It’s too easy to take things for granted. In Monty Python’s classic Life of Brian, John Cleese’s Reg asked what the hated Romans had ever done for the people of Judea – and was rather annoyed to hear a long list of things like medicine, sanitation, education, wine, irrigation and more.

Economic growth gets a similarly bad rap.

Last week, Greens leader James Shaw urged new economic models that balanced economic, environmental and social outcomes, while explicitly emphasising poverty reduction and broad-based growth in wealth. Labour’s Environment Minister David Parker reported enjoying hearing Lord Adair Turner’s views on new economic thinking that would de-emphasise growth.

Those ideas begin from false premises.

To begin with, the benefits of economic growth in New Zealand have been broadly shared.

The Ministry of Social Development shows that, from 1993 to 2016, real household disposable incomes have grown by about sixty percent – whether your household is at the 20^th percentile, at the median, or at the 90^th percentile.

Credit Suisse shows that private wealth growth in New Zealand has also been broadly based. Average real private wealth in 2017 is five times higher than it was in 2000, and the median is 4.9 times higher. If the benefits of growth had been captured by the rich, there would be a far bigger gap between average growth and median growth. Instead, it is rounding-error small.

And, at least as importantly, you hardly need to turn to fringe economic models to be able to account properly for environmental effects.

Every principles-level course in economics emphasises the importance of external costs, like environmental externalities, and their consequences for policy. Pigovean taxes on pollution have a century’s worth of history in standard, mainstream economic thinking. And other solutions like tradable quota regimes also have a very long history.

When America had big problems with acid rain, the solution came from bog-standard application of a mainstream economic solution: a tradable quota regime for sulphur dioxide that saw the most inefficient factories shut down, others clean up, and the end of acid rain.

New Zealand certainly needs better policy for dealing with environmental damage, but we do not have to invent new economic theories to do it. And neither need we risk the economic growth that is the foundation for any sustainable improvement in broad-based living standards.

What has economic growth ever done for us? The list will be longer than Reg’s.