I often think the big challenge of economics now is perhaps not managing overall growth but managing sort of "decline" overall with demographic changes. If my theory is right, in 10-15 years after the baby boom generation demography will level out again and we will be back to higher growth.
The idea that GDP growth is the most important metric for the health of a society is not even wrong.
You are a quick thinker my friend. If you figure out how capitalism can work on a shrinking or even steady state economy you will get the Nobel price. No kidding.
With a non debt based currency, capitalism could do just fine in a shrinking economy no?
(Looking forward to more knowledgable people pointing out the inherent flaws in this idea.)
"There is No Steady State Economy (except at a very basic level)" http://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-stat...
Limits to Growth–At our doorstep, but not recognized http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-02-12/limits-to-growt...
Wealth And Energy Consumption Are Inseparable http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2012/01/wealth-and-energy-...
Galactic-Scale Energy http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-e...
The stock markets around the world have been propped up by central banks since the financial crisis.
The FED stepped in with a few trillion in QE to save wall street. The ECB implemented their own QE. BoJ also in japan. And even china has stepped in to prop up it's stock market although their stock market is much younger, smaller and less systematically important.
And so the world goes round and round. Historically, printing money and artificially propping up assets doesn't end well, but if everyone is doing it, maybe it'll work out?