Growth Obsession

Those furiously defending the Tory government are obsessed with using growth as the sole measure of the health of the British economy, which is economic illiteracy. It's a bit like using your weight to measure your fitness, while simultaneously wheezing from COPD and being eaten from the inside by cancer. It's only one of several measures and, on its own, is not indicative of much.

They are forced into this position by virtue of the growth figure being the sole economic indicator that is positive, but it's not as positive as they portray it to be. They fall into the trap of feeling they have to defend the indefensible, whenever and wherever, rather than using logic or evidence. It's a knee-jerk reaction to which we are all susceptible, unless we have some self-awareness.

One needs only to be conversant with Hooke's Law to realise that the further you pull a spring (the economy), the faster it will start off returning to its point of equilibrium (growth), and it's not even a guarantee of it returning to its original position due to the stretch. The economy is similar - our relatively fast growth is a measure of how far we fell in the first place.

You can have a country like Japan, where growth has flatlined over the last few decades, but the population has declined, so the GDP per person has actually stayed relatively stable, therefore there has been no appreciable fall in living standards.

Conversely, you can have a country with a fast growing population where the population growth outstrips the economic growth, even though the latter might be high compared to other economies. The end result is a drop in living standards as there are more to share the relatively smaller growth among.

GDP alone is not a good measure, as the increased GDP could be confined to a relatively small number. GDP per capita is better, but still best not used on its own. Overall economic health is complex and not reducible to a single metric, unless than metric is formed from a compound calculation that takes into consideration other factors that are weighted according to their importance. 

Neoliberal economists worship economic growth and the free market, but it's not limitless, as there are limits to population and resources. The problem with neoliberals is that they can't accept these limits exist and therefore refuse to acknowledge physical limits such as climate change and are willing to charge over a cliff.

Another problem with neoliberalism is that the market didn't have a solution to Covid. It has to be realised that every economy, even that of the arch-neoliberal, Trump, had to resort to socialism by handing out money to people so they could survive. There are many such areas where the free market does not have a solution, or, its solution is worse than the initial problem.