Why do economists say it’s bad when an economy doesn’t grow?

Question

I often see statements in the news from economists saying things like “only 0.2% growth reported, which might have bad effects on the economy”. In my eyes infinite growth is simply impossible when we have finite resources, or is that a misconception from my part?

Edit: thank you for all the detailed an in-depth answers! Learned a lot of new things 🙂

In: 96

Answer 1

A ton of ways to answer this question but very very ELi5 answer:

Big changes are hard. Remember when we moved across the country, all at once? That was hard right? So, the government doesn’t want things to change a lot. A little change, 1 or 2% is enough.

But we also want more, not less. We want a little bit more, but no so much is causes problems. So the government tries to get 1 or 2% inflation rather than deflation.

Of course, it’s very complex and we don’t always manage that goal. Sometimes it’s 5% or -5%. But we aim to get 2%.