The US likes to fake the statistics and often revises them down later.
The US might have REAL GDP growth. It's population grows about 1% per year. How much more GDP above this 1% does the US really have?
This being said. How do you measure GDP growth? In money? Your would have to subtract inflation. How do you measure inflation? Increase in money supply?
"How do you measure GDP growth? In money? Your would have to subtract inflation. How do you measure inflation? Increase in money supply?"
Real GDP growth (what is usually called just GDP) measures do subtract inflation (called the GDP Deflator, which uses a dynamic market-basket based on consumption patterns, somewhat different than the fixed basket used for the Consumer Price Index). Nominal GDP (aka NGDP) is measured just in dollars, and thus does not account for inflation. Any time you see figure labeled just GDP, it is going to be Real GDP. GDP is more a measure of money changing hands than anything else.
Energy consumption is not 100% correlated, as there are different patterns of trade than there used to be.
A more interesting question is why we focus so much on national numbers, as most of the large forces in the economy are international. Keeping score at the national level creates things like the inequality of income illusion, where global inequality is decreasing while inequality in many countries is increasing.
Solid economic growth in the 70ies, then a big dip around 1980, a smaller around 1988, then solid growth in the 90ies until around 2004. Then decline. I would trust this model much more than any government announced GDP growth.
Reminds a little bit to Sow jet Russia. They had a tractor manufacturing plant with state given output increases they had to match. They were not able to fulfill the quota but since output (like many other things) were measured in "tons of tractors produced" the solution to the problem was easy. While they did not produce more tractors, the tractors became heavier and heavier every year...
I doubt it's as noticeable, but housing and appliances have also improved over that period (the average energy efficiency of newer buildings is probably the biggest effect, but better appliances and lighting probably manage to show up).
Do you have a source for that? According to Wikipedia, the US ranked 151st for year 2013. Did they make such a huge jump in ranking in 2014? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_real_GDP_g...