alt Hacker News> Because America's world wide industrial dominance soundly beat the shit out of everyone, due to deployment of a highly successful industrial policy.
That industrial dominance came largely during the war, and was made possible by the fact that they weren't being bombed while it scaled up.
There's a huge element of geopolitical luck involved in the rise of the US.
> Imagine if we needed to rapidly step up industrial output tomorrow to fight another global war and China was on the other side. How do you think it would go?
Horribly! I think they're much more prepared for such a thing.
Well then we agree, that their industrial policy is working a little better than ours. Which was the original point.
They don't let western businesses overwhelm their domestic industry at all. For us to let them do it to us would be unilateral disarmament and suicide.