Quote Originally Posted by Viking View Post
Hm... I think that if we blew up the average European country to American standards, we'd have another USA; all but culturally. Not every great invention happened in the U.S., not every great corporation is based off U.S. soil. The more great inventions and corporations from the same country, the greater the cultural impact and the greater the country compares to the outside world.

I think that the U.S. is a part of the larger "Western World"; to which a large number of countries belong. They all have in common wealth and high living standards. What sets U.S. apart is this:
In the measure of area, the US is only beaten by Canada; and in the measure of population, it wins by a long shot (US' 300 mill vs. Germany's 82, that's the closest) (couple of interesting links here and here)
Just throwing this out there as food for thought... if not for immigration, the U.S. population would be shrinking, just like Japan. For quite awhile now our population growht has been only due to immigration... I think the native born pop was at replacement birthrate for awhile and now is net negative.