Line Goes Up: Part 0

The most important trend in macrohistory!

Apr 3, 2020

In these turbulent and uncertain times, it is easy to focus only on the violent economic fluctuations within the business cycle. However, there is also a bigger picture: the longer-run increase in economic output across history.

Measuring growth is important, because it defines the standard of living available to humanity. As Bob Lucas put it:

“Once one starts to think about [questions of growth], it is hard to think about anything else.”

Part 1. The world really is better when GDP per capita goes up:

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Line Goes Up: Part I

GDP per capita is a fundamental concept in social welfare: it's pretty intuitive that if you live in a country which can produce more stuff, you're probably better off! Yet, it's a far larger part of the economist's toolkit than the social theorist's. In fact, critics of economics often deride GDP as an irrelevant anachronism of national accounting…

3 years ago · Trevor Chow

Part 2. Prosperity is an exception, not a rule:

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Line Goes Up: Part II

Last time, we established that GDP per capita matters! Yet for most of human history, GDP per capita has stayed at an absolute standstill. In A Farewell to Alms, Gregory Clark gives this three part history of economic growth: From the time of the Middle Paleolithic Era (circa 100,000 BCE) when humans started migrating out of Africa all the way up till the…

3 years ago · Trevor Chow

Part 3. Economic growth is about ideas and institutions:

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Line Goes Up: Part III

We previously identified the Industrial Revolution as the defining turning point for human welfare: However, we stopped just shy of explaining why the industrial economy created by the Industrial Revolution could drive the explosion in GDP per capita which came about in the 1800s. The reason is captured by the canonical model of economic growth: the Solo…

3 years ago · Trevor Chow

Part 4. Growth and existential safety are complements, not substitutes:

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Line Goes Up: Part IV

We do not pick when we are born. We do not deserve to suffer because of that. If every possible human that could exist from now till eternity deserves equal moral consideration, we need to improve the long term future of humanity, because there are a lot more people yet to be born…

2 years ago · Trevor Chow

More to come!