$13 TRILLION per year!!
Hickel ’20 [Jason; October 27; economic anthropologist focusing on ecological economics, global inequality, imperialism, and political economy; “Degrowth: A Response to Branko Milanovic,” https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2017/11/19/why-branko-milanovic-is-wrong-about-de-growth]
From this angle, it becomes clear that capitalism is highly inefficient when it comes to meeting human needs; it produces so much, and yet leaves 60% of the human population without access to even the most basic goods. Why? Because a huge portion of commodity production (and all the energy and materials it requires) is irrelevant to human well-being. Consider this thought experiment: Portugal has significantly better social outcomes than the United States, with 65% less GDP per capita. This means that $38,000 of US per capita income is effectively ‘wasted’. That adds up to $13 trillion per year for the US economy as a whole; $13 trillion worth of extraction and production and consumption each year, and $13 trillion worth of ecological pressure, that adds