The US economy did great prior to 1900 or so. During this period, we did not have significant military action outside of the Americas, and we avoided peacetime alliances. From 1820-1900 the US economy exploded from about 40% the size of the UK economy to about 200% the size of the UK economy.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-maddison-project-data...

Switzerland has a per capita GDP exceeding the US while pursuing isolationist foreign policy. They are the world's most popular country in opinion polls.

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voidfunc 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I hate to break it to you, but the world of pre-1900 has been dead and gone for a solid 120+ years, it was killed off by Europe getting itself into two stupid wars that the Americans had to come over and save them from. Nothing works the same anymore.

All those European countries get to invest in those nice social programs and isolationism because the US has at least up until now acted as world police and handled their foreign affairs for the most part.

	▲	0xDEAFBEAD 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Why shouldn't we let Europe do the world policing for a while? They're always complaining about whatever we do.