Comment by mopsi

  > Other sources disagree

"Consumption" figures are also misleading. In monetary terms, Americans consume more health services than anyone else, yet have fallen behind in life expectancy: https://ourworldindata.org/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/qLq-8BTgXU8... Key life milestones like getting a college degree, starting a family, buying a house, or retiring have all become much more difficult to achieve despite skyrocketing GDP figures. Less and less of the total wealth (which is growing) is reaching the average American family.

  > But it doesn't matter--you're arguing that prosperity for the average US worker began stagnating about 20 years after the formation of NATO. That's basically an anti-NATO argument, from the US perspective.

The prosperity of the average worker did not begin to stagnate when NATO was formed, but indeed decades later, when the US began to diverge from shared values to pursue financialization of the economy, deunionization and other forms of free-market radicalism that have set it apart from other advanced economies. NATO allies and US workers have been abandoned alike to pursue short-term gains, whether from outsourcing to China or cozying up to kleptocrats who promise to share their loot personally with the US president, his family, and his business buddies. Why should any American support this?

  > My goal is to abandon our place in the world and be like the Swiss. I don't want to destabilize yet another country (Russia in this case). We're gonna have to live with Russia whether we like it or not.

I don't think you understand what it means in practical terms. Switzerland is entirely surrounded by the EU, and its economic prosperity depends on access to the European Common Market. Switzerland must follow the policies adopted by the EU without having a voice in the process, because it is not a member of the union, yet the Common Market is vital and losing access is not an option. Switzerland has to abide by EU's state aid and competition rules, manufacturing standards, and countless other policies, but Switzerland cannot even restrict entry of people from the EU to live and work in the country. Again, why should any American want to lose control over their country to such extent? Are you really ready for an European-South American economic alliance that dictates how many Mexicans can enter the US or how much subsidies you can pay farmers? I seriously doubt that.

As for Russia, you have the luxury of shaping the kind of Russia you live with. Is it the Russia that enslaved half of Europe and is using their brains to build a massive stockpile of nuclear missiles to blackmail you while you dig shelters in your backyard out of fear for your life, or is it a different, more peaceful Russia that has abandoned imperialism like Germany was forced to? Isolationism is a fool's errand. You can very well pretend that the war in Ukraine doesn't affect you, but consider that the nuclear missiles Russians tried to set up on Cuba were built in Ukraine. Would you rather have Ukrainians living under Russian boot and building nuclear missiles to burn down American cities, or have them building rocket engines in support of NASA space explorations programs like they did in the same Soviet-era nuclear missile factories in the early 2000s? It's not a difficult choice.

Most countries in the world don't have a choice and have to deal with whatever the life throws at them. You do have choice. Use it wisely.