I should also point out that part of why the US is as strong a global presence is because the manufacturing infrastructure of Europe was decimated after some pretty intense warfare.
I just don’t see what you’re asserting.
Exactly this. The US coasted as the last major economy standing for a very long time, and we built our expectations upon this very temporary quirk of geopolitics.
Our economy may seem like it's thriving to some, but the fact remains that an economy that does not make things is in trouble. You may be able to make a lot of money by moving money around, but that is not viable long-term. Big Fortune 500 corporations may add a lot to the GDP of a nation, but a big F500 corporation is not going to sponsor your local Little League team.
The GP is right, in the narrow aspect of "businesses need to adapt and evolve", but what we moved to in the US is very heavy on the service side. There is a cost to this; there is a cost to everything. It's showing up now in some surprising places, such as high-end chip manufacturing. We let all of that go to Taiwan (Ricardian comparative advantage!), and now all we have is Intel, which has been coasting on inertia for more than a decade.