There’s lots of talk recently about the wealth of Jeff Bezos. There are maps comparing his wealth to entire countries, a “You are Jeff Bezos” game where you can spend his money on different things - like paying their fair-share of taxes, and a graphic that puts his wealth in perspective. A recurring point is that most people simply cannot fathom the amount of money he has. The number is $150 billion. My favorite attempt to bring the number into human terms is Quartz’s article, “The average US worker would need 10 times the length of all human history to earn as much as Jeff Bezos”. This beautifully captures the point that someone does not simply earn or work for such an amount of money, but rather captures it. We, at degrowth.info, thought a similar calculation would be interesting. We wanted to know how many humble (but hopefully useful) projects like ours Jeff Bezos’ wealth could pay for. In case you haven’t heard already, degrowth.info is improving its site to better support the degrowth community and improve the usability of the platform – this will cost 7,500€.
Saturday 1st June 2019 marked a significant occasion for the degrowth movement: the inaugural ‘Global Degrowth Day’. Groups of people gathered together in places all around the world to engage with ideas of degrowth and alternatives to our growth-based society, guided by the event’s theme of ‘a good life for all’. The Global Degrowth Day was coordinated by the Activists and Practitioners int...
The call for courses for our Degrowth in Action - Climate Justice Summer School 2015 has now been extended to 7 May. The summer school will take place from 9 to 14 August 2015 in the lignite-mining region of the Rhineland in cooperation with the annual climate camp. The core of the summer school programme is made up of courses that take place continuously over 4 days. In addition, there is the ...
By Ulrich Brand “Business as usual” is the motto of ruling politics nowadays. The dominant public discussions and policies are staged as necessities and unavoidable adaptions to an austerity policy which is apparently without alternatives. We are assured that rising poverty-rates, the redistribution of wealth from bottom to top and the cutback of social rights and democracy are only te...
