Capitalism’s Golden Age was between 1945 to 1980 in the USA, started by FDR and ended by Reagan. The short period was an outlier for capitalism, when a socialist-capitalist hybrid structure brought prosperity to most, a huge middle class, and great technological innovations. Since 1980, the USA has been contracting gradually, but with Trump 1 and especially Trump-Musk 2, the USA is now declining rapidly and has reverted back to an old Robber-Baron structure where government is controlled by a few billionaires – similar to Russia, a place of great natural resources that are squandered by a few rich, greedy men.
China’s new maglev transportation system in Qingdao, east China’s Shandong Province. It is currently the world’s fastest ground vehicle. Meanwhile, acting like a regressive autocrat, Trump will cut California’s High Speed Rail.
Capitalism’s Golden Age were the years of “les trente glorieuses” (1945–80), as they are called in France, or “Wirtschaftswunder” in Germany. Many of the European economies and Japan expanded the fastest in their histories, and the United States at the rate that surpassed its best performance to date. FDR had instituted a social-capitalism hybrid that would see the USA become a power-house economy that benefited all, especially the middle class. With WW2 over, the USA expanded and so did its middle class. The Reagan-Thatcher era [error] ended the Golden Age, devastating first the UK economy (the UK now is a hollowed-out shell) and then the USA economy. The middle-class suffered, wars were waged across the globe, and the rich self-agrandized to levels never seen before. Public schools, including at the university level, were defunded. So too was government supported R&D. The great technological era of the USA was slowly ending as education and R&D spending from the government was waning. As Prof. Dr. Thomas Piketty, PhD has taught us, inequality is not an accident, but rather a feature of capitalism and can only be reversed through state interventionism. Great inequality, as now exists in the USA and the UK, is a feature of empires ending.
A new power in the East, based on the old FDR model, a social-capitalistic hybrid government was emerging. China began using the old play book of the USA, FDR’s playbook, that had produced the Golden Age. And the USA under Reagan would embrace empire-ending Neoliberalism, a conservative movement to cut government and make the wealthy become exponentially more wealthy. Lack of support to industry by Reagan would mean the first industry to leave the USA was microelectronic chip manufacturing. Others would follow, moving to countries, such as Japan, Taiwan and eventually China, that would provide government support to expensive and risky ventures. While notable exceptions to the Reagan playbook would exist, such as the University of California that would educate the middle class and create and develop new technologies (3-D transistors, RISC, SPICE, integrated circuits, CRISPR, PCR, for example were invented at UC Berkeley), US education and technology development began a slow and steady decline. Indeed, thanks to UC Berkeley, and to a lesser degree, Stanford, the Silcon Valley in California is the one place keeping the USA lead in computers, processors and integrated circuits. Quantum computing, small satellites, and space launch systems, where the USA leads, is also dependent on California (see Table 1). Otherwise, China leads in 37 of 44 technology sectors, from biotechnology to AI, and is soon to monopolize 8 of those sectors. The USA monopolizes none of the sectors.
From the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, technology tracker
The few bright spots in the USA are now ending. The Trump-Musk regime has drastically cut funding in education, R&D at our universities, and government support of new technology companies. So stupid is Trump that he named a college dropout, Sam Altman, a guy who never created anything, as the new leader of the USA AI program called Stargate. This is opposite to what China is doing. The day after Stargate was announced, a Chinese company, lead by a young Chinese engineer who has BS and MS degrees from one of China’s great technology universities, announced a new AI technology, DeepSeek, that blows away what Stargate was proposing. Given our own internal implosion and the making of our former allies into enemies, coupled with the great rise of China, Trump has brought the end of USA leadership.
Think the US military is great? Think again. The Chinese have surpassed us in many sectors, including hypersonic missiles and stealth fighters. The USA spends gobs of money on the military, but much of it is spent on corrupt programs that yield substandard products and money in the pockets of the wealthy. The Navy’s F35 program, led by Lockheed-Martin, is one example of a USA boondoggle, making the rich much richer.
Image of a Chinese stealth fighter jet, which are stealthier than the best US fighters.
China’s space program is on track to surpass the USA too. They’re on Mars with a rover making important discoveries, and their space station is much better than that of the USA and recently announced they have achieved artificial photosynthesis for the production of oxygen and chemicals needed for fuel on board. And, guess what, the Chinese haven’t exploded 7 Starships in a row like the doofus Elon Musk – an ill-conceived spaceship that will never go to the Moon or Mars. When you have NASA run by politicians and techbros, instead of doctors of science and engineering, like we did in the 1960s when the USA landed on the Moon (rocket designer Dr. Wernher von Braun, Ph.D. and NASA leader Dr. Thomas Paine, Ph.D), expensive bullcrap is what you get.
China’s Mars rover.
As the Australian Strategic Policy Institute has written, “Our research reveals that China has built the foundations to position itself as the world’s leading science and technology superpower, by establishing a sometimes stunning lead in high-impact research across the majority of critical and emerging technology domains.”
Stem Cells, Health, Technology 