Despite talking about physical goods and services, there seems to be little in the article that goes into any detail about concrete reality, so I didn’t get much out of it other than a vague sense of foreboding.

Some nits:

The “energy cost of energy” metric seems a bit suspect and I wonder how it’s calculated. One reason I would expect it to go up because solar power is getting cheaper, and therefore it makes more sense to “waste” it on overprovisioning. Another is that the costs of fossil fuel are getting higher in some places. More detail is needed to see if it means anything.

Stock market valuations are in large part based on expectations about future growth. Perhaps these expectations are wrong? But I’m not sure that tells us anything one way or another about the wealth we already have. Perhaps some better way is needed to understand the present and past.