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Notes -
Your causal links are reversed, there.
America is rich because it is absolutly secure, has maximim prestige, is incredibly credible, and controls the global reserve curency.
All those qualities are confered on the US (and on NATO/NAFTA/whatever other treaty partereners it has to a lesser extent) BECAUSE America is the hegemon.
Thus, much like Rome, imperial china, spain, france, england, and etc; being a Hegemon makes you rich makes you the hegemon. Losing your hegemon cred puts you in danger of losing your riches.
Empires can be expensive and will in effect make the US poorer in the king run. And civilisations need to think about the long run.
This is something people say, but is just not true.
Empire is expensive when it starts to colapse. The solution then, is to not let it colapse.
In any case; the USA is in a unique position where they have managed to defer most of the inherently wealth destroying on the ground work to their hegemonic junior partners; and they get to reap most of the benefit of the expensive part of empire; excepting our little short 20 year neo-con adventure in the middle east.
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