Add to which, to be clear, I'm not defending an economic system that depends on continued growth, nor would I. GDP is and has always been a terrible metric by w

Add to which, to be clear, I'm not defending an economic system that depends on continued growth, nor would I. GDP is and has always been a terrible metric by which to measure economic prosperity. I also do not believe that past performance is a sufficient guarantee of future performance. That said, all of this is orthongal to what has been the historical rate of return of the US stock market.