Something I wonder, along these lines, is whether we're measuring the right thing. For instance, does "thriving" depend on things like life expectancy, infant mortality, maternal mortality, quality of health care, pollution, crime, incarceration, traffic deaths, and so forth? The way I think about it, "economics" is supposed to study the quality of life, not just a few isolated numbers that happen to be in units of dollars.

Do any of our "rivals" have entire regions with the levels of poverty seen in places like Mississippi, southern Ohio, or northern Michigan? I grew up in an area with patches of poverty like that.