that's why countries like Norway with little military and highly socialized, always have the highest standard of living. Countries that build empires modern America and the British before them tend to have the highest debt and fall on their own imperial burdens. Empires are expensive. But wait, you have "discredited" and "numbers" that are able to ignore 2000 years of history. must be some awfully fancy numbers and discredits
Small countries like Norway have the advantage of not needing to support a military because the US and the Brits previously provide much of their security. I'm glad you used Norway as an example because they were taken over by the Nazi's and certainly would have been swallowed up by the Soviet Empire were it not for the US. It is a distinct advantage for countries like Canada, Norway, Sweden, etc to know that they are basically a proxy for the US from a military protection standpoint. You can be a lot more "socialized" when you're not paying to protect yourself. With that said, it's our military and economic strength that has made the US dollar the word's reserve currency, which certainly has many benefits as well.