If your car gets twice the mpg and you’re consuming half as much gas do you consider that a bad thing? You’re deriving the same amount of utility at half the resource cost.
Yeah, but that isn't growth. Growth is my car gets twice the mpg and I now have a petrol heater on cold nights. Or I drive twice as far. My lifestyle staying the same from one week to the next is stagnation even if I'm using less resources.
This is an appeal to Jeveron's paradox. If efficiencies increase, growth looks like getting much more output. Getting the same output when efficiencies increase doesn't signal growth.
I suspect the disconnect is people think that "good" and "growth" mean the same thing. That isn't a real link. The situation doesn't look like it is growing, even if it is good.
Your savings on gasoline would be put in banks which would create growth by reinventment. Also while your car getting twice the mpg may not open up new possibilities for you, it could make a huge difference for people and businesses and nations where cost of transportation is significant.
