American society now has the same kind of "me-me-me" mentality I see in Asia (both developed like Japan or Singapore, or developing like China and India), the Americas (Mexico, Brazil, Colombia), or Eastern Europe (Israel, Ukraine, Russia, Romania, etc).
The only way to succeed in this kind of a society is to be ruthless. Most Americans are NOT. You even see that here on HN, with people complaining about educated Immigrants doing better than educated Americans.
You need to be ruthless in a low trust society, and it's the same now in the US.
People like to blame immigrants or the "other" but at the end of the day, society has specialized.
Either you build the skills to specialize, or you don't and wither away.
This has happened in every country from Japan to Jordan.
The difference is, lots of people in countries like Japan or Jordan still remember how actual poverty feels like, and will work their hardest to prevent something like that.
Most Americans have now grown up with 3 generations of surplus.
It was always the immigrants that did the dirty work and eventually assimilated - look at anti-Italian, anti-Mexican, anti-Japanese, anti-Armenian, anti-Jewish, anti-Slavic .... sentinment in the US.
Their kids eventually assimilate and also lose that ruthlessness.
>Either you build the skills to specialize, or you don't and wither away.
Or you can coast on the wealth built by the hard working generations before you and let the immigrants specialize and work hard while you rent seek them. This goes for people and for countries.
