Growth and inequalities in a physicists view

Document pages: 16 pages

Abstract: It is still common wisdom amongst economists, politicians and lay people thateconomic growth is a necessity of our social systems, at least to avoiddistributional conflicts. This paper challenges such belief moving from apurely physical theoretical perspective. It formally considers the constraintsimposed by a finite environment on the prospect of continuous growth, includingthe dynamics of costs. As costs grow faster than production it is easy todeduce a final unavoidable global collapse. Then, analyzing and discussing theevolution of the unequal share of wealth under the premises of growth andcompetition, it is shown that the increase of inequalities is a necessaryconsequence of the premises.