> You're certainly technological leaders in most fields for the understandable reasons of wealth, size and necessity

This ignores the history of capitalism, which is more important than the factors you mention. And capitalism was a philosophical and legal development.

> But I'm afraid the 'unprecedented human happiness' you cite is only readily available to an elite few.

That's just not true. The American sense of life is a happy one, unlike the British or continental European sense of nausea, dread, anti-semitism, nationalism, requiring one's brother to be one's keeper, and so on. Unfortunately I think the American sense of life is mostly gone in the east coast cities.