system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why must the economy *always grow*? [LI5]

Why is it a bad thing if the economy is not growing?  I somewhat understand why contraction is bad, but why is being neutral/static, or even slowly growing, bad?  Is there a circumstance in which we will be satisfied?  I realized this could be a really dumb question but I've not found anyone who could explain it to me.
gpt
Because the population is growing.

If no babies were born and no old people died, and our economy had 0% growth, we would all be just as rich or poor as we were last year.  

If many babies were born, and few old people died while the economy DID NOT grow, we would all have less money that we had last year.  We would get poorer.