I don't follow Krugman very closely, because I don't think he's worth listening to, but I don't think he is an MMT guy. There are fine distinctions between the various bogus schools of macro economists that they view as being quite important.
True economic growth is a noble pursuit. That would be equivalent to a rising standard of living. The problem is that they view a fictional aggregate called GDP, that has well-known uncontested flaws, as being an almost perfect proxy for the economy. That leads to trying to maximize the things that are in GDP, which can come at the even greater expense of what's not in GDP.
Perhaps the distinction is not often appreciated, as you say. Indeed GDP, or GDP per capita, seems skewed in it's ability to gauge the health of an economy or society.
I thought it interesting that economists obviously realized this, and so, cargo volume, and electricity consumption would become main indicators, verified accurately from satellite imaging. Then there's opaque reporting of data from a statistics bureau. I imagine ballooning bank loans and credit expansion are lagging indicators.
Interesting. I think we could probably go econ101 all Friday night.
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