Over the past two centuries, economic growth has freed billions from poverty and made our lives far healthier and longer. As a result, the unfettered pursuit of growth defines economic life around the world. Yet this prosperity has come at an enormous price: deepening inequalities, destabilizing technologies, environmental destruction and climate change.

Resolving this growth dilemma, best-selling economist Daniel Susskind argues, is the urgent task of our age. For many, in our era of sluggish productivity, the worry is slowing growth-in the UK, Europe, China and elsewhere-and reversing this stagnation is the goal of every politician. Others understandably claim, given its social and environmental costs, that the only way forward is through 'degrowth', deliberating shrinking our economies.