Final answer:
Increased technological knowledge propels economic growth by improving productivity, enabling rapid adoption of new production methods, and ensuring widespread access to technological benefits, which in turn can lead to more innovations.
Step-by-step explanation:
Increased technological knowledge is crucial for a nation's growth because it is typically the most important contributor to economic development. Technological advancements lead to increased productivity growth, as new methods of production can be implemented swiftly and at low marginal costs. Furthermore, countries with advancing technology often have robust institutions that facilitate the training of workers and the construction of superior machinery, allowing widespread access to the benefits of technology. In this way, the cycle of innovation perpetuates itself, as those same institutions make subsequent technological advances even easier to achieve. The U.S. economy, for example, not only boasts a workforce that is better educated and better equipped with physical capital than in the past, but also, these workers have access to ever more sophisticated technologies, as evidenced by the high number of patents issued annually.