Reading Questions and Discussions for Chapter 1

A set of reading questions (there are more coming) for people wanting to read together and discuss the key ideas

Posted by Gavin Melles November, 10, 2020 15 likes

Chapter 1 reading questions
1. Why is GDP the cuckoo in the economic nest?

2. How is the Doughnut a replacement for GDP?
3. How did John Stuart Mill redefine the earlier broader social definitions of political economy from Adam Smith and James Steuart?
4. How is the common idea of economics as the science of behaviour contradicted by mainstream economics?
5. In what way is 'utility' and its definition a poor basis for human behaviour and growth?
6. Has economics teaching (micro and macro economics) changed relative to understanding development?
7. What did Okun's Law and GNP lack as a panacea for development?
8. How does the upward curve of GDP growth fit the 'Metaphors We Live By' (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980)?
9. Why would Kuznets not have chosen and upward curve or GNP as measure of national welfare?
10. How did Donella Meadows (the influential systems thinker) describe GNP growth?
11. Post the 2008 GFC how have politicians tried to prop up growth and make it palatable?
12. How has the disappearace of traditional political economy created a moral vacancy? (Michael Sandel)
13. How is the work of Amartya Sen a culmination of Jean Sismondi, John Ruskin, E.F Schumacher, and others?
14. What enables human beings to thrive?
15. Can you explain the doughnut boundaries and concepts?
16. What is the Great Acceleration? What have been its ecological and economic effects? (Will Steffen)
17. How does the Anthropocene differ from the Holocene?
18. What five factors will influence progress? Any others?
19. What kind of governance do you think will matter for progress in specific areas?
20. How does this relate to me?

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