New Scientist discards notion of "data"

Tim Worstall takes New Scientist to the woodshed for their deliberate innumeracy:

If you're going to start demanding a new economics, as the New Scientist just has, then it would be useful if you understood what the old economics you're trying to replace has to say . . . as the New Scientist clearly doesn't. Take this seemingly uncontroversial statement: "We live on a planet with finite resources — that's no surprise to anyone — so why do we have an economic system in which all that matters is growth? More growth means using more resources." Umm, no, it doesn't mean that.

Certainly, growth can lead to the consumption of more resources, but it's not a necessary outcome. "This one is built on a long-standing question: how do we square Earth's finite resources with the fact that as the economy grows, the amount of natural resources needed to sustain that activity must grow too?" No, this simply isn't true. They've entirely missed how those dastardly neo-liberal economists they want to overthrow define and measure growth. Apologies to those grandmothers I'm informing about egg-sucking, but a little basic economics here.

We define economic growth as a rise in GDP (don't sweat the details here) per capita. GDP is not measuring the use or not of resources. It's measuring the value added in the economy. If I use sand to make a wine bottle I will add some small amount of GDP. If I use that same sand and make a computer chip instead I will add more value and thus more to GDP with the same use of resources. If I don't use any sand at all and start singing at a concert where people pay me (with my voice, perhaps paying me to stop) then again, I've increased GDP with no use of natural resources at all. And just to complete the logic, if I learn how to pack more transistors onto a chip I can use less sand to make one of the same performance, allowing me to create the same GDP with less use of natural resources. There is thus no requirement for economic growth to mean an increase in the use of resources, natural or otherwise.