We can get off the bottom but can we reach the top?

Indian politicians keep repeating that 8-10% growth of the economy is possible. Are they bluffing or is slow growth the new normal for the whole world? In the 19th and 20th centuries Europe and the US grew very fast, followed by East Asia. Growth of these countries was much faster than the rest of the world, in contradiction to basic economics which apparently predicts that living standards should converge. Europe became rich by looting commodities from colonies on every continent, which they used to feed their factories to sell back finished goods to the colonies at inflated prices. The US is blessed with vast resources, such as vast land area for agriculture, coal, oil, gold and other minerals, which together with free labor, called slaves, supplied by the Europeans, made it the wealthiest country in the world. Thus, Europe and the US became wealthy through exploitation which is not possible in today's word. East Asian countries, such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China grew by manufacturing copycat products at much cheaper prices, which kept prices low in the west and created a boom in commodity prices, helping countries such as Brazil, Russia and Australia. But growth in these countries has slowed down as commodities and labor became more expensive, so what happens now? According to the ' dual-sector ' model of economics no country can grow rich by moving farmers from agriculture to services. That is because it is relatively easy to imitate in manufacturing but you need education, training and different business models for services. Also prices of goods are falling. " Although the total amount of physical stuff that humans make keeps expanding, the percent of our economic activity that we put into making goods keeps going down." India is faced with a similar dilemma. The answer is to provide education and increase training in skills. But will it work? Probably at a basic level. Learning to be a mason, a plumber, an electrician or to work on a factory floor will pull millions out of poverty, like it did in China, but it will not take us to the next level. One renowned economist writes that education does not decrease inequality because the top 1% creams off most of the wealth created while another writes that education created much more wealth in the sixties than it is doing now. As technology progresses a lot of economic activity cannot be measured because a lot of services provided online is free. There can be no wealth if no money is being created. In addition, a lot of work presently done by humans will be taken over by robots. The answer probably is a drastic reduction in the number of people so that fewer humans will work as supervisors as robots work on farms, in mines and on factory floors with free energy from renewable sources. All other ways to increase growth will fail. According to experts.