The right’s flirtation with degrowth, explained

Over the last few years, I’ve written a lot about degrowth ideology, the view that the only way to save the planet is to abandon economic growth as an objective. Degrowthers sometimes say uncontroversial things like that GDP isn’t the only thing that matters in the world and sometimes say more controversial ones like that you don’t need or deserve a washing machine, air conditioning, or out-of-season fruits and vegetables.

I have two major disagreements with degrowthers. The first is that I think they’re wrong about how to save the planet: Many countries have successfully cracked the code to increasing prosperity without increasing carbon emissions, and continuing down that pathway seems promising. The second is that we live in a democracy, and it’s hard to find anything that polls as badly as trying to shrink the economy. Most voters consistently rank the economy as their highest concern. If your plan to fix the world requires making their lives concretely poorer, then your plan will lose at the ballot box.

I’ve been thinking about this this week because I think we are witnessing the birth of right-wing degrowth, which has all of the same flaws as left-wing degrowth — but potentially with much more political power. I saw it most concretely during the 24-hour period where it looked like we were imposing punishing tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Sure, some commentators acknowledged, the price of goods is going to rise dramatically, but they were proud to pay more for goods or have less access to them in order to restore American greatness. Sure, the economy will crash, but American patriotism matters more than the economy. 

The tariff threat, of course, didn’t last long. The stock market dipped, and Donald Trump declared victory and put tariffs on both Canada and Mexico on hold. And that’s instructive, because while some of Trump’s bad ideas are popular, I think right-wing degrowth is as dead-on-arrival an ideology as left-wing degrowth. That’s not just a problem for the tariffs part of Trump’s agenda; I think it’s also a problem he’ll run into if he starts on his promised mass deportations.

People are not willing to suffer for your ideology

The fatal flaw of left-wing degrowthism, I’ve written, is its disinterest in political realities. People care about owning a washing machine; they care about owning air conditioning. In the developing world, people buy these things as soon as they are within reach. People also care about the environment, but if you put their concern for the environment at odds with their ability to have material goods, their preference for material goods will win. 

In fact, one of the lessons of the last election is that even delivering quite a lot of improvements for workers will not save you if prices rise; the voters really hate inflation and will punish it at the ballot box.

Under Trump, we’re seeing the right set itself up to learn the same lesson. Trump, I saw people crow during the hours before the tariffs are reversed, is willing to put us through short-term pain for long-term gain! (Although, it turns out he was not — not yet.) 

Most people are not willing to pay dramatically more to buy American-made goods; we know that because they have that option already, and overwhelmingly don’t take it. Most people are not willing to deal with a falling stock market in order to stick it to the Canadians. And I think it is vanishingly unlikely that most people — even most people who want much tougher immigration enforcement — will be supportive of mass deportations once they produce dramatically higher prices in grocery stores.

The problem is that political decisions are made by people who care a ton about politics, people who have dedicated their lives to their vision for the country and the world. Left or right, they tend to dramatically overestimate how much the people they serve are willing to suffer for ideology — any ideology.

Low prices are good

But I want to say more than that a degrowth agenda is unpopular; I also think that it is bad. In particular, it’s unpopular because it is bad — people are mostly accurately assessing what makes for a good life for them and their loved ones, and economic prosperity is a big part of a good life. 

I talk to a lot of people who think that the flow of ultra-cheap, low-quality goods is bad for us. I don’t buy it. When my parents were growing up, you could tell the poor kids at school because they didn’t have nice clothes; households used to spend a huge fraction of their income on clothes. Now, we buy lots more clothes but spend much less — and that’s a good thing, not a bad one. Clothes being extremely cheap means far more people can dress in a way they feel good about. 

Just like Americans spend much less than we used to on clothes, we spend much less than we used to on food, and that’s a good thing: It means that even the poorest Americans can afford dietary variety. Under the guise of sustainability on the left and patriotism on the right, we’re encouraged to accept that everywhere will be a food desert. (“Do we need to eat avocados?” Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat from Maine, asked, defending the tariffs.) 

I don’t want Congress deciding which foods we’re worthy of eating; I would like to be able to buy the ones I want to eat. And I’d like to have that option even when I’m on a fixed income, feeding a large family, between jobs, or otherwise in a situation where money is tight.

In a way, declarations that it’d be fine if food, clothes, and other essentials were more expensive are themselves a product of America’s breathtaking wealth. In a society more in touch with the realities of material poverty, no one could say with a straight face that maybe higher prices would be good for us. But even in America, lower prices are good: They give people more and better options, they make it possible for people with low incomes to live like people with high incomes, and they improve our quality of life. The right, like the left, will need to come up with a vision for the country that embraces prosperity rather than trying to justify wrecking it.

A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here!