There's no real hyper focus on growth. There are plenty of important/powerful/influential people who loudly and clearly say that it's just an artificial measure

There's no real hyper focus on growth. There are plenty of important/powerful/influential people who loudly and clearly say that it's just an artificial measure, we must look at the real problems. Health, education, poverty, etc. Growth mostly comes into contemporary discourse when people talk about investment or when people use it as a swearword. There's no real dependence on it. Yes central banks target 2% inflation (US Fed uses the PCE deflator), because it is comparatively the easiest/simplest. Targeting "full employment" is just as important. If there would be nothing to improve, build, no one would have any unmet need, nor anyone would trade anything, then sure, we would not see growth nor debt, but for the foreseeable future growth is a useful indicator for how much debt is okay.