The Costs of Economic Growth

First published in 1967, The Costs of Economic Growth argued that the offical figures for growth in real income were entirely compatible with a decline in human welfare. Twenty-five years later, this book remains the most persuasive and systematic demolition of the relgion of growth yet published, its arguments only reinforced by the growing social and environmental problems of the late twentieth century. For this new edition, a section on the myth of consumer sovereignty has been added, and the text has been revised and updated in the light of recent global perils and enviornmental degradation - acid rain, the greenhouse effect, the destruction of the rainforests, and worldwide pollution of land and sea. Nearer home the costs of growth include traffic blight, the destruction of the countryside and, more controversially, the hedonism, crime and conflicts of the permissive society.