Growth In the wash-up to the Asian crisis, one could easily come to the view that the answer was to shift down a gear and grow more slowly. Within reason, this may be sensible and inevitable. But it would be neither sensible nor inevitable for these countries to adopt the lower rates of growth which are regarded as normal in developed countries.
The problem is that higher growth is far more vital to these countries than it is to us. For us there are unfilled needs in education and health, but the reality is that much of any extra growth in Australia would go to far less pressing priorities.