I wish we stopped focusing so much on the overall economy growing every year and more on individuals having a "richer" quality of life. In the last few decades

I wish we stopped focusing so much on the overall economy growing every year and more on individuals having a "richer" quality of life. In the last few decades we've seen significant economic growth, yet people are living in smaller and smaller apartments, struggling with debt, living cities that are overpopulated and crowded, while economists try to assure us we're richer today, both from a GDP standpoint and a GDP per capita. It certainly doesn't feel like we're richer to me. A world that's less crowded and where you can afford a nice house with a garden on a single income would IMO be better than having a couple more zeros in my bank balance. We wonder why births are so low in the West, but when you're living in a 1 bed apartment and have $50,000 of debt you're not exactly going to be keen to introduce more financial problems into your life by having a kid. We see this play out in the UK with the working-class having significantly more kids because for them in many cases it actually benefits them financially to do so. Our priorities seem wrong as a society. We're looking at metrics to optimise business health instead of personal health. We're using immigration to prop on the population while not asking why people in the society feel they're unable to have children. I think when people criticise capitalism what they're really annoyed about is this. Why are our politicians so focused business health and not on ours? Why can't we afford to buy a nice home on a single income and have money left over to raise a family? I keep hearing how people want to live in apartments in the city, go into debt and uni and don't want kids, but what choice do we have? These days we literally need to go to uni and live in small apartments in a city where we have no friends or family just to get a good job. And if we're really lucky we might have enough money for a kid by the time we're 35.