We are not actually experiencing growth when we measure by GDP and other aggregate indicators. The term 'growth' implies an expansion in real material conditions for a substantial portion of the population, which is empirically falsifiable at every s

Opening thread commentary.

This is a really well-articulated point and I've been thinking about it more this week. The distinction between 'growth of the system' and 'improvement for people' is exactly what gets lost in standard economic discourse. We keep using GDP as the scoreboard even though GDP would go up if a forest fire destroyed everything — it counts the logging, the emergency services, and the rebuilding but not the loss of biodiversity or community cohesion.

The 1972 baseline you mentioned resonates with me personally because my own family's story is textbook: my grandfather could buy a house in his 30s on one income, my dad had to work two jobs for similar housing, and I have a master's degree and can

this is a genuinely important point and it feels like we're finally getting comfortable enough with saying it out loud — that 'growth' has been conflated with 'GDP increase' so thoroughly over the last forty years that almost anyone who questions the premise gets accused of being anti-progress. but progress in what sense? if you define progress as higher aggregate output, sure, GDP is up. but if you define it as improvement in material conditions for a broad swath of people, your point about 1972 holds water and there's plenty of data on the stagnation of real median wages in developed economies while capital returns have accelerated.

the automation argument is particularly compelling here because we used to think tech would democratize prosperity — productivity

This is a hard point to make with anyone who was raised on standard economics textbooks. The "