Why are interest rates so low?

Tech progresss -> growth. That much is certain. It's certain that you cannot continue to have technological growth without economic growth. Name the 10 most important technological advancements of the 1900s and try to explain to me a scenario where those invention wouldn't cause growth. And its also certain that growing the economy by #1 and #2 above will allow more room for #3. So in a sense, you can, but it would be incredibly difficult to grow the economy without encouraging and making technological growth.

And, to be clear, I don't mean in some kind of fuzzy way where if you have access to the technological progress, you will go out and be more economically productive.

I mean: If ten years from now, your country's nominal GDP is exactly the same as it is today, but you have access to cool new technology that makes your life materially better, then economic metrics will attempt to capture that improvement and will say that you are now richer, ie, the economy has grown.

So, for example, when we try to figure out the value of inflation, we take into account the fact that your smartphone today is "worth" more than the featurephone that you had ten years ago, and we say that if hypothetically the smartphone and the featurephone cost the same amount, then your money has deflated (ie, your money is worth more, ie you're richer at the same nominal amount of money).

The metrics may or may not do a good job of putting a precise dollar figure on that, but they're trying, and if the technological progress is significant enough, and reaches a large enough population, then they'll put some dollar figure to it.

Technological progress that does not improve the lives of significant numbers of people, of course, does not translate to technological growth. But I assume that is not what you're arguing for?

First, these physical, tangible standard of living factors you so arrogantly dismiss. Cheap, ubiquitous travel means freedom to live where you want, even if that's more than a few hundred miles away, without sacrificing your family and friends. That was rare 20 years ago and almost unheard of 50 years ago. Except if you were rich, of course. Today, the rich can buy somewhat more comfortable and convenient flights, at extreme expense, but not faster ones.

As for refrigerators in every home? The alternative is shopping for fresh ingredients daily, or doing without them. You can't save leftovers for very long, so you need to cook daily. And speaking of cooling? 100 years ago, the king of England couldn't get an A/C unit at any cost, today they're perfectly ubiquitous.

Education? Yeah, there is some real differences here, but the bottom has gone up tremendously: in living memory, kids were pulled from school to help in the fields. Poor kids, obviously, the rich didn't go in the fields. Today, thanks to the mechanisation of agriculture, all kids can stay in school uninterrupted. And even the poorest kids can read by almost free electrical lights. Even 100 years ago, the rich would have to read by candlelight.

The rich can buy marginally better cars than you and I, but not by a lot. Fancier, but not really better clothes. Their houses might be bigger and fancier, but not more capable at keeping you and your family warm (or cool) and dry. Certainly, the rich have more luxurious options, but not really a lot better.

The richest man on earth can't buy a better smartphone than me or get a better signal than me - that's why those ghastly diamond-encrusted phones exist. But their text messages don't arrive faster than mine and they like the exact same cat videos as me on the exact same Facebook.

Still too vulgar and consumerist? How about the environment? Once, the rich enjoyed clean air, clean water and safe disposal of sewage by living in the country. But do you know why they dusted all the time in old books? Indoor coalfires are messy affairs. If you lived in the city (rich or poor), there would be no clean water, smoggy, dirty air and literally shit flowing in the streets. Today, even the worst tenements in the densest cities have clean, running water, flushing toilets and smogless radiators. The air might not be quite as clean as it could be, but it's a far cry from the smog-hell it once was - and a lot cleaner than just a few decades ago, thanks to better cars.

The perks you list were always perks of the nobility, they are not recent gains - but you're making the perfect an enemy of the extremely good. The much more interesting point is all the perks they've lost and are losing, and those are extremely numerous.