[throwaway_4253]

Just for clarity, how are you defining "Wealth" here? I tend to think of knowledge and skills as a form of Wealth, but it's reasonable for that to be debated; especially if all you're measuring is relative positions in a commodities market.

Either way, I think it's possible to argue that the US did generate Wealth in WW2, in the sense that it developed new technologies and knowledge that were eventually shared worldwide (I'm thinking mass production of materials like plastics, antibiotics, better research on nutrition, etc, statistical engineering techniques which eventually helped build up the Japanese auto industry), and that it trained a large portion of its population via the G.I. Bill and women working in factories, etc.

(None of this is to belittle all the damage done by the bombs, etc, and the US did have a massive advantage in non having it's production capacity wrecked like Europe, Russia and Japan. The broken window fallacy is a real thing)