Just in time for the 200th anniversary of the war of 1812, Canada is now, for the first time in history, wealthier than the United States. Over the last five years, the average Canadian's net worth has gradually overtaken that of the average American's, to the tune of an extra $40,000 dollars per household.

The coincidence that such a statistic would materialise just as Canada celebrates the bicentennial of its first and founding war is not without significance. If you're not as familiar with the war of 1812, I'll give you a brief primer: it's the one where Canadians fought off an American invasion and burned down the White House. Before the US invaded, William Eustis, the then secretary for war, stated: "We can take the Canadas without soldiers. We have only to send officers into the provinces and the people will rally round our standard." Those words would go down in hilarious infamy after troops marched on Washington and set fire to the presidential residence. It's far more complicated than that, but for brevity's sake that's all you really need to know. Though I'm told Americans tend to disagree on who actually won the damn thing.

Despite being largely forgotten by the Americans after it was over with, the war of 1812 has become Canada's primary foundation myth; right up there with the establishment of universal healthcare, the 1972 Summit Series and the conspiracy theory that Tim Horton's coffee is laced with nicotine. But unlike US myths, which mutate to the rhythm of pop-culture trends, Canadian myths require a near-constant buttressing – which goes some way in explaining why Stephen Harper's government just spent $28m on a marketing campaign to make Canadians more aware of the war's importance.

One specific point of pride that is often tendered whenever the war of 1812 makes the news is how the conflict brought together Canada's various disparate peoples in their opposition to American annexation, beginning what would become our long march towards a gradual and politely restrained nationhood.

Since 1812 Canada has defeated the US many, many times – but most of those rematches have been limited to the ice rink, where Canadian prowess remains largely unchallenged. For the past two centuries Canada has had to sit by idly without being able to defeat America at anything it truly cares about. But to finally overcome the US in terms of wealth accumulation is to beat it at its own game. It's like the Saskatchewan RoughRiders winning the Superbowl.

This recent bump in household wealth is of course due to a number of factors, the most curious of which is Canada's efforts to transform itself into the world's dominant oil power. Nowadays, we're so rich from oil money that our money is literally made from oil. But there are more compelling, systemic reasons why Canadians have continued to prosper while our southern cousins falter and stagnate.

Pundits have spent the week floating a variety of theories: Stephen Marche, renowned mythologiser of all things Canuck, argued that it was due to Canada's unique brand of "ruthless socialism". To this, the anti-socialist crowd argued the shift was actually due to Canada becoming more capitalist, just as the US began to experiment with wealth redistribution. Others argued that it was all about the mortgage regulations, stupid.

Regardless of the reason, Canadians truly believe that our social democracy-lite is fundamentally better than the man-bites-dog-Superpac-devours-man market democracy of the US.

And now, it seems it's also more profitable. It wasn't too long ago that Canada was being routinely denounced by US politicos as "Soviet Canuckistan", and held up as a frightful example of what the US would look like if liberalism were allowed to run amok. We haven't heard much of that since 2008. The triumph of the Canadian system over America's spelled out in the cold truth of dollar signs picks up where the war of 1812 left off. After 200 years of graceful acrimony, the Canadian standard has at last proven to be the superior of the two systems.

But while such conclusions deliver a pleasurable bit of schadenfreude, revelling in America's fall from the top is ultimately un-Canadian. Being richer than an America that has seen its blue-collar cities gutted and its middle class begin to hollow out is a rather empty sort of victory. Especially when you begin to suspect that we're not actually winning, we're just losing more slowly.

• Follow Comment is free on Twitter @commentisfree