You still see this today, altho' to a less extent because the risks are much less. Anyone who is working or has moved overseas is likely to be among the most ambitious of their peer group from back home.

As JetSetWilly pointed out, this lack explanatory power. For instance, it does not explain why the USA is a global power whereas Agentina, Brazil and Mexico are far from it. So while this may be necessary, it cannot be sufficient.

There are also other factors like the dominant protestant work ethic in the north (i.e. that working hard is the best way to get close to God, as opposed to focusing on observing dogmatic traditions).

There was also a more established rule of law in the north and there are other differences. So although the potential for similar outcomes was there at the start when the Americas was being founded, they set off on wildly different trajectories.

Edit: I'd recommend reading Civilization by Niall Ferguson.

Also likely to be from a wealthy or otherwise privileged background: wealth offers opportunity and permits risk-taking.

Maybe likely - but not required. It sounds nice, but until you have a source for this, I'm not likely to believe it.

If anything, especially with these types of endeavors, where there's not just money, but life to be lost - I'd presume that the wealthy would have more to lose than someone with nothing.

In other words, with a wealthy person taking risks has a much higher opportunity cost than someone with nothing to lose.

As an aside, you can move abroad to asia & live for a fraction of the cost that you'd require in the states. International travel & work isn't just the domain of the wealthy anymore.

Anyone can move to Asia and have a better quality of life, perhaps, but it sure as hell helps if:

* you can afford regular plane tickets home to family/possibly at short notice,

* you have support back in your home country until you get settled,

* you are wealthy or privileged enough to have access to whatever visa in whichever country you prefer. (e.g. sufficient education and experience to meet the requirements of a skilled work visa)

With respect, if you think intercontinental travel & work isn't primarily the domain of the wealthy, we may have different definitions of wealthy.

This is a problem for some and an opportunity for others. Many of the people capable of kickstarting the economies of Greece and Spain have left for England or Germany...

Whether or not that attitude is actually still pervasive or whether it's a nice story we tell ourselves is debatable, but it was true of the europeans that founded the country.

I actually see much of the early immigration as the reverse: people who wanted to maintain their old stable lives, but for various reasons were finding it difficult to do so in Europe, due to religious or political differences. So, they left to found a new society elsewhere, where they could keep and enforce their traditional community norms. The Puritans were not looking for frontier living or risky fortune, but rather for the opportunity to maintain a very communalist, strict, religious community in keeping with their faith. Early Puritan communities were not some kind of individualist libertarian society, but more like religious communes, with strict rules on what you could do on which days of the week and in what manner. The Hasidim might be the closest modern-day analog: they moved to places like Brooklyn not out of a desire for adventure, but because it was somewhere they could maintain their traditional way of life, which was becoming impossible to do in Eastern Europe. Within the U.S., the "Mormon exodus" westwards from Illinois to Utah had a similar motivation.

Please do not start a race-war, this was a solid reasoning, anyone could have moved to America back then.

Even an established guild member - above a journeyman and by consequence a free-citizen with voting and mobility rights - would have been disqualified since leaving the city for new residents would have meant leaving the guild and losing the (limited) freedom of mobility they need to board a ship. So they had to leave on good legal terms, still owning some land, which meant a large surplus of money.

Now, can you think of a reason beyond religious persecution for someone of such a privileged class and circumstances to just decide to risk sea-travel for himself and his entire family and just pack up and leave?