Well yeah most people are obviously referring to relative decline, I'm surprised you even needed that explaining to you, unless you thought that Argentina reall

Well yeah most people are obviously referring to relative decline, I'm surprised you even needed that explaining to you, unless you thought that Argentina really might actually be poorer today in real terms than it was in the year 1900. > counterfactuals about how they "should have" grown No, they were growing a lot and extremely wealthy, then they chose to go down a low growth path. Growth is not some magical thing, as if they just stopped growing for no reason as you appear to be suggesting. The point is their growth trajectory changed for very particular reasons, which were mostly things in their control. I mean if in 100 years time the USA was the poorest country in the world but still richer than it is today in real terms, would you really go "yep, yep, nothing to see here, stop dealing in counterfactuals"? Obviously not.