>All things being equal, more people working is a an increase in buying power.
This isnt an absolute. If you have 1 person working for $1/day and go to 2 people for $0.5/day, buying power hasn't changed.
You can have more people working, and people working longer, for less and less material goods.
I think any meaningful definition of economic growth/recession must address the fundamental question of is there more material goods and wellbeing in a country today than yesterday.
I agree that the allocation of those goods is a separate question entirely.
>This is the result of massive, global macroeconomic forces. It's basically a slow reset of the post-WWII global order.
I think that what we are seeing is the start of a realization that part of historic GDP growth was actually a fiction, in that more tangible goods were not produced.
This is why a small increase in wages sent inflation through the roof.
In theory, US real GDP per capita has gone up 33% since 2000[1]. This looks fine on paper as long as the growth is just accumulating in a bank account. Once people actually try to consume more, it becomes obvious that there isn't 33% more stuff to buy.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=Sfun
So, that sucks, but it doesn't make a useful definition of recession. This is the result of massive, global macroeconomic forces. It's basically a slow reset of the post-WWII global order.