But that European system was built long after the US became independent?

Yeah. The truth is literally the exact opposite of what they said - early puritan settlers left for America specifically because they wanted to be controlling and overbearing and the European states they set off from were less and less welcoming to this kind of thing.

Perhaps. I contend that the main waves of immigration in the 18-20th centuries consisted of opportunists well above average.

There is more to it than the post-war social-democratic systems in Western Europe. Going back centuries there was never a way to up and move to an uncontrolled space and start anew like on the American continent. The entire European continent was under tight control by whatever authority there was whether church or feudal, with restrictions on movement, residence, and labor.

But Americans aren't educated outside of stem

> And it shows

what's the homeless rate in Sweden ? Netherlands? France? I'll leave out Germany since thats a little unfair.

That does not even seem close to being true. I think more accurately it was a reaction against an established aristocratic and monarchial system that wouldn't share power with a new growing colonial upper class. Don't think the English were codling the peasants much back then.

Ok, overbearing before WW2, coddling after, then? :-) Either way the effect was to drive the more ambitious layer out which I think seeded a very skewed culture relative to their origin.