Well, it's silly to expect even 2% GDP growth over extended period of time: in just 300 years, it would give us almost 400-fold growth. Increasing everyone's purchasing power 400 times would certainly look like singularity.
The trend of compounded growth since 1820 has been 4%, really until some time from the 1990s to now. Many suspect the natural rate of growth still to be 4% but somehow, our policy or behavior suppresses it.
The transition to the lower rate of growth is a lot covered by Tyler Cowen under the rubric " The Great Stagnation".
We're roughly 2096 ( exp(1.04,195) ) times wealthier on aggregate than in 1820. This happens very slowly. Since 1960, the ratio is 8.6:1 - you and I are 8.6 times as wealthy as the people most like us from 1960.
Megan McArdle talks about the "Little House On The Prairie" Ingalls family not being able to afford a modest tin cup for the third daughter for a long time - apparently something noted in the books. Yet they were "middle class"
by the standards of the times.
Could you point me to any source where it is calculated? This seems especially suspicious, since high speed growth started only 200 years ago (in 18th century the average per capita growth in Europe was 0.1%), in 19th century the average growth was about 1%, and in 20th it reached 1.9%. This gives around 20-fold growth, which is hardly similar to 400-fold one.
I don't need it though. I have something in my hand right now that I could have sold for literally a million times as much only 60 years ago.
I can buy enough food for a year on a single weeks wages. Compare and contrast to an indentured peasant who worries if he's going to starve this year.
I can travel to the other side of the planet and come back. This is something I can purchase on about a week's wages. The cost to someone three hundred years ago to doing this was so much higher, and given that I can get there and back in less than 48 hours, it doesn't even begin to compare. My purchasing power (i.e. the things I can buy), compared to someone like me three hundred years ago, is so, so, so much more than a measly 400 times theirs.
The transition to the lower rate of growth is a lot covered by Tyler Cowen under the rubric " The Great Stagnation".
We're roughly 2096 ( exp(1.04,195) ) times wealthier on aggregate than in 1820. This happens very slowly. Since 1960, the ratio is 8.6:1 - you and I are 8.6 times as wealthy as the people most like us from 1960.
Megan McArdle talks about the "Little House On The Prairie" Ingalls family not being able to afford a modest tin cup for the third daughter for a long time - apparently something noted in the books. Yet they were "middle class" by the standards of the times.