To resolve a pub argument, I would like to know whether, in a rich
modern economy, the physical mass of goods consumed per person is less
or more compared with, say, Victorian times or the sixties and what
the trend is. I argued it was, as more wealth today was in the form of
information and intangibles, whereas my friend argued that we had
simply outsourced the physical manufacturing to other, low labour cost
countries, and we consumed more physical "stuff" than ever. |
Request for Question Clarification by
pafalafa-ga
on
16 Aug 2005 07:05 PDT
I'd guess it depends an awful lot on who and what you're comparing.
Who has more physical stuff -- Bill Gates or Andrew Carnegie...? Beats me!
But for the average citizen, there has been such a huge expansion of
the middle class in modern times, that I'd have to say we collectively
own A LOT more stuff (per capita) then the average -- much poorer --
person of bygone days.
But how to prove this. Ah...there's the rub!
pafalafa-ga
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Clarification of Question by
bonz0-ga
on
16 Aug 2005 08:31 PDT
I suppose I'm really thinking of the aggregate for a country. Just
anecdotally, there seems to be a lot less 'stuff' being made - where
there was a car factory, there's a call centre, a big port is now
smart waterfront flats, and a clothes factory is a software house.
Also, we do spend an increasing fraction of our income on services
like broadband internet, sports clubs etc.
But we all still spend money on consumer goods, and I'm sure buy more
cars, stereos, toys and so on than our parents even imagined. I can't
figure out which trend wins!
The motivation for asking is to get an idea of whether the
environmental effects of getting richer are good or bad, from the
whole earth point of view.
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Request for Question Clarification by
pafalafa-ga
on
16 Aug 2005 08:54 PDT
Page 7 of this presentation:
http://www.epa.gov/sustainability/Workshop0505/7b_Rogich_Donald.pdf
Trends in U.S. Material Flows, 1975-2000Materials
might be the closest you get to an answer.
The charts show that total material use in the US has increased quite
a bit between 1975 and 2000.
However, material use per dollar of GDP has actually fallen. And
material use per capita varies, according to which graph (inputs, use,
or outputs) you choose to focus on.
You might want to show your barroom pal the graph on page 8, which
shows overall material use per capita increasing from about 20 tons
per person in 1970 to 25 tons per person in 2000.
You win!
Let me know if this does the trick for you.
paf
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Clarification of Question by
bonz0-ga
on
16 Aug 2005 09:23 PDT
Thank you very much - loads of meat in that report. I think you may be
right - that may be the closest I get to the definitive answer.
I think I lose the argument though. Although on a per dollar (or
GBpound, being British!) of GDP basis, there is less "weight of stuff"
consumed as we get richer, this is outweighed (ha ha) by the increase
in GDP, so we do use more stuff in absolute terms. So I'll have to
find a different reason to be optimistic! I think it's an interesting
question though - I'll continue to do some research!
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