_This article is written by Kevin Alberton, Professor of Economics, at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. _

Kevin’s work ranges from business and social forecasting and the evaluation of government policy to: the impact of globalised liberal markets on the political economic prospects of the UK; the ways, means and implications of privatisation and marketisation in the public sector; and the development of social, and responsible, innovation. He is currently working in the areas of employment and society in a low-to-zero (economic) growth economy and the well-being aspects of relational — as opposed to transactional — socio-economic interactions.

  • The problem: For half a century so-called ‘growth’, measured by increasing GDP, has been pursued by passing on unsustainable costs to future citizens.
  • **Why it matters: **This is both unjust and inefficient; further, one day we will be these future citizens.
  • **The solution: **Rather than continually promoting ‘growth’ defined by increasing GDP, we require government policy that reduces (ideally eliminates) the future costs of today’s socio-economic activity.

The future to back

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there”, as L. P. Hartley wrote in the first line of his 1953 novel The Go-Between. And we of the present have great power over the past, shaping it to support (or otherwise) our ideologies. It follows, however, that if the past is a different country, so is the future. And we of the present have great and asymmetric power over the future — essentially, we are building the future, or tearing it down, on a daily basis.

Considering the future as a different nation allows us to consider the power imbalance inherent in our relationship with it. While inhabitants of the future might reinterpret us, or frustrate our plans by, for example, not carrying them through, we of the present have the means to determine the nature of their very existence. Consider that oil burned today is oil that cannot be burned tomorrow; forests cleared today will not be forests tomorrow, pollution we leave today will impact tomorrow and so on. We have more power over the inhabitants of the future than they have over us and, as with all power, this tends to corrupt. 

Debt: spend today, pay tomorrow

One area in particular where the power imbalance between the present and the future is most clear is the matter of financial debt. It almost goes without saying, that debts we run up today accrue to the inhabitants of tomorrow. We might also consider the burden of ecological debt.

Do not do unto your future self what you do not like your past self having done to you.

Even before Covid-19, data from the World Bank indicates that financial debt had been growing at twice the rate of GDP over the last five decades, even prior to the onset of the pandemic. This implies, that for every $1 increase in global expenditure (as measured by global GDP), there has been an approximate $2 increase in debt. Financial debt is the means we of the present have of drawing down the financial resources of the future so we can exploit them today. This might be justified if the money drawn down to today is invested in such a way that the debt will essentially pay itself off; however, the long-term rate of increase of debt over GDP implies we have not invested in this way. This global pattern is broadly replicated in the UK.

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The other form of debt we can run up for future generations relates to ecological damage. We may make the mess, but they have to clear it up. The ecological debt we owe the future — or more accurately, the diminution of their standard of life which results from our actions today — can be measured by the ecological footprint or Earth overshoot day. This represents the day in the calendar year when we have used up our annual allocation of resources, and start drawing down resources from the future.

Decolonise the Future

Merriam-Webster defines colonisation as “domination of a people or area by a foreign state or nation: the practice of extending and maintaining a nation’s political and economic control over another people or area.” Considering the future as another nation allows us to reflect on how our (present) decisions impact on their (future) resources. Today we are using the resources that should belong to the future — and we are passing on them our costs for the convenient (to us) reason that we have the power to do so, and they do not have the power to resist.

Our incoming government seems no less intent than previous ones in passing yet more costs onto future generations — either in reduced services or increasing debt — if their manifesto documents are any indication. This is unjust! In any event, such policies have already been shown to fail; there is evidence that major socio-economic policies (particularly in the USA) have taken us down the wrong economic policy path since the 1970s.

We may consider our present selves as the victims of this same behaviour: one reason life seems so much more difficult today than it did two decades ago is that today is the future that was sold off yesterday to fund the excesses of that time. There is no reason we should continue the same inappropriate, unjust policies; instead, we should consider the temporal golden rule: “Do not do unto your future self what you do not like your past self having done to you.”

Do your (future) self a favour

Government policy should make it a priority to implement policies that ensure the UK pays her own way in the world and time. Specifically, we must desist from the practice of drawing down to today's resources that ought to belong to future generations and cease passing on today’s costs to the future.

In practice, this may mean de-emphasising (so-called) growth in favour of sustainability. Since the 1980s, we have had 45 years of (so-called) growth, and the result is the economic and ecological mess we see around us. Since 1978 the costs of (so-called) economic growth have outweighed the benefits. Calling for more growth is only going to make the problem worse.

Practically, therefore, we need to look beyond GDP in order to judge the health of our socio-economy; other options are available, including the Genuine Progress Indicator. We should eschew government policies which rely on ever-increasing debt, whether financial or ecological.

Bear in mind, one day we will be inhabitants of the future, so let us do our future selves a favour and insist on temporally balanced policies today.

Done reading? Make sure to share your own thoughts on sustainable policies and the future we’re shaping by leaving a comment below ⬇️

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