That being said, I agree with your underlying point: bigger things are harder to move % wise. However, when you consider the overall economy, it isn't as clear cut as Google (and Google isn't that clear cut!). There are so many factors to consider, including population growth, rate of integration of certain populations into the "developed world," resource constraints, innovation growth %, etc. etc.
The Dow should increasingly roughly move at a small multiple of the growth of the global economy. So if one says you shouldn't expect the same returns, one is essentially saying that the global economy is going to slow down as a whole relative to the past century. I just haven't seen any compelling evidence for this claim. Sure, I have seen wild speculation and isolated scenarios, but I have not seen any well-thought out arguments that really attempt to capture all the factors in a probabilistic fashion.
The best evidence I have seen is that developed countries tend to have slower growth rates after a certain point. But this is a recent trend, not universal, and of course not perpetually written in stone.
That being said, I agree with your underlying point: bigger things are harder to move % wise. However, when you consider the overall economy, it isn't as clear cut as Google (and Google isn't that clear cut!). There are so many factors to consider, including population growth, rate of integration of certain populations into the "developed world," resource constraints, innovation growth %, etc. etc.
The Dow should increasingly roughly move at a small multiple of the growth of the global economy. So if one says you shouldn't expect the same returns, one is essentially saying that the global economy is going to slow down as a whole relative to the past century. I just haven't seen any compelling evidence for this claim. Sure, I have seen wild speculation and isolated scenarios, but I have not seen any well-thought out arguments that really attempt to capture all the factors in a probabilistic fashion.
The best evidence I have seen is that developed countries tend to have slower growth rates after a certain point. But this is a recent trend, not universal, and of course not perpetually written in stone.