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there's no need for jousting at infinities.

as long as there are houses to insulate, jobs to specialize in, unread overnment papers to stop printing, inefficiencies to solve, there's economic growth possible.

the problem is that Greece is a poster child for the EU's problems (and of "developed economies")

it's the state/regional version of the middle-income trap, no one wants to do big projects, because relatively everything is expensive in developed economies (Baumol, permitting is hard, money goes into many inefficient small and important things)

there's no need for asteroid mining, there's need for investing in things that improve productivity, and that's basically cheaper inputs (energy, logistics, other cost of living things like housing!), or improve output (education, competitiveness, better access to markets, decreasing language barriers, making bureaucracy easier and smarter, etc)



It seems like say Kansas in the US (I am no expert on Kansas, so correct me if I am wrong), where educated ambitious young people move somewhere else. People with fewer options, or older people, stay. Greece is in the EU and there citizens have access to the EU job market. It's natural for cities and regions to concentrate opportunity. The prosperous regions can subsidize the rural parts, like they do in the US.


I looked at the population pyramid for Greece, just guessing but it looks like there are 10% fewer women in their 20s than men.

Sometimes that sort of thing is because men come to work. Sometimes it's because young women up and leave.

This article discusses educated women leaving Greece.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13607804211023521


> overnment papers to stop printing, inefficiencies to solve, there's economic growth possible.

You’ve got it backwards!

If everyone is very efficient, houses are perfectly insulated and everyone replaces SUVs with bicycles, and has huge savings in the bank

GDP of the country actually goes DOWN in that scenario

Anyhow, the main point stands - if Growth is Zero, economy should be stable, not collapsing. The system should not behave like a drug addict


If growth is zero then you literally end up with a zero sum game where each person can only grow his pie by taking from someone else.


depends on prices!

if a community values bikes more than SUVs GDP can still go up.

also it depends on the SUV, are people ditching a 20 year old thing for electric bikes or ...?

hedonistic adjustments are notoriously difficult in these calculations, but also necessary.




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