It is very apparent that over the past half century that the per capita GDP (gross domestic product) of the United States has been increasing linearly (see Figure 1), whereas the gain of the US stock market has been increasing exponentially (see Figure 2). The GDP is composed of consumption by the citizenry, investment by the citizenry, consumption by the government, and exports less imports [GDP = C + I + G + (Exp – Imp)]. The Export to Import relationship has been negative in the United States since 1975 and much of this has been attributed to America’s consumption; here US citizens take advantage of the fact that the US has a privileged currency based on a long history of economic stability and world hegemony.

Currently, the total debt of the United States, which is made up of consumer debt, service debt, corporate debt, and government debt is 326% of America’s 2024 GDP. A significant portion of this debt is owned by foreigners of Asia and Europe; as of 2025 30% of US treasuries are foreign owned. It is curious that treasuries are being purchased out of the Cayman Islands ($442 billion US for June 2024) and of all the foreign purchases the Cayman Islands ranks 4th after Japan, the United Kingdom, and China [see: https://ticdata.treasury.gov/ resource-center/data-chart- center/tic/Documents/slt_table5.html]. The Cayman Islands are notorious for being centers of offshore money to avoid taxation by country. It is well known that US law demands that all citizens and green card holders report all their income to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) no matter where that income is obtained. Given recent disclosures into the money laundering operations of the late Jeffery Epstein it is well understood that many of America’s oligarchs offshore their profits to shirk federal taxes (Levine 2020).

Now to answer the question: why the per capita GDP of the US is not tightly correlated with stock market gains with the former being linear and the latter being exponential? The first difference between the two is that GDP assesses completed economic activity, whereas the stock market is a projection of future economic activity. Also, GDP includes the entire population of Americans, whereas the stock market disproportionately represents the high-income earners (top1% of income earners in the US own over 50% of stocks and bonds). Additionally, stocks can be owned by foreigners and pseudo-foreigners who are based in the Caymen Islands, for example. Jeffery Epstein was known to have multiple passports and multiple identities (Levine 2020), which would allow for the avoidance of US taxation. Finally, the exponential function of the stock market is emblematic of the growth of debt often used to support stock purchases by the 1% who take advantage of the disparity between creditor and debtor; debtors make up most of the citizenry and therefore they participate maximally in GDP creation but less so in debt ownership (Figure 3).

A simple way to think about the foregoing: while the elites administer from their security compounds, the citizens build the society. During this process, wealth is shifted from a majority to a minority of elites, which if not regulated can be destabilizing (Figure 4). All this was well understood during the Neolithic period, as fictionalized in the Old Testament: pick up any of the thirty-nine books at random for verification (see Footnote 1).

Footnote 1: You can think of the Old Testament as the ‘Moby Dick’ (a great American novel) of the Neolithic period.

Figure 1: Per capita, gross domestic product of the United States between 1960 and 2024. The function is linear. Data from the World Bank and adjusted for inflation. (bible_023.jpg)

Figure 2: The Standard and Poor’s stock market prices in US dollars between 1928 and 2025. The function is exponential. (bible_021.jpg)

Figure 3: Aggregate debt is plotted as a function of time juxtaposed against aggregate economic growth. Notice that once economic growth begins to reach relative asymptote the income disparity accelerates (for many mature economies economic growth continues at a reduced rate although economic collapse is also possible as experience by Greece between 2009 and 2018). The creation of debt by the issuance of loans (IOUs) to support agricultural production during the Neolithic period, for example, was such that the debt typically preceded the harvest of the crops (Hudson 2018). This fact also supports the idea that money is created by creditors to enable production within an economy (Hudson 2018; Werner 2003). (file: bible_020.gif)

Figure 4: Aggregate incentive is plotted as a function of increased income disparity. The peak of this function indicates the optimal disparity of income in society. The figure is derived from an understanding of the Gini coefficient. At the highest level of disparity, a society starts to break down since citizens no longer have an incentive to participate in the economy (file: bible_016.gif)