Immigrants as a group tend to be more entrepreneurial than the populations they leave behind, so sure, the newly-arrived Latins in the US are the best of their lot (it sure takes balls to strike out like they do). That said, the welfare state has eliminated the make-or-break dynamic of the old US, so simply crossing the border counts for a lot more than it used to — it used to be that you had to work hard when you arrived to have it much better than back home.

Also, current immigration law’s preference for family ties over skills is absolutely horrible.

You mention regression to the mean - this is also bad, especially considering that the genetics from older waves of highly successful immigrants are now several generations old.

Genetics aside, the cultural endowment I wrote about is still significant. The US is the only place in the world with a grass-roots (though now partly co-opted) movement for a return to the free market.

There are still a few people who remember the spirit of the old US, the idea. The US was not really about a place, it was an idea about a government that respected individual rights, including the fundamental right of property.

The rights of property, privacy, self-defense and in many ways the right of speach are all but gone. While not as restricted as under a few even more totalitarian states, they are nothing to write home about in the US anymore, and they get further encroached upon every year.

I do not know about genetic endowment… do you think Mexican immigration has a genetic aptitude for entrepreneurship? I do not know about Indian and Asian entrepreneurship but it would seen that the Indian and Asian entrepreneurial immigrants are 2-3 sigma outliers of their own bell curve, but their next generation may suffer a regression to the mean.

A collapse to me means the breakdown of the government and all of its shackles. There is cause for hope there, especially in the possibilty of secession for more libertarian regions, but a power vaccum can also bring even worse fascism that present today.

If you are tough and crafty, it will be a good place to operate for a long time to come, like much of corrupt Asia and Latin America, but richer.

a.) there is little sentiment left supporting additional massive stimulus spending
b.) the politicians seem to think they have already succeeded in saving the system, and that job growth will be coming any day now.

I think we’re seeing similar hints from the Federal Reserve in the discount rate hike and the bias toward tightening from some of the board members.

The government and the Fed have no idea of the massive deflationary forces that confront it, and thus no idea of what a huge level of money printing and stimulus would be needed to stop them. If they really wanted to stop deflation they’re already way behind the curve.

Still, it is the best of the lot, so where else ?

For me, the best chance is still in the US, but after the collapse…

Nowhere is anywhere near good as the old US, even the already socialist and corporatist US of a few decades ago. There is no place left to run. The US was that place.