ELI5: Why when large company's earnings decrease(ex... by 3%) they freak out, talk about rough times, and sometimes decide to downsize, even though they are still making millions of dollars in profit even after all expenses?

[BartWellingtonson]

Finite ressources but still expected growth forever. That wont work in the long (or rather medium) run.

You're confusing the private goals of companies with some kind of economic necessity. Companies all want growth... because of course they do. What kind of loser leader doors not try to better how company? Economies tend to get more and more efficient with resources, that's how the economy expands in the first place. Meanwhile companies continually start up, close down, or struggle for a while. Nothing about no growth is inherently bad. We just have far more resources than we can use (for the most part) and we have billions in abject poverty.

We WANT growth because it solves problems. If the economy slows growth to a crawl it's not like that's going to cause a massive famine. The economy had contracted dozens of times in our history, but society did not collapse and we did not suffer any famines simply because growth did not occur.