Economists Trying to Control the Discourse

You would think the situation might call for a revisiting of conventional notions, a moment of introspection, an admission that perhaps past advice may have been not entirely of the finest caliber.

You might think so but, well, no.

David Leonhardt, in an unusually early preview of this week's New York Times Magazine:

But while Washington has been preoccupied with stimulus and bailouts, another, equally important issue has received far less attention — and the resolution of it is far more uncertain. What will happen once the paddles have been applied and the economy’s heart starts beating again? How should the new American economy be remade? Above all, how fast will it grow?

That last question may sound abstract, even technical, compared with the current crisis. Yet the consequences of a country’s growth rate are not abstract at all. Slow growth makes almost all problems worse. Fast growth helps solve them. As Paul Romer, an economist at Stanford University, has said, the choices that determine a country’s growth rate “dwarf all other economic-policy concerns.”

(Note, the links pasted through from the Times, which continues to have a completely idiotic policy to automatically link irrelevant articles, but that's a minor gripe compared to this one. Normally I just excise them but I'm too peeved at the moment to bother.)

I admit I haven't screwed up the courage to read beyond that point as yet. I'm sorry but it appears that I am too feebleminded to be able to understand the point on which the whole lengthy article expands.

Will someone, please, very slowly and patiently, explain to me what it is that is should be growing forever, how it is possible that it can do that (when all other growth processes in nature eventually terminate), and why we need it to do that? Please also explain why that should dwarf all other "economic-policy" concerns, like, say, sustaining a viable planet. I and the other seven billion of us would be most appreciative. Thanks in advance.

Update: Reading on:

For centuries, people have worried that economic growth had limits — that the only way for one group to prosper was at the expense of another. The pessimists, from Malthus and the Luddites and on, have been proved wrong again and again. Growth is not finite.

Which raises another request for assistance. Can someone provide such a "proof", please? Perhaps that word means something different to an economist.

The rest of the article is not too offensive though it seems a bit oblivious to, well, a lot of things. To be fair I did like this bit though:

He then told a story that John F. Kennedy liked to tell, about an early-20th-century French marshal named Hubert Lyautey. “The guy says to his gardener, ‘Could you plant a tree?’ ” Summers said. “The gardener says, ‘Come on, it’s going to take 50 years before you see anything out of that tree.’ The guy says, ‘It’s going to take 50 years? Really? Then plant it this morning.’ ”