>>510094360People live paycheck to paycheck primarily because they refuse to save their money, not because they are unable to. They do this because they are constantly inundated by corporate propaganda, both direct and cultural, that convinces them that the only way to be a "normal" member of society is to constantly be spending cash on frivolities. There has been little real economic hardship (as in, "I might fucking starve to death") since the Great Depression. The exception to this is the insanely high cost of housing, food, and medical care, which is artificially created by the forces we're talking about rather than a natural result of our economic dominance. As a country, we could easily afford to house, feed, and care for the entire population, cheaply, if we did not concentrate 80+% of our wealth in the top 5% of people.
>This country has been run by bankers and corporate interests since the Civil War and I’m tired of pretending it hasn’t.People with a lot of money wielding a greater amount of influence is a natural state of affairs in any government, but there was still something of a balance of power between the oligarchs and the government up until the early 80's when corporate interests finally completed their coup of any semblance of representation for the people. The real turning points were the advent of practical behavioral psychology, the creation of affordable consumer mass media, and the successful division of dissidents into bipolar political camps. None of this was hinged on America's hegemony. The best you can do is to say that our unfettered access to international markets strengthened them, but this is a consequence of modern business practices in general; the richest man in the world is a South African.
Agreed that direct interference in other countries' governments was a massive mistake, but that isn't necessary for global hegemony. We had great success with soft power.