Third World Asset Allocation

An editorial in the WSJ today points out the great crisis facing us in another way: When measured in euros the real US per capita GDP is down 25% since 2000. Germany's is up 4% and is higher than the US per capita GDP. The US, measured in currency other than the dollar, is experiencing a decline in wealth.
25% is a big decline. I watched a TV show the other day following two British women house hunting in Cyprus; they were state employees who were evaluating properties I could never consider. The immortal state financial reservoir aside, how did this happen? How has this slow strangling of the dollar been tolerated? Certainly the economists advising on a national level see and know what is happening.
I think they see and know very well. They have decided--wrongly, I think--that the competitive capitalistic system, with its winners and losers, creates enough social instability--or the threat of same--that various distinctive products and services in the country must be homogenized, regardless of the decline in both lifestyle and quality they know will follow. Growth and development will be left to other countries.
This can be very tricky. Declining GDP allows for less and less internal competition as money leaves the system for better rewards elsewhere. Money is created instead of wealth and the currency falls further. The currency continues to flee the country or goes to hard assets (usually augmented with borrowing.) Finally a sad, subsistence-based culture emerges with its inevitable militarily uniformed elite.
It is easy to give the Olympics to Rio; Chicago is old news.