to make my post less vague, the problem is rent-seeking behaviour. unfortunately, the american political system is effectively a way for two groups of rent-seekers to compete through inane rhetoric, and both sides might favor one tiny group more than other tiny group, but the biggest rent-seekers win either way: those whose entire strategy revolve around zero-risk investing to maintain their power: arbitrage of labor, and commodities, and suppression of development in the third world, all through supply chains is one such example. they're already the richest so why would they invest into something that could make them lose money? how would they benefit from progress, if they were already the most developed nation earth, and could simply invest in stopping development everywhere in the world instead? environmentalism was one solution to stop development in the third world, of course. to solve the problem of the revanchist countries, they'd have to lose a significant portion of their power.
United States