The debt/deficit is on politicians (and the public who votes them in). See also issues with US Social Security (Canada was on a similar path, but the government(s) sorted things out in the 1990s).
At least for the US, it has not de-industrialized, as exports have never been higher. It makes a smaller portion of total GDP, but that's because of growth of other sectors; and a smaller portion of the workforce, but that's because of automation:
* https://www.csis.org/analysis/do-not-blame-trade-decline-man...
The largest problem nowadays is probably housing costs, and that has nothing to do with trade, but is about things like NIMBY and zoning.
If you want more than "a particular section of society" and more folks to benefit look into redistribution, which plenty of conventional economists will happily agree with.
Name me a country where this is not the case. The only thing we've failed to do is educate enough of our people to prosper as a deindustrialized nation. That and failed to protect our democracy.
What education did we give them to prosper as an industrialized nation? It seems to me that the population was able to discover that and benefit from it entirely on their own. Why do they need "education" to "prosper" in current conditions?
Aren't we currently living in the most educated time already? That is we have more people going to and graduating from college than ever before. What is currently missing? Do we need to force everyone to go to college? What about those who don't graduate? They just won't ever be able to prosper?
> That and failed to protect our democracy.
I think a little more than half the country would disagree with this assessment.
That's an odd question, given that Prussian schooling was invented to turn children into productive factory workers.
There's nothing odd about the question. What's odd is that you assert that conditions 200 years ago are relevant to it.
You don't even have a point about the deficit. While there are plenty of economic schools that will give you high deficits, the US didn't get his by following any of those either.