Growth and Resilience

According to Google Ngrams, there used to be a lot of talk about good growth. These days there is little. These days there is more talk about economic resilience than there is about good growth:

According to Google's Oxford Languages, resilience is the ability "to recover quickly from difficulties" or "to spring back into shape". Either of those definitions could be applied to our economy. Maybe our economy does show "resilience" these days. But resilience means only occasional good growth. 

Economists are giving up on growth:

• Robert J. Gordon says there was "virtually no growth before 1750". He says there's "no guarantee that growth will continue indefinitely." And he says the good growth of the past 250 years could be "a unique episode in human history." This is what someone would say, who has given up on restoring health and vigor to the economy.
• In an article from Boston's NPR news station WBUR, ecological economist Kate Raworth is described as "subscribing to the theories of" Donella Meadows, who "said growth was a 'stupid' goal [and] impossible to sustain".
• And Dietrich Vollrath, economist and blogger, says "slow economic growth is a sign of success".

It is as if these people are trying to justify the inability of economists and policymakers to restore economic vigor. 

Such people are not caretakers of "the possibility of civilization."