Governments should invest to develop all types of capital, and not just income, to improve the lives of future citizens and to protect the planet.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02807-8?shem=dsdf,sharefoc,agadiscoversdl,,sh/x/discover/m1/4&fbclid=IwT01FWAUNWHpwZG9mAWV4dG4DYWVtAjEwAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHrwGhdScaLVoVG7eKPb2i7GqPQ3T-aqrssxko5N4DHOs6abv5pwN8SGP1p20_aem_EYf7ZIysYy4jzJU3xvFx5A
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From the article
Two reports have renewed the [debate over whether nations should stop prioritizing economic growth](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02216-x).
In June, the Global Justice Report, published by a research organization called the World Inequality Lab, called for a rebalancing of income and wealth, and for the richest countries to accept lower growth, to solve planet-wide problems such as environmental degradation and climate change[^(1)](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02807-8?shem=dsdf,sharefoc,agadiscoversdl,,sh/x/discover/m1/4&fbclid=IwT01FWAUNWHpwZG9mAWV4dG4DYWVtAjEwAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHrwGhdScaLVoVG7eKPb2i7GqPQ3T-aqrssxko5N4DHOs6abv5pwN8SGP1p20_aem_EYf7ZIysYy4jzJU3xvFx5A#ref-CR1).
In May, a United Nations group of economists, the High-Level Expert Group on Beyond GDP, published a set of recommendations for moving beyond gross domestic product (GDP)[^(2)](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02807-8?shem=dsdf,sharefoc,agadiscoversdl,,sh/x/discover/m1/4&fbclid=IwT01FWAUNWHpwZG9mAWV4dG4DYWVtAjEwAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHrwGhdScaLVoVG7eKPb2i7GqPQ3T-aqrssxko5N4DHOs6abv5pwN8SGP1p20_aem_EYf7ZIysYy4jzJU3xvFx5A#ref-CR2). The report called on nations to [manage their economies around a dashboard of indicators](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01511-x) of sustainable well-being, and not just GDP.
Yet, this focus on growth risks asking the wrong question. The central issue is not simply whether economies should become richer faster or slower, or how [general well-being](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01254-1) can be measured, but whether governments are leaving behind more or less wealth for future generations.
Sustainability is fundamentally a matter of justice[^(3)](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02807-8?shem=dsdf,sharefoc,agadiscoversdl,,sh/x/discover/m1/4&fbclid=IwT01FWAUNWHpwZG9mAWV4dG4DYWVtAjEwAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHrwGhdScaLVoVG7eKPb2i7GqPQ3T-aqrssxko5N4DHOs6abv5pwN8SGP1p20_aem_EYf7ZIysYy4jzJU3xvFx5A#ref-CR3): what one generation owes to the next. The debate around how this can be achieved has given rise to tensions (see [*Nature* **655**, 547; 2026](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02147-7)). The Global Justice Report largely frames justice in the context of space: between countries and between wealthy people and those living in poverty. Approaches to managing sustainability within [planetary boundaries](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01749-9) — to avoid breaching global limits of natural resources and systems — seek justice across periods of time, between present and future generations.
The problem is that its very difficult to tell someone poor and starving “no, you can’t cut this tree down for firewood because it will kill someone else years from now with a land slide”
I am sorry, but we have to get rid of capitalism first because it’s primary objective is akkumulation of wealth and power in the present.
Future people have no money or power in the present so their opinions are absolutely irrelevant.
Younglings get brainwashed with the [official Version](https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=tkaYqq7Syhg) so that it doesn’t surprise that nothing really changes over time.
Without the incentive to accumulate capital and power, we fast return to a subsistence economy with three chickens and two rows of potatoes in the backyard; we need a leap in productivity to generate rapid wealth—wealth that will clearly reach everyone, but proportional to each individual’s efficiency, as is natural.