>Most places that’s more than enough to live comfortably.

“Comfortably” is certainly a matter of opinion. But that 17.3k is a purchasing-power parity average, targeted at HN’s largely rich-country leadership. The nominal average income per person in the world is 11.4k.

http://m.statisticstimes.com/economy/countries-by-gdp-capita...

So we have taken the usual cost of living adjustments into account, and the question is, do you want to live on the equivalent of 17.3k per capita US relative to the cost of living in most of the US — somewhere like, say, Pittsburgh?

It’s difficult to try and frame this. The price of any goods with constrained supply (higher education, housing and land) tend to increase to meet people’s ability to pay.

It might make more sense to think in terms of a carbon budget if we are thinking about sustainability.

The major issue with this isn’t growth, it’s landlords and medical care having irrationally high prices based around a return on a good that should have no profit. Fuck growth.

The more accurate question is do you want to live with whatever goods can currently be bought with USD 17k in the US today?

I’m not seeing the productivity gains anyway, buddy, I work for minimum wage and you’re barking up the wrong tree.

Growth doesn’t matter if it doesn’t reach the people.

Yes, indeed. But growth does matter if it reaches the people, which is scythe's point.

Right, so growth in its current state is a wealth vacuum distributing wealth from high impact places to low impact places. I don’t see how that works as an argument for MORE growth.

Then we should have more growth _and_ a better distribution of the gains from growth. But merely better distribution without growth leaves us in the USD17k scenario.

The original comment point is that there is that growth is needed (but not sufficient) if one wants both conditions he pointed out to happen - which is most people.