Does Italy have a problem?

This is an article about the lack of economic growth in Italy. It chalks up the phenomenon to a culture of maintaining what one has as opposed to growing more. Now I can attest to the difficulty of carrying out certain daily functions in Europe, as described in the article, and I'm sure that the sometimes inefficiency of a highly stable, regulated society and economy has effects on economic growth. But what I ask myself is, in a country with high standards of living, relative income equality, and low population growth, why is economic growth necessary or even desirable? I mean, if people are successfully meeting their needs, and the government has little foreign debt, why isn't it good enough to stay at more or less the same economic level? This is similar to the logic in many family businesses throughout the world. Most small businesspeople aren't looking to get rich with an ever-expanding global empire, but rather to meet their family's needs in the present and assure some security for the future. And that seems to me like a pretty decent way of doing things.