I mean surely as a sea faring ppl we were never extremely rich but never as poor as we are today. I recall we used to trade it india and china in the past and some historians could argue that egypt used to get gold and frankincense from us. So my question is how did we go from being moderately rich and using our resources wisely to the point that we traded with other nations to being extremely poor?. The japanese were not that rich before contact with the western world but like us they used to trade with others and thus were not extremely poor either. Any historians who can answer my question?