Most of those people are still relying on the stock market to sustain exponential growth.

If my investment strategy is based purely on dividends, then it's true I do not require share prices to grow. But if I am going to grow my portfolio be reinvesting my dividends, then I need more shares that I don't already own to be created so that I can buy them, which means the total market cap of companies will have to have increased.

And, after I've grown my portfolio, I'll be looking to reinvest a correspondingly larger quantity of dividends, so that market cap will need to have grow by a correspondingly greater amount.

If you want compounding returns, whatever form those returns take, you need sustained exponential growth in the economy.