Not that there's no valid discussion to have about growth as an objective per se, but this is a particularly weak rebuttal that hinges on a narrow definition of (material) growth. Economic growth is first and foremost about the value of economic exchanges. Not about the amount of stuff we make.
Gross Domestic Product, is a very gross way to measure progress as the name implies.
Robert Kennedy said in respect of GDP “It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life really worth living.” [1]
You have alternatives like the genuine progress indicator (GPI) that includes aspects such as pollution, criminality and health to the GDP. Most of all we can have many measures, we should not reduce progress to only a number.
that's not what the name implies. Gross simply means large or super, as in Super-Market or in Bulk-Sale. Originally it has also meant rough. In English it still does, but formerly in a sense of coarse, and I guess in this case especially rigid.
> ... Its meaning forked in English. Via the notion of "coarse in texture or quality" came the senses "not sensitive, dull stupid" (1520s), "vulgar, coarse in a moral sense" (1530s). Via notion of "general, not in detail" came the sense "entire, total, whole, without deductions" (early 15c.), as in gross national product (1947)
Okay, not quite rigid, but not either dull, stupid. It's actually difficult to believe the outline, while the beginning is uncertain.
A gross may also have meant a dozen, and Groszen was a coin, maybe a dime a dozen. So, what are these twelve products that estimated national domestic production there and then, metal, salt, textiles, big macs?
As Ursula Le Guin, I'm not an economist, but I live in one.
Didn't mean to be literal, but I find ironic the use of the term, because it reminds me of rough which in portuguese, my native language is "Grosseiro"
