Or maybe there's a whole conjunction of factors, including the destruction of most of Europe during WW2, the fact the USA is pretty geographically isolated while bolstering a large high income population, which helped the USA to leverage its industrial prowess in the aftermath to catapult itself as the world's economical/financial leader, from then on the rest of the world has been playing catch up.

These stupid policies have helped a lot to build wealth in the USA, it's an amazing place for business, not so much for citizenry. If the only metric one cares about is how much money there's to be made, the USA is definitely 1st in the world, if you care about more than just money then you really have to look deeper. At some point these policies can bite the USA in the ass, then it's pretty much good luck on changing a whole society's view in what's valuable outside of pure wealth-generation.

The USA is a rich place but that doesn't make it necessarily the best place for one to live in as a common person, even more if one doesn't care so much about buying ever more expensive cars, homes and clothes.