Can't argue at all with the overall diagnosis but I would suggest that America has really been a prosperous nation for a small window between the late 1940s and the late 1970s.

America has always been a libertarian free for all. That stopped for just a brief episode after FDR and then a bit under LBJ, but Reagan came in and said, "What the hell are you people doing? We live in a gunslingin', eat your mother nation, dammit! And that is what we shall have!. And a few of you will get rich!!"

People bought into it. They still do.