Economic growth must be measured along the axis of evolutionary growth. Meaning, it must include an analysis of how the evolution of humanity benefits from such growth. Not how does an individual (or group) benefit from such growth at the expense of others.
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell — Edward Abbey, American Environmentalist
An example is the tobacco industry, which created lots of “economic growth,” yet 30 years later, it leads to respiratory disease as the 3rd leading cause of death for which the next generation is coughing up skyrocketing medical insurance premiums. The same goes for the food industry, taking unacceptable shortcuts in the rat race for money with detrimental and ballooning long-term consequences. Examples abound.
So, economic growth is good when it yields a more efficient and responsible treatment of nature’s resources available to us. Economic growth is harmful when growth is selfish, detrimental to society, and non-renewable.
