We operate under the depression-era assumption that per-capita GDP is some kinda gold-standard metric for evaluating how well a country is doing economically. In reality per-capita GDP is just tracking the trash changing hands. We also overemphasize transactionality because of this. It's somehow much better from an "economic perspective" to have everyone buying new shirts every week even if it's the same people buying and then tossing the same fast fashion junk in the trash.
When you consider other metrics we could be judged by such as the OP is kinda pointing at here, our country looks way fucking worse on the leaderboard.
We ought to use the measures of the material conditions of our population to drive policy rather than how much currency has changed hands and how many worthless transactions have occurred.