The Great God Growth
Can economies continue growing for ever - and therefore continue to exact an ever-growing demand on the world's resources - or does there come a point where a mature and advanced economy fulfills the full expectations of its consumers and renders any further growth unnecessary as 'peak comfort' has been reached?
In my opinion the stable capitalist western democracies have now reached that point; the problem being that the wealth accrued by them over so many decades has not been distributed fairly amongst the populace: the rich have got richer and the poor have got poorer, thanks to the slavish belief in the neo-liberal economic dogma of Hayek
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen [pounds] nineteen [shillings] and six [pence], result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery
So I'm certainly not countenacing recession. Nope: the three factors that just might save the Capitalist Empire from going the way of the Egyptian, Greek, Inca, Aztec, Roman...Empires are:
Slight Growth
Slight Inflation
Slight increase in population
How to quantify "slight"?
I dunno, how about 0.25% per annum? Strong and Stable