dCalls are heard everywhere to rethink the fight against poverty to take into account planetary limits.
Fifty years ago, a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) presented its conclusions, at the request of the Club of Rome, and indicated that the increase in the gross domestic product (GDP) could not continue indefinitely: the continuation of the economy growth would inevitably lead to the depletion of non-renewable resources and levels of waste and pollution that ecosystems could not absorb. More and more scientists share this diagnosis.
For about ten years, at the urging of Tim Jackson, Dominique Méda, Vincent Liegey and Timothée Parrique in particular, economists have been trying to build macroeconomic models that take into account the imperative to slow down.
Politicians themselves are finally beginning to appreciate the challenge. Two signs, among others: the response received by a report presented to the UN on the eradication of poverty “beyond growth” ; and the commitment of governments, enshrined in the pact adopted at the Future Summit that met in New York on September 22 and 23, to use progress indicators that go beyond GDP.
Fight the hype
Traditionally, the fight against poverty has been considered as a sequence of three steps:
– through economic growth, we increase available wealth;
– through taxes imposed on companies and rich households, the State finances their budgets;
– through public services and social protection, it guarantees its redistributive function.
The redistributive function of the welfare state remains essential. But this way of proceeding maintains the competition between the fight against poverty and the reduction of the environmental footprint. We must therefore expand the range of instruments deployed to alleviate this tension, if we cannot make it disappear completely.
In this sense, reducing inequalities is essential. Without a doubt, social exclusion is due above all to serious material deprivation resulting from a lack of sufficient income, and statistics remind us of this reality: in Europe, 23.9 million people are in a situation of serious poverty. But it is also the result of income gaps between the richest and the poorest, who can feel excluded even when their basic needs are covered, when social expectations evolve with the increase in the average standard of living: not being able to leave the class green or enrolling in an extracurricular activity, not being able to buy the necessary sports equipment, or not being able to participate in social life due to embarrassment of being poorly dressed. This is also part of the experience of being poor.
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