Beyond that in some sectors capitalism can't make the pie bigger. For example, housing in desirable localities will stay a roughly equivalent part of your income.
It's also wrong that people in the Soviet Union find growth unintuitive. Until the late stages of decline, the Soviet system saw incredibly significant growth even for the average person.
It's true that even the poorest Americans often have smartphones or even cars but it's also true that for most of them smartphones and cars have become a necessity rather than a convenience and they may still go hungry or postpone important doctor's visits to offset the cost.
The widely cited IMF statistic "demonstrating" that poverty has globally gone down over the decades has been widely debunked for using an arbitrary and meaningless definition of poverty (where you could literally be unhoused and "food insecure" without being considered poor). Sliced more realistically, the data at best demonstrates that poverty is stagnant in total numbers. At worst, it's tracking population growth.
Sliced more realistically, the data at best demonstrates that poverty is stagnant in total numbers. At worst, it's tracking population growth.
I have a magic wand. When I wave it you will be reborn in any time of your choosing, past or present. You will be randomly assigned a race, gender, IQ, sexual preference, family wealth, health status, and country. What time would you choose?
Beyond that, no one believes that material wealth is fully useless. But we know that material wealth is not useful beyond a certain baseline to one's happiness, except as a means for the exertion of power. The hedonistic treadmill is inexorable.
If I could live in a world free of rent seeking and social domination with the equivalent of ~40k/year in material product each year, I would do it. Most of the reason most people work beyond that is to acquire fundamentally scarce goods such as housing ans land for which capitalism won't make the pie grow, is due to artifical demand brought forth by marketing, or simply doesn't actually benefit to individual happiness.
We already have fairly conclusive research on this, once you have enough money to be insulated against catastrophy and acquire stable living conditions as well as a sufficient social status, the marginal effect of increased income on your happiness is roughly zero.
Which is, by the way, not the opinion of the Soviet ideology, they were fairly committed to growth for a prolonged amount of time, though their economic system did not necessitate it to survive (geopolitically it was necessary for military reasons though)
You don’t get bonus points for spreading a miserable worldview.
You're also completely sidestepping the original point. Defining all scientific and technological accomplishments as the products of capitalism because capitalism is the dominant system is begging the question. We know that scientific and technological accomplishments and improvements to the general quality of life were also made before capitalism existed. We don't know that capitalism has had a positive effect on these trends.
Plus if you want to take the primitivist route you could argue that if you believe the data on climate change, the status quo is literally built on killing us over the next few decades and "benefits" like getting a thousand new smartphone models each year or being able to choose between twenty nearly identical brands of bottled water are entirely offset by the externalities that are rapidly becoming tangible problems even to the wealthier among us.
Pretty much the central tenet of western capitalism is that it can and will grow; indeed, all sorts of sacrifices of fairness are made in the name of increasing the total size of the pie. Nor is the total number of pie-consumers and pie-producers fixed.
It may be counter-intuitive, and it is certainly not obvious if you've spent your life in the Soviet system, but it's important to consider.