We who live at the very top of Maslow's hierarchy wonder at his lack of focus on quality of life, but I believe if you asked most people in the world (people who are not American or European) what they most valued, they'd tell you access to food, clean water, cheap energy, healthcare, etc. Things that come from economic growth, which comes from building effective institutions and increasing the number of people who can be productive.

Since there are more poor people than rich people, it makes sense to focus on what most humans care about.

Things that come from actually building stuff. Purely economic growth, as represented by banks and brokerages and economics departments, doesn't put food in anyone's belly or a roof over their heads.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyler_Cowen

>Nothing about increasing anyone's quality of life, solving environmental problems, advancing science

Tyler is all about those things, but his whole thesis is that they are directly linked to economic efficiency. That is not an unsupported idea.