The Demoralization is just Beginning

And that would be a good thing in a world where super-powers aren’t imperialist, and don’t try to one up each other.

Alas.

How exactly?

I’m no pro-China advocate (I’m Australian and live with the mixed outcomes of our ties with China, and I have no strong feelings about what Australia or the US should do with respect to China or anyone else).

But (leaving aside arguments about their “true” motives and assuming good faith), China invests in the economic development of many weaker countries and doesn’t try to brain-drain them. The U.S. and western allies invested heavily in the redevelopment of Germany and Japan after WWII, and all countries involved ended up much stronger.

It’s that spirit that I’m talking about.

Say again? If we're talking strictly about the United States as per the article that inspired this post, the U.S. is a case study of a prosperous, remarkably stable democracy steadily increasing its prosperity, wealth, influence and power while also for the vast majority of its history investing for the long term and in vital infrastructure. This process hasn't been constant or evenly incremental but it has been there for (now) literally centuries.

The same could be said of Britain and many other developed countries on shorter but still reasonably long scales. On the other hand when you look at dictatorships in the wider scope of the modern era, the vast majority of them either invest explosively only to fail catastrophically at some point before reverting to some other variant of government, or countries that see their biggest failures happen during periods of dictatorship, and their major socioeconomic successes happen during periods of something at least approaching democracy and openness.

There are exceptions to the above tendencies in favor of democracy, but China can't yet be called such. It has had only 80 years under its present dictatorship (preceded by decades of warlord rule, weakness and chaos) and of those only the last 40 have been ones of relatively stable growth, investment in major projects AND concurrent increases in prosperity. Under Mao it invested in certain major projects, but at nearly cataclysmic social, economic and human cost. Hardly a model, in those days, of dictatorship being applied to patient, wise planning.

>Concerning the USA, the divide between the extra rich and the general poor is nowadays too large to have a functioning country.

Really? Feel like sharing the mechanism by which these claims of overly severe wealth inequality will make the US collapse any time soon?

Note also that as another comment above this mentions, the U.S has had more or less similar levels of said inequality for the last 100 years.... in which it functioned as a stable, relatively peaceful, democratic, increasingly prosperous society in which overall standards of living in absolute terms have gone up enormously.

Personal freedoms can't be manufactured. They are a product of the underlying system governing a country. The US has very strong institutions and legal framework in the form of the constitution (again, at this point in time; I expect the current admin to weaken those, either directly or by eroding public trust in them).

Culture is something that's very hard to replicate. The language of the world in English, Hollywood is American, Hip hop is American and I can't really think of any other country in a position to globally influence and create an ethos in the same way US can. You can call it branding. US fully controls the societal narrative around the world.

Financial opportunities is the easiest one to manufacture (see Dubai). You can give incentives left and right and in few years attract investors and high earners. But without #1 and #2, you'll just attract transients, not people who want to become influential citizens.