>You can do both, especially given the latter pays dividends. People moan about the US's domination on the world stage because it obviously benefits you, collectively, as a country, substantially.
Foreigners are always insisting on this to me, but they're never able to come up with concrete examples that are very compelling.
The US was doing absolutely fine prior to WW2, back when we didn't feel Europe was our problem. Our economy was going like gangbusters during that period, in fact.
If Europeans really think it so wonderful to dominate the world stage, they should be very happy for the US to step aside and let Europe take a try. The fact that they aren't happy shows that they're not being honest.
>Which is why it grates and/or is mystifying when you complain about that state of affairs. How you distribute the wealth internally is also mystifying, but for different reasons, and largely unrelated to how you get that wealth in the first place.
It's very simple. I want the dollars spent defending Europe to be spent here at home.
The way I see it, a nation can emphasize one, or maybe two, of the following three: growth, welfare state, military.
Post-WW2 US has historically emphasized "growth" and "military". Emphasizing "military" is silly because we barely face any military threats, and we were doing great prior to WW2 with far less military spending.
Europe has historically chosen "welfare state".
I want the US to switch to emphasizing "growth" and "welfare state", and let the Europeans handle their own continent. The fact that Europe has historically underinvested in growth and military is very much their problem.