This is so simple minded as to be little more than propaganda. Our prosperity is the result of high IQ people creating modern technology,industrialization and mass production, and the extraction of coal,oil and natural gas to run most everything.
And our downfall is the loss of individual freedom and liberty in the perversion of the founders ideals of sovereign individuals residing in sovereing states with a weak Federal government whose ONLY jobs were to facilitate commerce and relations between the state and to protect our property and citizens while respecting the God-given unalienable rights of the individual.
Instead, we now have a top heavy Big Brother federal government operating a nanny state where the giveaways and global imperialism have far exceeded the ability to fund them.