system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Can economies be expected to grow overall, forever?

So I know there are periods of growth and a recession every 7 to 10 years give or take. But my question applies to the longer time frame. Can modern economies continue to grow at the rates we've seen forever, or will increases eventually start to taper off? If they're expected to taper off, what implications does this have for say retirement plans because they rely on long term economic growth? I know this would probably be like centuries down the line but it's just an idea I thought was interesting.
gpt
>Can modern economies continue to grow at the rates we've seen forever, or will increases eventually start to taper off?

I think the answer to this can be boiled down into one simple question: do you think our technology can always keep improving? 

So much of growth literature (and macro literature overall) is focused on the technology level and how exactly it grows. Seminal work from Lucas and Romer in the 80s and 90s is worth taking a look at. But at any rate, let's imagine a super simple scenario where the production in the economy is determined solely by y = A K^x N^(1-x), where K is the capital stock and N is the amount of work put into it. So obviously, there will be an upper limit on N, determined by the number of people who can physically work. Perhaps we even say that there's an upper limit on K, or we're only really interested in a "steady-state" K (in other words, changes in growth rates are being driven by capital stock). 

Then it just boils down to: how does A change over time? If you think that we can always keep making that bigger (aka make more stuff with less input), then sure, we can always keep growing. If you somehow think that's limited, then real growth could taper off.