I was listening to "The Regrettable Century" podcast's episode on degrowth recently, and they made a couple of good points here. The first point is that degrowth as reduction-in-consumption only is really going to affect the global rich; everyone else can afford to come up a bit to a new lower average. The second point is that there's more to quality of life than quantity of consumption. Nobody is talking about, e.g., making modern medicine go away. It means more trains and fewer cars, fewer Funko Pops and more live music. It means shorter working hours and no commutes. Fewer treats but more leisure. It's only a permanent reduction in "standards of living" if by that you mean "amount of consumption" rather than "quality of life".