Cornerstones and positions of a precautionary post-growth economy

Financing the post-growth state

“…Third, beyond its ideological imperative to promote growth, the state also faces a 'functional' (Eckersley, 2004) dependency on growth to finance itself. While this fact is well established (Petschow et al, 2020;Bohnenberger, 2021;Corlet-Walker et al, 2021), the post-growth literature often fails to emphasise that this is more fundamentally a dependency on capital accumulation, which is the economic phenomenon that generates growth (Blauwhof, 2012;Kallis, 2018). A state dependent on the taxation of private wealth and income is thus ultimately dependent on the ability of capital accumulation to generate profits and wages from which taxes are collected (Harman, 1991;Blauwhof, 2012;Ferguson, 2018).…”

“…First, one should underline the fact that the taxable base, for both the state and its welfare organisms, depends mainly on economic activity, although compulsory levies have their own sensitivity to its variations (Büchs & Koch, 2017;Petschow et al, 2020;Bohnenberger & Fritz, 2020). It should also be noted that the taxable base is partly determined by sociodemographic factors such as population growth and the health status of populations (Laurent, 2021b).…”

“…At the same time, the state will face additional expenditures, notably linked to rising human needs: the costs of the investments needed, those implied by the correction of the regressive effects of transition policies, those of adaptation policies, those linked to the consequences of ecological upheavals (extreme climatic events, migrations, collapse of biodiversity, etc. ), ageing populations in the Global North and an increase in the relative costs of healthcare systems (Bailey, 2015a;Gough, 2017;Petschow et al, 2020;Corlet-Walker et al, 2021).…”

“…However, the research field in the state's fiscal dependency on growth is still emerging. Bailey (2015aBailey ( , 2015bBailey ( , 2020 and Damien Demailly et al (2013) have been the first authors to examine this looming problem in depth, later followed by Claudio Cattaneo and Aaron Vansintjan (2016), Timothée Parrique (2019), Ulrich Petschow et al (2020), Martin Fritz and Katharina Bohnenberger (2020) and Christine Corlet-Walker et al (2021). Occupying a distinctive position in this field, Eloi Laurent (2019Laurent ( , 2020Laurent ( , 2021a seems to be the only author to contest the assertion that states may have a problematic dependence on growth.…”