Our Exponentially Growing Economy

When the economy turns down, it’s good to keep in mind that it is not going to last. You may lose your job, or lose money in the stock market, but it’s only temporary. In the long run, the US economy not only grows, but it grows at an exponential rate. And so does the world economy.

You can read about this exponential growth in Ray Kurzwiel’s book: The Singularity Is Near for free by doing this:

  1. Click the link above to go to the book’s page on Amazon
  2. Click on “Search Inside”
  3. Search on “GDP”
  4. Click on the page 99 link

This is a book for optimists. However, even pessimists will find things to like such as the possibility of nanobots running wild and destroying the earth, etc.

2 Responses to “Our Exponentially Growing Economy”

  1. Brian Says:
    May 16th, 2008 at 3:09 pm

    I believe that you have miss label the title. It should be “Our Linearly Growing Economy”. There is a clear straight line from the great depression. Exponential line would be curved line. Here are an example:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Exponential.png. The blue and green line are exponential since as x increase, y increase faster rate. However, the red line is linear since as x increases, y increases at a constant rate.

    To put it in simple terms, which would you rather have? A dollar a day increased by a dollar every day (i.e. $1 on day one, $2 on day two, and $3 on day three, for a year) or would you rather have a doubling of the first day for the second day but starting at 1 cent (i.e. $0.01 on day one, $0.02 on day two, and $0.04 on day three, and so on until 1 year)?

    I know which one I would choose, within 12 days my decision would have paid off. For additional information see: or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth.

    Thanks for your articles. It is some interesting ways of seeing things.

    Regards,

    Brian

  2. admin Says:
    May 16th, 2008 at 3:29 pm

    Brian,

    If you squint hard at Kurzwiel’s chart on Amazon, you will see that it is a logarithmic plot, not a linear plot like on the chart that you linked to.

    Kurzwiel is much smarter than me so, I defer to him. However, I remember seeing a discussion about this topic between him and some people who question the exponential growth. It might have been on his website. If you are interested, you should be able to google it up in a few seconds.

    Matt

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