And what people forget in this metaphor - the company that innovated and manufactured the garden hose has just made money too. Their engineer is now employed.

And that happened after the period of horrific exploitation of people in factories, including children. Economic growth is good not in itself but only if it is widely shared. It will be better for economic growth in the long run anyway because inequality comes with its own set of problems.

A society where everyone is poor is worse than a society where some are rich but most are poor. It is worse that everyone be in crushing poverty forever, than to have unequal distribution of wealth.

“Growth is only good if widely shared” is a meme that has led to immiseration every time it is implemented. If capitalism has to own child labor, then redistributionists have to own the violent mass scale enslavement of the peasants under Mao/Stalin.