It is noticeable that the United States represent a lot of factors in the economy. While there is a liberal general consensus in Great Britain, it looks that in the United States things are more divided. Of course America is a great defender of the liberal democracy, but the question of the intervention of the state, without renouncing to capitalism in any case, divides a lot society.
Great Britain is a country where liberalism is at the heart of society. The ideas of Adam Smith concerning the division of labor and the theory of the peculiar interests that serve the general common good is very important to this extend. Great Britain succeeded to implement the industrial revolution faster than the other countries thanks to these principles. Moreover its financial markets were key to fight Napoleon to the extend it was able to mobilize a lot of capital in a very few time. This country became the most powerful of the world during nearly all the XIXth century.
However, at the end of the XIXth century, two countries rose an impressive way compared to Great Britain : Germany and the United States. If Germany had an authoritarian regime led by Bismark at the end of the XIXth century, it created first movements of social security and built an economic development combining the state and companies. First unions were also put in place to build more social dialog to allow a better efficiency of the companies in the long run. In my opinion this model proved to be more efficient at the end of the course than the British one. It was one of the reasons why Germany rose dangerously to threaten Great Britain’s supremacy. It was a major reason the WWI happened.
The United States has a different scheme. This country is deeply divided. The coasts, seen as more ‘liberal’ (ie moderate and centrists) and the south and the center, where there are a lot of racial tensions. This division can be also seen concerning the role of the state. There is a important controversy between the domination of liberal and neo liberal system, and also the Keynesian system. The Keynesian system has been put in place when Roosevelt went to power in 1929, and it led in my opinion to a real renewal of the American economy. It contributed to make America the great winner of the Second World war and ensure a great period of growth between 1945 and 1975. The return of the domination of neo liberalism, sustained by the School of Chicago, was linked to the inability of the Keynesian system to respond to the oil crisis in the 70’s. But today neo liberalism is challenged by two aspects : the impact of the 2008 financial crisis and the rise of China, which is following a Keynesian economic approach since the advent of Deng Xiaoping to power. The rivalry between the United States and China is also a competition of economic models, even if, in my opinion, the Chinese Keynesian economic system is far more threatening than the communist model of the Soviet Union.
We can see that both Germany and the United States tend not to be as liberal as Great Britain. In Germany today for instance, social dialog is at the core of culture of companies, much more than in France, and it contributed to save billions of jobs during the 2008 crisis. If these countries are great defenders of the capitalist system, they tend more to combine a cooperation between the state and companies. It is more a consensus in Germany, while in the United States it depends on the party in power and the period of history. That is the reason why it is possible to say the two great developed countries where social democracy are the strongest are Germany and the United States ; while France is more egalitarian and Great Britain more liberal. That is also the reason why it is excessive to consider capitalism as necessary ultraliberal, as the intervention of the state is, in my opinion, not preventing capitalism to work efficiently if it is made a proper way.
The observer 