&gt; What I do see is that life today should be markedly better than it was about 500 years ago, but that it has largely flattened out within the last 100 years.<p>The article shows a chart of total world GDP (in constant 1990 dollars), and this states that since 1900 total world GDP has gone up by a factor of approximately 40. The previous 100 years (1900 to 1800) grew by at most a factor of 10, and in the 300 years prior to that (going back to 1500) GDP merely tripled.<p>I could definitely understand if you were trying to formulate an argument that this sort of exponential growth cannot be sustained, but your time frame for any &quot;flattened out&quot; phase is completely wrong.