system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How can the stock market keep growing year on year?

It confuses me where that 3% annual growth comes from. Those of us with index funds are banking on it continuing indefinitely, but how can that be possible? Nothing in the universe keeps growing indefinitely.

Does the economy keep growing because it still has people and commodities in agrarian or village societies which it commodifies and brings into the global market? Or is it that technology is still making human labor more productive? A mixture of these? Will the market ever stop growing?
gpt
Long-term economic growth has three components: (1) Labor, (2) Capital, and (3) Technological Advancement. When looking at long-term economic growth, it's not unreasonable to assume, at least in a developed economy, that the economy will grow generally each year, as there is more labor, capital, and technological growth each year. Of course, there are potentially cataclysmic events that could happen to disrupt this, but those are not incredibly likely (knock on wood) year to year. 

That's why if you look at a graph of US GDP (for example) from 1900 to today, even the great depression seems like a small blip. The great depression had horrible consequences for the country at the time, but the economy went through the cycle and eventually recovered.