Upper-middle income and high-income nations – countries over the threshold of $10,000 per capita – could in theory deliver flourishing lives for all, achieving real progress in human development, without needing any additional growth in order to do so. We know exactly what works: reduce inequality, invest in universal public goods, and distribute income and opportunity more fairly.

It’s not growth itself that matters – what matters is how income is distributed, and the extent to which it is invested in public services. And past a certain point, more GDP isn’t necessary for improving human welfare at all.

From the perspective of human welfare, the high levels of GDP that characterise the United States, Britain and other higher-income countries turn out to be vastly in excess of what they actually need.

[For the past forty years], guided by the dogmas of neoliberalism, governments have privatised public services, slashed social spending, cut wages and labour protections, handed tax cuts to the richest and sent inequality soaring. In an age of climate breakdown, we need to be doing exactly the opposite.

It is politically easier to rev up GDP and hope some of it trickles down to the poor than it is to distribute existing income more fairly.