Why is a country as wealthy as the US tearing itself apart? Whatever its cause, Americaâs economic and civic decoupling is easy to spin favourably. The story is not that a rich country is so politically broken but that a politically broken country is so rich. Save Share Here follow pairs of facts about the contemporary US. The economy added 850,000 jobs in one month; a third of voters believe the last presidential election was stolen. A lockdown with no peacetime precedent cost just 3.5 per cent of national output; states as large as Georgia are curbing the independence of election officials.