US recession, Steel, rail, teachers, Israel

[Gordon Fitch]

> . . . Now, this is an odd thing.  If my personal economy grows by
> zero from one year to the next (zero corrected for inflation,
> of course) it means my living standard doesn't change.  Big
> deal; I have lived through many such years.  On the other
> hand, if the _national_ economy experiences zero growth, dire
> suffering and disorder results.  Or at least people get very
> depressed about it.  This difference strikes me as odd.  I'm
> sure there's some simple explanation.

Max Sawicky:
> mbs:  ZG with population growth obviously means
> less real per head.  ZG also means that many
> below the mean see negative growth, which is
> a bummer.  Negative growth plus anemic positive
> growth makes the natives restless.
> 
> Job churning increases, and the transition costs
> of this are also an aggravation to the families
> in question.

If I may skip over several steps of argument here, what I
think you're saying in essence is that growth is a political
need of the ruling class, rather than an economic need of
the community as a whole.

That being the case, the defect of the Greens' alleged
desire for zero growth which J.H. disparaged is not the 
zero growth itself, but their omission of specifying the
concomitant requirement -- the overthrow or dissolution of
the class system and the class war that sustains it.