[bachmeier]

> America definitely has this puritan streak of trying to be the best person you can be - or the purest you can be. Work harder, drink less, exercise more, etc.

That might describe some parts of America, but it's definitely not universal. The German immigrants that formed the generation before me were drinking more and exercising less. They were also farmers, so they didn't need to exercise.

I would argue that it's the heavy influence of immigrants from all over the world that caused the self-help obsession. Those who came here weren't a random sample from their home countries. Immigration was itself a form of self-help.

[Baeocystin]

It's been known for a long time that immigrants in the US perform better across most every metric than the native population.

Sometimes this is seen by policy-makers as indicative of a problem with the native population. Sometimes this is cast as immigrants taking over.

The reality is rather straightforward, imo. The type of person willing and able to uproot themselves from their parent culture and set their sails for new opportunity is a huge selection event, in and of itself. It's no wonder that the most driven percentage of humanity turns out to be the most successful.

(This is also why I think the US would only benefit from much less restrictive immigration policy, but that is a discussion for another thread.)

[jbrun]

Yeah, probably true. My background is Jewish European and there is an obvious streak of self-improvement in that culture (or at least, there used to be....)