Most of the people I know, even if they have some issues with American capitalism, think is seems to work pretty great at "creating wealth" (these are all middle-class white folks, fwiw). They look at their relatively spacious houses, abundance of cheap consumer goods, two cars, etc and think yeah, this is all pretty great, thank you capitalism.

What I've tried to impress on them is a.) this wealth is due in no small part to exploiting workers in the global south, and b.) this wealth is also do to unsustainable exploitation of the environment.

So assume that this data is accurate - that we are using up the equivalent of 5 times the resources of earth. Current US annual GDP per capita is about $65k. Does this data mean that about 80% of this GDP or $52k is based on unsustainable exploitation of the environment? That what they attribute to the miracle of capitalism is really just ripping everything we can out of the planet? I get that GDP /= consumption, but I feel on a national level is near enough to make no difference. And even if 5X is high... say it's only 2X after making various adjustments. That still means HALF of what we attribute to capitalist wealth creation isn't about capitalism at all, just unsustainable greed (which is, of course, definitely capitalism)?

  • Liberalism [he/him,they/them]
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    edit-2
    4 years ago

    No doubt that American consumption is unsustainable, but I don't think you'd expect a 1 to 1 proportionality with GDP, since something's price doesn't correlate with how much it hurts the environment (which is part of the problem).

    For example if everyone in the US switched to a more earth friendly kind of packaging but consumption stayed the same, GDP would go up because it would also be slightly more expensive.