Growth

The usual approach to alleviating the problem of scarcity is to produce more goods and services. At the macroeconomic level, the main aim is economic growth, i.e. an increase in gross domestic product. Here, nominal growth figures, which express GDP in current prices, must be distinguished from real growth, which excludes inflation. In this respect, real growth is a better indicator for assessing economic development.

Since economic growth is associated with increased material prosperity (not necessarily with a better quality of life or happiness), reduced unemployment and higher tax revenues, promoting growth is a central goal of economic policy.

Normally, economic growth is accompanied by increased resource consumption (although this can be reduced by more efficient production technologies and is hardly the case for services and digital goods), which is why growth is also viewed critically.

In addition to entire economies, growth is also sought by companies (primarily profits, possibly also turnover) and to some extent by private individuals (income, assets).

From a systemic point of view, an understanding of different types of growth is also helpful for the analysis of problems; for example, in addition to linear and exponential growth, there are also variants of 'overshoot and collapse' or predator-prey systems, which can occur when resources are overused.