We read in the New York Times:

Economic growth in advanced nations has been weaker for longer than it has been in the lifetime of most people on earth....It increasingly looks as if something fundamental is broken in the global growth machine...

Why should any individual care about something called "economic growth"?? Answer: we shouldn't. The economy as a whole is nothing but an abstraction. It's an amalgamation of millions and millions of individual decisions that take place every second of the day. Since we only have power over our own decisions, "economic growth" is completely meaningless.

Ahhh, but central planners are cut from a different cloth. They see themselves as captains of the economy. Each individual is but a cog in the wheel that's supposed to crank out "growth" for the economy as a whole. These self-proclaimed captains believe that they can push and prod the cogs with violent force (they use the term "policies") in order to generate that "growth."