The growth imperative emerged out of the post-Great Depression anxiety about maintaining full employment. Economists argued that continuous improvement in labor-saving technology made it necessary for the economy to grow to maintain full employment (Harrod, Domar). It was not initially growth for growth’s sake but growth for jobs’ sake.

Eventually, that full employment imperative got taken for granted by policy makers and central bankers who became more concerned with fighting inflation to maintain the real value of assets. Economists argued that the economy required a “natural rate” of unemployment or it would go into an inflationary spiral (Friedman, Phelps).

Notwithstanding the shift in emphasis from maintaining full employment to fighting inflation, job creation remains the popular legitimizing rationale for growth. The problem with redefining what is measured to “creativity, quality of life and happiness” is quite simply that those qualities have, in economic theory, nothing to do with job creation. This is not to say there is no relationship whatsoever between employment and happiness but that there is no causal quantitative relationship such that an x% increase in happiness could be expected to generate approximately a y% increase in aggregate employment.