Yeah, there's definitely downsides to that since there's no free lunch, but maybe our society should focus on providing affordable essentials for most (education, housing, healthcare, etc), instead of gleiing at the though of getting a new games console for only $199 and that GDP went up by 2%, while food, rent and medical went up by 10%.
Optimizing our society for excessive consumerism and the eternal "line must go up" race, just to plow the wealth in the hands of a few billionaires, at the expense of workers and the environment, doesn't seem like the best long term.
But it holds even if we calculate as a percentage of expenditures rather than as a percentage of income.
The poor tend to spend more of their money on hard goods and the rich a higher percentage on services. And of course goods are a lot easier to import than services.
Well you see that thing used to be made with higher cost American labor, and those workers were paid more, so they could afford the things they were making.
When the jobs were shipped overseas, those workers were not able to get higher paying jobs, so they were stuck with less purchasing power, such that even though "stuff" is way cheaper now, all the things that couldn't be built overseas now cost an insanely higher percentage of that worker's take home pay.
Sure, you used to have to save up to buy your one pair of shoes per decade, but they mostly lasted a decade. Now you can buy three pairs for the same price, but all together they only last 5 years. You are poorer even though you can "afford" more.
Optimizing our society for excessive consumerism and the eternal "line must go up" race, just to plow the wealth in the hands of a few billionaires, at the expense of workers and the environment, doesn't seem like the best long term.