To put it perhaps oversimply: because growth isn't just more stuff produced the same exact way, it is also better stuff in new ways. Look at the GDP compared to

To put it perhaps oversimply: because growth isn't just more stuff produced the same exact way, it is also better stuff in new ways. Look at the GDP compared to a bronze age civilization to modern times. We didn't achieve that just by herding more goats and forging more bronze, although we have far more of both goats and bronze thousands of years later. Most of it is in things that money flat out couldn't buy in the past. Just antibiotics for one, let alone more complex medicine and services.