[sam h]

[ QUOTE ]
this is the closest thing to a right answer though i have some qualms with it... there are some truly silly answers that have been put forward. consumption???? employment????? way off the mark there

edit: i missed mrgold's comments...his second sentence is the dominate theory in the field of economics

[/ QUOTE ]

Exactly. Part of the reason people have silly responses, though, is that we really don't know the answer to this question.

Generally speaking, we have pretty good reason to believe that economic growth comes from increasing labor productivity and, especially, technological advance. But this implicates the next question: How do you get a better workforce and, more puzzlingly, how do you foster technical innovation?

To the chagrin of many on this board, the people in economics and political economy who study this nowadays seem to agree on one thing: It is not by minimizing the role of the state in the equation and letting the market solve the problem.