Re:Investors Are in Denial About China
by intrasight on Tuesday March 29, 2016 @11:57PM
(#11386866)
Don't blame the economists - it is the Dismal Science after all. Economists just measure and model things. There is now more cross-fertilization with Social Science in trying to measure "intangibles" like happiness. Internet and social media are making it much more scientific to measure such things.
It is politicians and developers who put a value-judgement on growth - specifically GDP growth. And they are perfectly rational in doing so. In most jurisdictions the developers hire the politicians and so they adopt that value-judgement. The other 99.9% of the constituents are largely ignored on this topic.
The main reason for this belief is that we have a distorted view of economy. For economists, business growth is the only thing that matters in a society. On the other hand, 99% of the people in a country don't really care about economic growth (above some basic comfort level of development, it must be said). This happens because most people live of wages, and wage growth is slow and sometimes non-existent (as presently in the US).
The standard growth oriented view of economy is important only for investors (people making money in the stock market and bond market), and business owners. Normal people will live perfect fine lives as long as the economy is not imploding.