Highest Possible US GDP

The American economy grew at inprecedented rates after WW2, and still grew relatively well after that period. We all know the dismal times the US economy experienced and its recovery, so I ask you this:

What would it take for the US economy to grow at an average of 6% (minimum) from the post-war period to modern day, and how large would the US economy be? Bear in mind that 6% is the minimum. If you find a way to make it higher, then feel free to do so.
 
There were only a handful of years since 1945 where economic (GDP) growth exceeded 6%. That includes the 1940s and 1950s when the US was really the only undamaged industrial power on the planet.

If you do the math, that growth figure would mean an economy 59 times larger than that of 1946. Nominal GDP today is close to that multiple -- but that's nominal GDP and not constant dollar GDP, which would mean an economy 13 times the size of today's using a simple dollar conversion from current dollars to 1946 dollars. The US today is about 1/6 of global GDP, which would mean a US economy about 2 times the size of the entire current global GDP.

Getting the US economy that big is, therefore, something that I find strains the bounds of what is plausible.
 
Well the US already has almost unparalleled GDP per capita figures, even among OECD countries, so it has much less room for growth than countries with a much lower GDP per capita, that are in a "catch up" stage of economic growth (eg. China). Obviously going back and preventing costly American-led interventions in Vietnam and the Mid-East would certainly help, but there really is no way to keep US GDP growth ahead of places like Germany and France in the 1960s (when they are essentially still recovering their industrial losses from WW2 and are experiencing compensatory growth) or countries like China or Brazil in the late 20th/21st century which are essentially playing catch up by simply using current technology to industrialize and getting huge growth rates by simply increasing a GDP/person that is still only a fraction of the GDP/person of the US (eg. If the Chinese economy were to go from having a GDP/person of 1/5 to 1/3 of the GDP/person of the US it would have an economy roughly twice the size of the USA)
 
A good comparison of GDP/person growth rates in the USA vs a country like Germany or France in the 1960s or China today is kind of like asking if Usain Bolt continue to reduce his sprint times by X% each compared to the rate of annual increase in performance of just an average person who decides to take up sprinting as an armature: Bolt is already the fastest man alive and using cutting edge training techniques to maintain his record setting times and perhaps slightly improve them whereas your average Joe is just trying to catch up to the standard set by everyone else and which is well within the norm of human capability. Hence although Usain Bolt will likely always remain the faster runner the amateur will show much more dramatic improvements in his time, at least until he reaches the level of a professional.
 
What about a sort of super happy post ww2. China doesn't go communist and stabilises, the Africa debacle is avoided and it stays stable (better decolonisation?) and the USSR after Stalin gradually introduces capitalist methods and isn't seen as an enemy so no waste of Eastern Europe and no Cold War. A much bigger economic pie, and the US is supplying to it, with a correspondingly big slice. With no Cold War there isn't the huge spending on nonproductive assets either, it all goes into the productive economy. Oh, and perhaps govt investment in universal healthcare and education, and no war on drugs.
Wow, that's quite a list
 
What would it take for the US economy to grow at an average of 6% (minimum) from the post-war period to modern day, and how large would the US economy be? Bear in mind that 6% is the minimum. If you find a way to make it higher, then feel free to do so.

There is exactly one circumstance in which the US could sustain 6% growth for so long: have it reduced to subsistence incomes, like China. It could bounce from that at 6% a year for many decades, just as China averaged 9% per capita income growth from 1980 to 2014.

Asking for sustained 6% growth in a country that's already rich is substantially less realistic than the porn most people wank to.

Oh, and before anyone tells you about the 1950s: real per capita income growth then was 1.9% a year, the lowest decadal average between the 1930s and the 1990s inclusive. And 1950 wasn't even at the peak of a business cycle, since the US was still recovering from postwar demobilization.
 
6% real (inflation-adjusted) or nominal (raw dollar figures)? Overall or per-capita?

6% nominal GDP growth is pretty easy: extend the high-inflation period of the 70s. You can probably have it hit earlier by letting the Bretton Woods system collapse when it first comes under strain over balance-of-payments issues in the 50s, and you can probably extend it to last longer if it doesn't coincide with a major recession until after high inflation levels are accepted as "normal" (both because the association creates political pressure to reduce inflation, and because simultaneous high unemployment and high inflation was one of the stronger arguments that got academic economists (and thus the federal reserve) to consider the money supply theory of inflation alongside the Keynesian AD/AS model).

6% real growth overall is probably easiest to achieve through increased population growth (see Jiraiyathegallant's suggestion).

6% real per-capita growth is a tall order. If I knew how to achieve it on a sustained basis over a 70-year period in a country starting from a high first-world baseline, I'd have better things to do than posting here :)
 
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