Why has America been the e economic engine of the world for so long?

I don't think it's chauvinistic to say that we've invented disproportionate number of the things that were worth inventing here.

Um what's the what is that what is the secret of that success and how does it relate to democracy and what is its future if democracy itself is is on a kind of a rear movement a retreat.

Um, so it's a hard question, especially because I covered politics for the economist.

So, um, I found out late.

Um, but I but I'll I'll try.

Um, I I think a few things.

You know, America is a continent-sized free trade area, which which, you know, is is valuable.

It's been protected by oceans on either side.

It's been able to develop for a long period without really getting embroiled into wars until it became hegemonic later in later in its life.

Um, but there there are also other things uh foundational to it.

So uh you know patents and intellectual property are actually written into the constitution as an enumerated power that congress has to promote.

Um and over time we have also uh gained tremendous population through immigration waves and that has you know never really gone down easily.

you know in 1840 when Irish and Germans and and and and and Nordic uh people were coming over like that was very very controversial right uh that was not accepted but you know those those people contributed um to our economic development.

we saw in like the 20th century when we leaped ahead in in scientific progress.

A lot of that was again, you know, immigrants who came over and we see that now as well, right?

There is something about um America, not just the fact that it brain drains the rest of the world, which I think is really the American superpower and has been for a long time, but also that um you know, we have deep financial markets.

Uh we set up after World War II a global trade system in which we were the the hedgemen of that too.

We have a dollar that everyone trades in.

um we should be sitting very pretty.

But to your point about um what comes next, you know, we have gotten tired of this role of being an economic hedgeman and and a militaristic hedgeman as well, right?

We want to kind of pull away from all of this.

Uh one of Trump's nominees on the Federal Reserve says that, you know, countries should pay us for the privilege of using the dollar, uh which is a great way to get them to to move away uh uh from doing that.

We're tired of the free trade system that we've benefited from so much.

And of course, we're pushing as hard as we can to tamp down on immigration, both legal and illegal.

Um, and we are also uh politicizing uh justice in a way that, you know, could at some point uh threaten property rights, but I don't think we're there yet.

But all of which is say that we've we've ascended to this peak.

You know, we're doing a lot better than Europe is um in a lot of ways.

But um in terms of where we're moving, I I think that that is a harder a harder place to to kind of be optimistic about.

Let me ask you a follow-up.

It's akin to the question I asked Peter a little while ago.

Are you surprised that on the one hand the data shows that immigration is a net benefit to the economy of the United States and is the engine of growth and innovation?

Are you surprised by the the way people have thought about immigration has shifted so radically in our country over the last 10 15 years?

Uh it's a cycle, right?

So you see um in the 1840s when we have mass migration of people from Ireland and Germany that's the advent of nativism in the time right you have the no nothing party uh anti-masonic league um in 1920 right right before the Ellis Island the heyday of the Ellis Island immigration that's when the border slam shut in 1924 and stay shut for 40 years so in all those times you know there's a big surge and then there's a huge nivistic backlash those migrants are then incorporated into the American body politic They're not thought of as um you know Irish American.

They're thought of as American.

Um and that happened 100 years ago.

It happened almost 200 years ago.

And I feel like it's happening now as well.