Coombs wrote:
I do still think that even per capita growth and the notion of productivity are too abstracted from genuine quality of life and issues of individual empowerment. They're used as ways to suggest those things, but they have no real bearing on it when not stated in more relative terms. In the US especially, economic growth has been sold as the only real indicator of the success of the middle class. Really, its just saying how much the elite are willing to give to the middle class, as long as we keep making them even more. It's a false pretense altogether. The economy could shrink and life could get better for 100% of citizens.
Oh absolutely, there's really no one metric that can be a good indicator for a genuine quality of life. But if your country happens to be at the top these charts, along with a host of other quality of life indicators (hello Norway!) then you could argue that the average citizen enjoys a high standard of living. But even then, the 'average citizen' is a misnomer!
I particularly agree that growth for the sake of growth is shoved down the throats of many despite the fact that trickle down economics has long since failed, so it's made a lot of people cynical.
