Sorry, but this is horse-manure. If we abandoned all notions of GDP, we would still need to smooth the curve of X number needing care, while much smaller Y number can provide it. This is why I don't mention GDP and mention "the maths".
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I do see your argument & I make it myself. Getting to a sustainable position will take effort and time. I get it. But the current gov mission is ‘growth’ and it’s limiting thinking while strangling options. Example: other societies don’t outsource caring for family.
aug 26, 2025, 8:26 am • 4 0 • view
that's because they dump that chore entirely on women. returning to a situation where women have no moment for themselves because their entire lives are taken over by caring for both children and elderly ain't it.
aug 26, 2025, 1:45 pm • 1 0 • view
True. Unless, as an idea, one lives in a multi-generational household like I used to. Ask why we today live in nuclear families? Is it because it’s ‘better’ or bc it creates a more mobile unit of labour and increased consumption? As a final tease, what does ‘family first’ mean nowadays?
aug 26, 2025, 2:36 pm • 1 0 • view
"Unless, as an idea, one lives in a multi-generational household like I used to. " "unless" my ass. i'm in a multigenerational family and what this amounts to is that my mom, her two sisters, and I are taking care of my grandma. paid care work is NECESSARY
aug 26, 2025, 5:54 pm • 1 0 • view
like, mom & aunts are fully retired and they can't go on vacation, can't even take a week off to spend time with their grandkids because someone has to be with grandma 24/7. this is ONLY manageable without losing your mind because at least a few months out of the year there's paid care.
aug 26, 2025, 5:56 pm • 1 0 • view
the way out of this is society getting its shit together to provide EXTENSIVE public in-home-care services for the elderly where worker's rights are protected, they are paid fairly, and also the patients' rights are protected and they're not treated like warehoused meat.
aug 26, 2025, 6:03 pm • 0 0 • view
everything else leads right back to elder abuse, worker abuse, and/or invisibilizing care work by making it women's household work again. and the only way you can do that is if there's enough money to pay for all of that and also enough people to do that work. at absolute minimum, you need that
aug 26, 2025, 6:04 pm • 0 0 • view
(and then we can discuss the same issues with care for minors, care for ill people, care for disabled people, etc. etc. etc.) if your degrowth strategy can't be just it can go to hell
aug 26, 2025, 6:06 pm • 0 0 • view
Powerful testimony, thank you. It must be very tough. You are right; we must build a society based on mutual trust and cooperation, with decent living standards for all. A ‘we’ culture, not an ‘I’ one. That can only come, in our current model, from massive wealth redistribution. 1/2
aug 26, 2025, 6:53 pm • 1 0 • view
And I don’t see that on the table from this UK gov. Or it’s likely successors. I see policies designed to dehumanise & remove dignity, not enhance it. At some point folk will rebel against being treated as expendable resource. Degrowth is a whole subject which someone else attributed, not me.
aug 26, 2025, 6:53 pm • 1 0 • view
Well, they outsource caring mainly to women doing it for nothing. I agree that GDP is the wrong measure. The first thing we must discuss is a debt jubilee, imo. Debt is what drives the need for growth. But whatever the position we drive towards, my point was: we are not having that conversation.
aug 26, 2025, 8:32 am • 17 1 • view
Thanks Alex. We agree. The wrong conversations are dominating. For me ‘sustainable’ isn’t just trees & bees, it’s a whole system thing. It’s bolder than politics dares. As the English husband of an Indian wife with global family diaspora, the growth of anti-migrant sentiment truly saddens me.
aug 26, 2025, 8:44 am • 4 0 • view