Simultaneously driving the economy and increasing quality of life are often competing goals. Take tiny homes, sure, you might be able to put more people in homes they own, but housing construction is one of the most hammer-ready jobs producing activities there is, and if you cut the average house size by 75%, there are fewer jobs in building.

Then consider externalities, the environment could be a lot cleaner if we got over striving for economic growth. Growth is driven by population or consumption growth or both. So you get more trees cut down to build roads, houses and malls. More pollution from energy consumption and manufacturing.

We should really just pursue managed population reduction, combined with a prescribed amount of economic shrinkage, not growth. But then people really get stuck in their caste and there are far fewer opportunities to move into middle class.