Exponential expansions in social evolution: the case of per capita income averages in the U.S.

The exponential expansion of per capita incomes over the last centuries in tech driven economies like that of the U.S. is the most recent in a long series of social creations marked by one or another exponential expansion. The origins of the deep attraction to these enhancements are found in the evolutionary heritage of our expanded cognitive and affective capacities. These evolved capacities have always marked the exponentially rising learning curve in the rapid language acquisition of young humans. They have also played a role in the emergence of religion as an explanation scaffolding from our context of origin onwards. After the exodus from our context of origin into larger and larger populations, they helped shape the emergence of the inflated ascriptive inequality that grew as individuals struggled to find a framework to make and assess status claims at these larger social scales. Among many other changes, the exponential expansion of per capita income averages over the last centuries in economies that first embraced systematic technological innovation and diffusion provided an alternative material enhancement for status differentiation throughout a population. The contrasting labor-saving and disruption costs of this fourth enhancement have played a role in the remarkably steady pattern of a multi-century per capita growth rate average in the U.S. of just under 2% per year.