Chris Boyd wrote at Quora:

Many of the Americans I meet in the country have a heart of gold too, are exemplary citizens and I still have many contacts there. Which is why I feel so sad for the American public. They’ve had a succession of psychopathic bloodthirsty governments who squander the country’s money on fruitless wars and weaponry, whilst murdering its young men and women in the process, using their patriotism as a tool to coerce them to fight and support war.

As Jack Ma, the multi-billionaire owner of Alibaba so succinctly pointed out recently: “the reason the US is in such trouble is that they have wasted thirty years and around fourteen trillion dollars on pointless wars”. I would go even further than that. The US currently spends $1.2 trillion on weapons, war and spying out of $3.4 trillion earned in Federal taxation - fully one third of all income generated.

China has risen to become the second biggest economy in the world without firing a shot, or invading anyone and whilst spending less than a fifth of what the US does on weapons and warfare. Therein lies the lesson – whilst America has been busy blowing things up, China has been busy building things up.