A significant reduction in the quality of life for many in the 'so-called West' appears to be the unfortunate price of the world returning to a more 'normal' historical pattern of international relations.
I don't think that's true. The policy of alliance building and containment of their largest peer and competitor still makes sense. It was how the US ultimately overcame the Soviet Union, and is even more vital given the size and talent in China. A US without an alliance system will not win that competition.
What's much more concerning is that the rational interests of the US as a nation aren't reflected in its policy making any more. The 20th century had its share of domestic issues but the inmates weren't running the asylum as far as foreign politics was concerned which was coherent.
What's much riskier to the world is the US having to take the brunt of defending Europe, the Arctic front, and dealing with a conflict in China (which is far far more serious military threat than Russia in 2025).
It's difficult medicine to swallow but that's the realpolitiks of it.
The fact that Americans are abandoning us in our struggle with Russia in order to pick a fight with China makes it hard to see them as reliable allies.
Germany's GDP is twice that of Russia. EU GDP is 8.5 times larger than Russia.
Yet even in the current state Russia would have very hard time fighting Europe. The Russian military hasn't been this diminished in decades. But the real issue is Europe can't easily spare stuff to help Ukraine because they don't have their own security figured out.
For example, can the person of today afford a higher standard of living than one of 20 years ago - unclear, food has become disproportionately more expensive, housing cost has by far outpaced the wage growth, tech has become cheaper, but big-ticket items like cars are proportionally not cheaper.
From this, the person of today is poorer in tangible terms.
Did the infrastructure improve? - some, but I'd say it was a (sub)linear improvement in absolute terms - we certainly didn't build as much stuff as we did in the mid to late 20th century, and what we built before was the more important stuff, so the new stuff has marginal utility.
Did European industry and technology improve? I'd say in terms of relative importance, we regressed - there are huge gaps in European technological capability for which only foreign options exist - this didn't used to be the case.
Were there some big ticket innovations like Concorde or the Moon Landing or whatever - clearly no, the world seems to have lost its appetite for these kind of hugely ambitious projects.
This 'number go up' style capitalism is clearly not to the benefit of the individual, but I can't for the life of me think who does it actually benefit.
Why do you think a rising China is concerning to the US, but not to Europeans?
Re China: We don't share any border or ocean with them and none of our interests are opposed. To the contrary, they're the only other major power taking climate change seriously. Why would they be a threat to us?
Forget 20 years ago, you can just back 6 years is enough. Ask any person when life was more affordable and job security better, in 2019 or today and everyone will say 2019.
Graphs like GDP or the stock market going up, mean jack shit to the average person when they can't afford a house anymore.
A lot of our economic growth was just on paper through financial instrumentation.