For well over a century, the US grew to a superpower using the gold standard. Being on the gold standard allowed for more correctional mechanisms, perhaps at the sacrifice for the speed of growth, and under the gold standard, the US is able to rise from the Great Depression, win World War 2 and outproduce its opponents, and had the greatest economic expansion in its history in the 40s, 50's and 60's.
But under the petrodollar, the US began its slow gradual road of eroding its manufacturing power, began greater income inequality, began to develop trade deficits. The US dollar cannot adjust to trade deficits because of perpetual strong US dollar propped by oil, where under circumstances where you import too much and export too little, your currency is supposed to depreciate to make your exports more price competitive which boosts local manufacturing. Instead, it becomes cheaper and more profitable to continue to import stuff for profit rather than manufacturing those items. Thus your 'free market' isn't free economics at all, and has been broken for decades because the US dollar cannot revaluate based on trade deficits and surplus. Without local manufacturing, US middle class begins to erode as incomes become stagnant taking on 'service jobs' which are like Mcdonald fast food jobs, Amazon warehouse jobs and Uber driver jobs, while inflation on other things, such as cars, rent, homes, and college education, began to rise while middle class income fail to keep up with this. This forces the middle class into debt and more debt to pay for these items.
