[boc]

The US actually has a series of social safety nets. There are massive government programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security which provide real, measurable safety nets to the most vulnerable in society. There are also hundreds of thousands of charities, churches, and non-profit organizations that donate time, money, and resources to assist families going through hard times. There is also the US Military, which serves as a government-backed career path for millions of high-school graduates.

I think you're thinking that the US got ahead through exploiting labor. You missed the biggest piece of it though - the US welcomes (or at least until recently used to welcome) massive amounts of highly-educated immigrants from all over the world, and crucially has built a culture and society where those people can feel "American" fairly quickly in a way that they would never if they moved to Switzerland or France.

Being able to brain-drain the entire world and then smartly arm those people with unlimited capital to build their companies and dreams is the "unfair" American advantage. It isn't unethical, it's just not something European society supports. That, and the 30-year mortgage.

[Pet_Ant]

1) It's subsidised through cheap labor. The start-up whose founder live and work in buildings built by undocumented labor. Eat food grown by that labor, and served from food trucks run by undocumented labor. It's innovation subsidised by misery.

2) the brain-drain is unethical because it takes subsidised education of individuals without returning anything in return. Emmigrants should get a bill of the cost of their upbringing. It's really free-loading, especially for a country with such a poor public education system as the US.