Fareed Zakaria

About 25 years ago, US and European wages were roughly the same.

Today, US wages are 50% higher than European wages.

About 15 years ago, the Eurozone economy and the US economy were the same size.

Today, the US economy is 70% larger than the Eurozone economy.

If you look at one company, Nvidia, it has a higher market capitalization than the entire German stock exchange.

So it's like, what world are you talking about?

The United States is more dominant today than it has ever been.

We have some issues with inequality and things like that, but those are issues of redistribution.

How do we organize and divide the pie?

but not of prospering.

We've created more wealth.

And we've got the dollar underpinning the world.

So the fundamental, to me, the fascinating thing is that the whole vision is premised on decline, decay, sclerosis.

Even the Venezuela thing, as you say, what they want to do is go from being the global hegemon that set the rules, that created the system, that maintains the system, to like a regional bully.

We give up to Putin, Ukraine, we give up Asia to China, and we get to boss over Venezuela and Mexico.

Isn't that great?

And it's like such a shrinking of American power.

Think about the difference.

As you say, you put it right.

They think coerced compliance is better than the kind of messiness of this alliance between democracies.