news hour

"Growth solves everything" said Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google.

He was speaking, ostensibly, of how to fix the American economy a few nights ago, in an interview with Gwen Ifill on PBS Newshour.

Since such a position is difficult to disagree with,  something must be the matter with it.

Yet surely it's something to think about.

For where would we be without growth?

The presumption that growth is good and that people's economic well-being is fundamental to the orderly functioning of the state is fundamental to a particular form of power as exercised by the corporate state, to which almost all of us now belong.

That what is large must become larger, what is big bigger. That the rich get richer as a matter of public policy, (policy of which Mr. Schmidt is a trusted advocate, the face of one of the largest corporations in the world, confidante and advisor to the rulers) and that all others are lifted up by the inexorable tides of private wealth.  

And then there are those who take pride in wearing a shirt and pair of pants until they disintegrate and fall off their bodies, take pleasure walking goats through the hills in the evening and don't watch much, if any, television.