Abstract:
This article re-examines growth-based conceptualizations of social justice, first by revisiting Simon Kuznets's postwar claim that economic growth would ultimately generate greater equality, a perspective that subsequent evidence has steadily weakened, and then by considering the argument that growth might still advance justice by improving the absolute conditions of the least advantaged, leading to social justice in a Rawlsian sense - an argument likewise undermined by cross-national data showing that such gains result from political choices around taxation, redistribution and social transfers rather than from growth itself. The article argues that when this already fragile defense of growth as a vehicle for justice is weighed against the historical link between growth, carbon emissions and ecological degradation, the growth-as-justice paradigm becomes untenable. Finally, the article contends that realizing justice within planetary boundaries requires three commitments: abandoning growth as the overriding policy objective, accelerating decarbonization through regulation, taxation, market mechanisms and public investment, and expanding the welfare state to meet the demands of adaptation and a just transition.