the University of Kent at Canterbury)

This is a powerful statement about the failure of the rat-race society and the need for a new philosophy of sociable living. (Professor Richard Layard, London School of Economics)

The most lucid, penetrating, comprehensive and clearly articulated analysis of our present human predicament and of the pathologies that underlie it that I've seen so far. (John Bunzl, author of The Simultaneous Policy)

Breaks new ground by asking us to think what a post-growth, environmentally stable society might actually be like. ... Clearly, stylishly written. Its language and argument are accessible. (Hugh Stretton, author of Economics: An Introduction)

Clive Hamilton is Executive Director of The Australia Institute, Australia's foremost public-interest think tank. He has held visiting academic positions at the ANU, University of Sydney, University of Technology Sydney and the University of Cambridge. Described in the press as Australia's most influential economist on the left and Australia’s leading environmental economist, he is the author of six books and his views feature regularly in major news outlets.