Something I touched on in my recent Automation post is that the growthist system is bad at addressing the things that are actually important to most people - while tying the notion of "quality of life" to possession of luxury goods and experiences. I've been thinking on this since, and I think one of the disconnects between proponents of growth and proponents of degrowth is that they build different hierarchies of needs, with material goods being ranked higher for growthists. As I mentioned in the Automation post, there are three things that heavily dictate quality of life, and that aren't really amenable to technical solutions - housing security, food security, and healthcare security.
Given the massive increase in global GDP over the last century, these should probably be solved. Certainly strides have been made - the Green Revolution, whatever one thinks about the specific methods involved, has prevented an immense amount of human suffering. Housing continues to be a significant issue almost everywhere, though, and even access to healthcare is a problem in much of the world. It would seem that economic growth isn't a reliable indicator of solving the central problems people face.
This is the part where well-meaning people start proposing solutions - state-run healthcare, loosening of zoning laws, expansion of children's lunch programs, a pivot from meat agriculture to plant agriculture. I think these are good ideas and have much to recommend them, but the larger issue is one of priorities. Growthist society does not perceive a communal obligation to provide, unconditionally, the basic things needed for human beings to thrive. The system is geared toward "make more stuff and presumably the rest will be sorted out on its own."[1] With that in mind, is it any wonder that people see economic growth as the solution to these problems? And, on the flip side, is it really surprising that folks associate degrowth with poverty and misery?
The growthist incentive structure requires continuous input of labor and materials and continuous output of economic products - goods and services - ideally generating sufficient circular flow to keep growing, like some kind of cursed perpetual-motion machine. This is what growthists call "prosperity" - the idea that this year, we made more value, quantified by some arcane method, than last year. Therefore, we are presumably richer, which is presumably a good thing. Being richer allows access to luxury goods - our iPhones and Pixels, our OLED televisions, the dress we wear once. The growth mindset, strangely, is more concerned with aggregate production than availability of basics.
Why is this not solved? Two reasons. The first is that access to "prosperity" is what motivates workers to produce. Someone who has access to a home, to healthcare, and to food is less likely to feel compelled to remain in a dangerous or unhealthy workplace; treating those as basic obligations of society would reduce the amount of leverage an employer has over an employee. Second, growth systems allocate resources (materials, labor time, etc) toward destinations that are themselves economically valuable; the intent of almost any growthist economic activity is to provide a greater return than is put in. Things that do not provide a direct economic return - eg, building and maintaining homes that will be provided as a community obligation - are not emphasized and are in fact viewed as impractical or impossible.
In other words, growthist systems have incentives for these problems to remain unsolved.
Many people, no doubt with the best intentions, have proposed universal basic income to resolve these issues. I find UBI to be, at best, a band-aid over the larger problems. Allowing people to participate in the growthist system regardless of their personal circumstances does not change the fact that the system is geared toward production of luxury goods and services, and the basic necessities of life are treated as economic commodities like any other. This is unwholesome. "Here's some money to participate in a screwed-up structure" doesn't challenge growthisms's underlying problems. It may be desirable as a stopgap measure to alleviate poverty, however.
I'm not a capitalist. I'm not really a communist, at least in the conventional sense. I have doubts about the utility of concepts like the labor theory of value, and I don't put much stock in Marxist historical materialism - especially since it has a strong whiff of both solutionism and growthism. I have no revolutionary program, nor any economic policy papers to present. I don't have concrete answers.
Where I end up instead is an observation. We produce luxuries beyond the imagination of someone thirty years ago, in astouding quantities - and we throw them away a couple of years later.[2] How much material extraction and how many labor hours would it really take to address the most basic issues - having a home, having enough food, having access to basic medical care - for every human being on this planet? I suspect the answer is a tiny fraction of what the growth economy is using today. With what's left - the hours we wish to apply, the materials we can use sustainably - we can produce things beyond the basics.[3]
That's "quality of life" - not an endless mountain of disposable luxuries.
[1] This is not a problem limited to capitalism; certainly housing security in the former East Bloc was imperfect, and socialist systems have largely chased similar growth goals as capitalist ones. "National development" is a vague enough excuse to work in both capitalist and socialist structures.
[2] Said with full awareness that I'm a professional in the developed world and that my own consumption footprint is too high. (I'm working on it.)
[3] I have no clear idea how to get here without some kind of nightmarish ecological or economic collapse. In the fine tradition of malcontents since the dawn of time, I'm making clear criticisms while only providing vague and abstract alternatives.