Wealth may be an excellent thing, for it means power, and it means leisure, it means liberty.

The rich man's sons inherits cares; The bank may break, the factory burn, A breath may burst his bubble shares, And soft, white hands could hardly earn A living that would serve his turn.

Like every other good thing in this
world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however,
it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay. Let us be
duly thankful for that, my dear Denis--duly thankful.

Such power there is in clear-eyed self-restraint

Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is

Measurement aside, there are two reasons aggregate growth might matter. The first is to create jobs to assimilate the unemployed and anticipate increases in population. The second is to improve living standards. Economic logic does not require overall expansion to achieve either of these objectives. An expanding labour force can be accommodated if hours of work fall. And it's productivity growth, rather than the overall size of the economy, that drives improvements in living standards. Getting bigger doesn't necessarily yield wealth; improving productivity does.