> M2 seems to track the value of the US economy pretty well
Ah, now you are seeing! The US prints completely ridiculous amounts of money. The superpower we have/had is to then dump a significant chunk of the resultant inflation onto other countries. So we get to turn a far larger chunk of that printed money into "growth", keep the currency stronger, suffer less inflation, etc than would be true for other countries engaging in identical behavior.
BTW to make sure we're on the same page here. There are two distinct topics at play. One is quality of life for the average person. I think that has stagnated to declined for the plethora of reasons illustrated on the 1971 page. The second is the economic state of the country (as opposed to the people). And that has obviously substantially improved since 1971, particularly with our superpower, but I am arguing that as our ability to export inflation continues to decline we're towards a major inflection point that I suspect will be the end of this economic system.
Ah, now you are seeing! The US prints completely ridiculous amounts of money. The superpower we have/had is to then dump a significant chunk of the resultant inflation onto other countries. So we get to turn a far larger chunk of that printed money into "growth", keep the currency stronger, suffer less inflation, etc than would be true for other countries engaging in identical behavior.
BTW to make sure we're on the same page here. There are two distinct topics at play. One is quality of life for the average person. I think that has stagnated to declined for the plethora of reasons illustrated on the 1971 page. The second is the economic state of the country (as opposed to the people). And that has obviously substantially improved since 1971, particularly with our superpower, but I am arguing that as our ability to export inflation continues to decline we're towards a major inflection point that I suspect will be the end of this economic system.