"Growth" doesn't need the population to output more total work than last year, it just needs the population to output more work than the population consumes thi

"Growth" doesn't need the population to output more total work than last year, it just needs the population to output more work than the population consumes this year. The difference is growth. Growing the population actually doesn't necessarily help GDP per capita growth (the best measure of economic growth). If the country isn't managing population well, then increasing population actually hurts growth. Of course, the value of "work" is entirely abstract. You can value anything at any price you want. Society haggles "work" to within certain bounds but there's no basis in the non-abstract world for these bounds.