> Overall, economic growth is good for society as a whole, so it makes sense that a state should encourage it as much as it can.
The problem with basing the language in the aggregate, is implies that distribution doesn’t matter, and all modern economic models agree. This is a big problem for the reality of people living in ever increasing inequality. Money is a competitive resource, we use it to bid for real resources. If constant economic growth disproportionately goes to the already wealthy, it worsens inequality when resources to exploit become more scarce. It’s one thing to have massive swaths of untouched natural world to exploit for human benefits, but those days are long gone IMO.
I think that was the point I was trying to make, that both total economic output and distribution matter. Both matter in terms of overall citizen satisfaction.
If you have a very fair distribution of a very small productive output, everyone will be miserable because they don’t have enough to live. At the same time, producing a ton that only goes to a select few will also leave most people miserable.
We don’t want to go to either extreme. We want to find the best way to foster productivity while making sure everyone benefits from that productivity.
My suggestion is that you get the best of both by letting competition and innovation be rewarded, while also taking care of the ‘losers’ in that competition.
Inequality is not "ever increasing". You should resist the urge to say everything is constantly getting worse just because that makes you look more sympathetic to the poor.
(A worse issue is that inequality decreasing can mean things are getting worse for everyone.)
The problem with basing the language in the aggregate, is implies that distribution doesn’t matter, and all modern economic models agree. This is a big problem for the reality of people living in ever increasing inequality. Money is a competitive resource, we use it to bid for real resources. If constant economic growth disproportionately goes to the already wealthy, it worsens inequality when resources to exploit become more scarce. It’s one thing to have massive swaths of untouched natural world to exploit for human benefits, but those days are long gone IMO.