GDP -- Gross Domestic Product -- is an imperfect measure of how well a country is doing. You can't look at it and infer, for instance, how well plumbers in Beijing, Vladivostok, Kokomo and Kerala are doings relative to one another.
But it's what we've got, an apples-to-apples yardstick that tells us a little about the average wage-earner and a lot about countries as a whole.
By that yardstick, the U.S.is way out in front, with China and the EU jostling for a fair second place. The rest of the world is a lot worse off -- Russia is down between Canada and Italy, with an economy thirteen percent the size of the EU or China, eight percent that of the U.S. Call it 2.5 trillion dollars. California's most recent GDP numbers, over four trillion, put it well ahead of the the sprawling giant. If California were a country, they'd rank about fourth (and they'd be spending a lot more on defense, so don't get too complacent out there). Gavin Newsom is running a larger country than Vladimir Putin, despite having a fraction of the land area and less than a third of the population.
When you see Russia referred to as a "paper tiger," that's the kind of thing they mean. The butter is spread very thin over there -- and thinner still, given what Mr. Putin's government is spending on guns instead. That's a big slice of the planet, and a big chunk of the world's population, on short rations and fighting what amounts to World War One with added robot bombs.
China is gleefully watching Mr. Trump run America's share of Western Civilization down the garbage disposal, thinking they'll end up on top. It's a lot more likely they'll go down the drain along with us, if it comes to that; based on past performance, their response to a global war or the next pandemic is likely to come up short.
With the rise in preventable disease, trade wars, regular wars, growing disregard for the rule of law, devaluation of science and increase in illusory BS (much of it driven by AI), humanity seems determined to dig themselves into a new Dark Ages. While there's evidence they're not quite as "dark" as popular opinion believes (nor the collapse as sudden), it's not a bright time, and as a species, we're not too bright if we fall into it because we've decided we don't like our neighbors and tolerating harmless weirdos is too much work.
The hopeful side -- and the scary side -- is that the United States is an 800-pound gorilla, the only on on the planet. When the U.S. has a cold, there's sneezing all around the world. And we've got our act together, we tend to pull everyone else along.
The barbarians are at the gates -- and a lot of them are coming from inside the walls, where they've been all their lives.