US President Donald Trump says repeatedly that Americans are the world’s ultimate  consumers, and that the global economy depends on them to keep spending.

It’s an idea that runs deep in American culture — where individualism, freedom, and success are defined not just by liberty, but by the ability to make money. Billionaires are lauded, private capital is king, and banks have been liberalized over decades to maximize returns.

If we are honest, capital accumulation today often comes from “rent-seeking” — making money off the backs of others. Some will call this anti-capitalist, but the growing concentration of wealth and power is now being questioned by many around the world because the inequality it has produced is destabilizing societies from the inside out.

This context matters because it has shaped a specific form of prosperity — one in which consumption is both a right and a duty.

The American Dream became synonymous with owning more: a house, a car, gadgets, closets full of clothes. In the Cold War, this consumption was elevated into a geopolitical statement.

The 1959 Kitchen Debate between then-US vice-president Richard Nixon and then-Soviet Union premier Nikita Khrushchev, staged at a Moscow exhibition in a model American home filled with appliances, was a cultural showcase of capitalism’s promise.

At the same time, consumer advertising was being revolutionized. Vance Packard’s The Hidden Persuaders warned that corporations were learning to shape people’s desires at a subconscious level. Consumption was no longer just a behavior — for Americans, it became a marker of identity, success, and belonging.

When then-US president Nixon took the country off the gold standard in the 1970s, America needed the world to keep trusting its currency. The greenback’s dominance was preserved not by gold, but by the scale of US consumption and the magnetic pull of its financial markets.

The result was a world in which other countries funded US deficits by buying American Treasurys, so Americans could keep spending. In effect, the world subsidized the American way of life.

But this model is starting to fray.

It is not just the widening gap between rich and poor. It is also the mounting debt, the declining social trust, and the fact that global conditions no longer support this path.

Moreover, US military spending is a glaring example. For decades, Washington has poured trillions of dollars into its defense establishment, fighting wars in faraway lands while cutting back on public investment at home.

In 1961, outgoing US president Dwight Eisenhower warned in his farewell address about the military-industrial complex — a system that requires a steady stream of enemies, real or imagined, to justify its budget. Today, that system continues to dominate the political economy, feeding an ideology of endless preparedness and global dominance while leaving domestic needs underfunded.

Meanwhile, the ecological cost of American-style prosperity is catastrophic. The suburban sprawl, oversized vehicles, fast fashion, and single-use culture might be sold as “freedom”, but when scaled globally, they are ruinous.

If the Global South, aspiring to develop, follows this model, the planet won’t stand a chance. There simply aren’t enough resources or ecosystem services to sustain 8 billion people living like Americans.

China is charting a different course — at least in theory. Its leaders have repeatedly emphasized that they are not trying to replicate America’s excesses. Instead, they promote a vision of “moderate prosperity” or “middle-class life” with Asian characteristics: less about consumption, and more about stability, education, and community welfare.

Yet even as China turns to domestic consumption to reduce reliance on exports, especially under Trump-era tariffs, contradictions abound. Rising car ownership, speculative housing markets, and growing inequality challenge the idea of moderation.

What kind of consumption is being promoted, and for whose benefit?

We are entering a moment of global rethinking — a “reset”, as some call it. Nations are reexamining their supply chains, their autonomy, and their development models.

But unless we also question the cultural assumption that prosperity equals consumption, this will be a false reset. The American model is ecologically obsolete and socially corrosive.

The real question is: Can we build thriving economies without anchoring them to endless material throughput? Can we center prosperity around meaning, care, creativity, and connection, rather than accumulation?

We already know the direction we must take. Prosperity in the 21st century must involve lowering overall consumption, decarbonizing energy systems, scaling up reuse and circularity, restoring soil and ecosystems, and valuing services that improve well-being.

Yet this shift runs into a structural barrier: Our economies are wired to measure success through GDP, which rewards “more” in material terms. The more waste, the more consumption, the higher the GDP.

Redefining “wealth” has long been dismissed as utopian. But that is changing. Around the world, alternative frameworks are gaining ground. New Zealand has introduced a “Wellbeing Budget” that puts mental health, child welfare, and environmental indicators on par with financial ones.

China is developing a green GDP to better reflect the true costs of pollution and resource depletion. Costa Rica tracks ecological sustainability and happiness as core development metrics.

The European Union is funding efforts to value unpaid care work and social cohesion. Even some global corporations are experimenting with metrics like social return on investment, purpose-driven performance, and inclusive wealth accounting.

What these efforts have in common is a deeper recognition: people matter. Services that enhance well-being, like caregiving, teaching, healing, creating, and restoring nature, are often the least paid, least recognized, and least counted. Yet these are the services that make life truly livable. Building an economy around them would require shifting not just policies but narratives.

We are not without tools. Advances in digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and real-time data can help us track and reward what really counts — clean air, thriving communities, mental health, biodiversity, and equity. The technological means to redefine progress already exist. What’s missing is the political will and the cultural imagination.

The old American promise of “better living through consumption” built an empire, but it is no longer a model the world can afford.

As the US clings to this fantasy, others are beginning to imagine and quietly construct a different kind of future. One in which prosperity is measured not by what we own, but by how we care, what we restore, and who we become together.

The author is chief development strategist of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.