Is robust economic growth an impractical goal in the west?

Robust economic growth may be a thing of the past. Not likely to happen again anytime in the foreseeable future.

Interesting to read economist Paul Krugman's review of this book "The Rise and Fall of American Growth" by Robert J. Gordon. Krugman, himself, is an advocate of using stimulus and good (basically liberal) economic planning as a road to prosperity. On the other hand, in reviewing this book, he acknowledges that the growth and prosperity that many of both liberals and conservatives advocate may be all but impossible to achieve again in our economy.

My own take on this is that an end to any hope for robust economic growth is, at least, likely. The whole idea of future growth based on innovation and things like Moore's Law bringing down the price of technologies comes into question. One of the problems, as pointed out in this article, is that we don't really factor in the benefits of things like smartphones into our economic equations. A smartphone can do wonders, but if it doesn't cost much to buy, it doesn't add much to the economic measures of prosperity that we use. The question of how we define prosperity is a big factor in my own thinking.

For various reasons, the surge of economic growth that we saw between the late 1800s and 1970 may not be repeatable. A law of diminishing returns?

To me, this thinking is important because traditional liberals and conservatives keep bashing each other over conflicting roads to economic growth and prosperity. Maybe this prosperity is an impractical goal. If that is the case, we will need to find new roads to better lives. Maybe we should learn to love each other and ride bicycles? I actually try and do that, myself.