I was just having a similar debate with someone whose point boiled down to "but the GDP", to which my reply was: what is the purpose of GDP if it does not translate into quality of life of the population? This should not be a controversial position, but apparently it is, and it has been the case at least since the 80s or 90s, which is when I think the word "society" began to get replaced with "economy" in popular discourse. I could be wrong.