Agreed. A lot of these disagreements come down to how we define “growth.”

GDP measures monetary throughput, not lived outcomes. It rises with debt expansion, asset inflation, and government spending, even when productivity, purchasing power, and quality of life stagnate or decline.

Increased productivity should result in lower prices, higher real wages, and more leisure. In fiat systems, those gains are often absorbed by currency dilution and asset holders instead.

So the real question isn’t “is the economy growing?” but who benefits from that growth, and in what unit is it measured?