>Problem there is the rest of the world would be even further behind us.

Here you are rationalizing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(psychology)). You tell this mainly to yourself to keep peace of mind. The fact is rather that 'we' did benefit more than we deserved. You know as well as I know that the world definitely will be lost when all Chinese have the same level of consumption (think of cars) as the US and Europe, unless we succeed in time to produce enough green energy.

>Free market and capitalism works better than any other system, hand down. The problem we have here is that government got involved in the free market in many areas.

As I already wrote, I'm not a free market fundamentalist. So, I totally disagree here.And I think that it is esp. the current financial crisis that has made clear to even many fundamenalist diehards that the market cannot do without regulation (implying they're actually no longer fundamentalist believers in the free market). Your hypothesis that free market and capitalism works better than any other system simply is not true.