We had hype all the time. It's not recent invention. And in 48 years after 1973, per capita GDP increased 2.18x which, extrapolated to a 103 year interval (as between 1870 and 1973) means 5.32x increase which is almost as fast (6.7% slower, which is very easy to explain knowing that U.S. primary energy supply stopped growing in 1973 after skyrocketing in the century before).

In the last 50 years, Western civilisation learned how to do more with less. In the century before, we simply invented new and new ways of throwing more and more non-renewable resources onto all problems we had. Which isn't really all that hard to do - for as long as you may come up with sources for those resources.

Now we do better.