Write an essay that compares the attitudes and responses of industrialized nations and emerging nations on issues of increased prosperity and overconsumption

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers will vary but correct responses should include: In the early twenty-first century, much of the world is experiencing growth fatigue: the feeling people have in some rich communities that we do not want a world winding into the stratosphere of spiraling desire, at ever more irresponsible levels of consumption, production, and resource depletion. Rationally, according to a widely approved argument, we do not need to grow richer. Instead, those of us who enjoy the privilege of relative prosperity in an unequal world need to safeguard our riches by redistributing them more fairly. The opposite argument says that capitalism works—at least, that it works less badly than any other economic system ever devised—because it is attuned to human nature. People are always going to want to better themselves economically. We can no more renounce the pursuit of material "happiness" than stop the world in its orbit. So it is best to try to make a virtue of this trait and find environmentally sustainable ways to increase the world's wealth and free markets to distribute it more evenly.