What is truly economically illiterate is to think that an economy needs to grow every year just to maintain the same standard of living. The economy is currently set up in a way that we will lose more than just future progress if growth stops, we will also lose past progress. It would be wise to get rid of this pointless rigidity.

This fixation on growing every single year hurts prospects to grow more over longer periods of time. It also causes needless environmental destruction. We would rather deplete the soil for a quick buck than maintain it and make it better every year at the cost of lower initial yields.