"The USSR would have had a hard time copying the nuke if the US had turned them into radioactive slag in 1945."

Yes, and Great Britain would still be an empire if only Michael Moorcock's fiction was true.

Back in 1945 USA had a whooping nuclear head count of... 6. Try to use them against such a big and unpopulated country as USSR, and the best you could hope is getting involved in a land war in Asia. I suggest asking Vizzini about that.

So Teminator vs Matrix, isn't it?

"I've always read that the reasons were the loss of WWI, the unfair Versailles treaty"

And you are, of course, right. But then, please, review the Versailles treaty. It basically holds down to "no tariffs will be allowed to Allies on German territory while German goods can and will be heavily tariffed on our borders".

"the massive war damages"

Yes, of course. And those damages and the hefty war repairings were being sustained with money borrowed from USA which all of a sudden stopped coming and debt reclaimed after 29' crash while, at the same time, basically no more imports were accepted by USA from Germany after the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.

"Now the mistery has been revealed: germans just didn't want to pay the import tariff on their iPhones!"

Not exactly that but almost, only up-down: Germans couldn't buy enough iron to build their Mercedes because impossed import tariffs and then, they couldn't sell the little numbers of Mercedes they could produce because Smoot-Hawley Act would tax them 50% at USA borders.

All these led to poverty and hyperinflation, which led to discontent, which led to a crazy leader gaining power, which eventually led to a world war.

"As for driving ... you've never really driven in Europe, or anywhere else, have you?"

Well, that only can mean European people drive much better than American since, implied in your account, Europeans drive more dangerously but still they manage to kill each other when driving less than Americans.

"Judging by your observations and brag-paragraph, I'd estimate a 75% chance you live (or at least work) in New York City"

Yes, since he moved from UK to USA because (among other things) of the weather, when his company got acquired by Apple. Is Cupertino, CA anywhere near New York City nowadays?

There it goes your average republican's acumen.

"i could say everything (yes everything) that you said and i did the opposite move."

I claim bullshit on that!

You can't seriously say you moved from Cupertino, CA to Manchester because of the weather!

Grunt!!!

"US property is respected enough to not need legions of gated communities."

Pardon me?

My bet is that USA has the biggest numbers and biggest percentage of population under gated (real or virtual) communities with doors opening both outwards (not to let them in, i.e. Bel Air style) and inwards (not to let them out, i.e. Washington suburbs style) in the whole first world.

"The more succes one enjoys, the more tax one has to pay"

Well, not exactly true since the "more" in "more tax" is actually shorter than the "more" in "more success": double your fortune and you won't double your taxes. Multiply x1000 your fortune and you probably will pay less taxes than your assistant.

"Thereâ(TM)s really no place on earth as relatively free of the problems that dog all civilizations - crime, corruption, pollution, overpopulation, disease"

Yeah. Except for basically every other first-world country.

"and really only one that also offers vast economic opportunities and the ability to change who you overnight."

Yes. For the good. And also for the bad.

"Who wants to leave one socialist country to come to another?"

You can bet basically nobody from a properly run "socialist" (by your standards) country (i.e. Northern Europe) would want to go to what USA has become in the last 30 years.

And no, neither Obama nor USA is in danger of being anywhere near to be considered socialist.

"Socialist", despite of what you think, is not a swear word.

"I'm more likely to die of being hit in a crosswalk."

Yes, you are right. Car accident rates are also that much higher than in Europe.

"Let's say the value of the wood by itself is $150. The value of our little economy is, therefore, $450.

Now each violin maker makes a violin.
The first person makes a violin worth $300.
The second person makes a violin worth $700.
The third person makes a violin worth $1500.

The value of that economy is now $2500- a massive increase over the starting $450. Not only that, but the value has gone up until those objects are destroyed."

You still didn't explain who has both the $2500 and the will to buy those violins. Without this pesky detail no, there's no more wealth than at the begining.

"The economy is not a zero-sum game. This is not a race to the bottom. As low cost-of-living places get more and more jobs, their standard of living rises and costs go up accordingly."

No, it is not a zero sum game, it is more like a steam engine: it requieres a hot (cheap producers) and a cold spot (rich consumers) to work.

Now, the game big corps are trying to play is to find if they are able to jump from hot spot to hot spot and the world will be big enough so by the time the travel it around (from Japan to Korea, from there to China, India and Philippines, from there to Brazil and Latin America, from there to Africa) old hot spots are already cold again (...and once Africa becomes hot enogh, back to, say, India, which by that time is again as poor as it was in the begining).

"And don't overlook the key fact that more people buy a given product than work to make it."

Just like in the steam engine example, you won't be able to extract more energy (wealth) than you put in. It is not a zero-sum game but it still is a closed-system one. More people buy a given product than it takes to produce it... provided they have the money to buy it, which comes in turn from the money those other people have earned by doing things that other people can and want to buy (which ones? the first ones? no, they don't have the money because all they have is just the portion the second group already gave him, which must be less than their own surplus, or else they'd be producing that themselves at an advantage).

"Walmart selling lots of stuff made in China. The total amount saved by all Americans in buying these products is several times larger than the total lost wages."

For one, it's not clear for that to be the case. For another, it is only savings if they were in the need of buying that even at a higher price, which for the most part is not the case. I'd call that the "promotional sale" fallacy.

"And WWII was caused by a german guy who wanted to expand the territory of its country a little bit too much, not by tariffs."

Humm... no, big no. No man could start a world war back then. WWII started because that German guy was supported by quite a lot other German guys and even a higher number of Germans and other Europeans that did nothing to stop the avalanche at its beginings.

And once you start studying why it was so, you'll find tariffs playing quite a strong role in the whole equation.

"Norway is the third richest country in the world by per-capita GDP, it's highly protectionist and most of its biggest enterprises are even state-owned."

Norway is the way it is because of a temporal chance not to last long. Firstly, we are here talking about tariffs, not state ownership (which would lead to a very interesting conversation, given USA common points of views about it, but a different one). Secondly, Norway, while quite strong on their borders by current standards is far from a closed border, being an EFTA member. Thirdly, they are lucky in that they are oil rich and their tariff policies are assymetric (they close their borders but their business counterparts do not), but this will sooner than later change, since EU is starting to be fed up about that.

"All indications at this point are that it's simply impossible. If we were to posit that mankind will someday achieve inter-galactic travel, I would guess that it would be by developing suspended-animation and AI capable of piloting a ship over that kind of time frame. The logistics of planning that kind of trip are pretty unimaginable"

Perusing you own argument, I'd say it is not pretty unimaginable but, on the contrary, quite easy to imagine: we've been flying around in a Noah-ark type of spaceship for as long as we know.

What I find troublesome is not the logistics but the intent. A 'Songs of Distant Earth'-style endevour is purposeless by any practical meaning once you start thinking about it minimally seriously, so I don't see it happen unless there's a chance for the people sent into deep space to communicate and interact among them, which without FTL devices seems pretty doubtful.