Economic growth and economic health

* Almost every day a current-events broadcast has someone prescribing more economic growth as a cure for some of America's troubles. I wonder whether there is a definition of economic growth that authorities can agree on. I'll bet that most pundits think that economic growth is GDP growth and that GDP growth is a measure of economic health.
* In fact GDP growth is largely a product of population growth and inflation, neither of which is universally desired. Those of us who feel an ethical obligation to future generations should be imagining, discussing and seeking a society that functions satisfactorily without population growth and with minimal inflation.
* GDP is a normalizing reference or denominator for numerous macroeconomic variables, such as tax revenues, government spending, market indices and especially national debt. For example, lenders' confidence in government bonds depends on (national debt)/GDP. But GDP and its growth is not economic health. In a developed society, one that produces plenty of what it needs, the most reliable expression of economic health is employment rate which is: 100 minus unemployment rate as percentage. In my opinion, this measure of economic health can be nudged to a satisfactory value by several small tweaks in public policy.
* Since GDP growth is mostly population growth and inflation, I postulate that growth of GDP/(population x CPI) should be a pure expression of what's desirable about economic growth. Population is measured only once per decade, so one must interpolate population to estimate this index annually. As seen in Fig 1, 0.1*GDP/(Pop*CPI) passes through 1.0 in 1960, so it is named "Prosperity relative to that in 1960". I calculated this "Prosperty rel 1960" for the past 6 decades and found something interesting.

Over this period, 0.1*GDP/(Pop*CPI) increased 2.47x (from 0.88 to 2.17).
* The important result is that Americans on average have well over twice the buying power of their grandparents. That is, we average people could save over half our incomes if we kept our appetites for stuff down to that of our grandparents, or we could use over half our incomes for nonessentials. Everybody who feels that rich hold up your hands. The increased buying power is due to technology and exploitation of poor foreigners holding down inflation.
* The problem is that this extra wealth has gone to the top 10% of Americans, none of it went to the bottom 90%, and the bottom 30% are poorer. If the increase of average buying power was indeed confined to the top 10%, then their buying power would have increased 25 fold. What did they do to deserve that? The wealth is obvious in southwest Davidson Co and Williamson Co. Perfectly good homes were razed to make way for McMansions, and new homes are super mansions--drive down Tyne Blvd, Hillsboro Rd and Franklin Rd.
* Should we discuss the ethical implications of the modern distribution of wealth? Is it right to leave the bottom fifth of our population out of productive employment when we are awash in money? Is failure to share life's satisfactions sinful? Is greed on the rise? What happened to noblesse oblige? This ain't my Utopia. Is it your Kingdom of God?