Question
Why is the United States of America so much wealthier than other countries?
Answer
I am afraid I find most of the answers rather self-congratulatory and based on an amazingly limited context. The numbers in my answer below are rhetorical and metaphoric, not literal.
We're talking about the wealth differential, both total and per capita I assume, adjusted for the effects of illusory wealth based on debt that we might end up defaulting on.
About 20% is the effect of starting a country on a clean-slate, large and resource-rich continent, thanks to a partly accidental, partly deliberate ethnic cleansing of previous inhabitants. Americans who only know their own history simply have no appreciation for how big an advantage this was. America is practically a "do-over" for all of humanity. All the benefits of humanity's accumulated knowledge and mistakes could be applied without paying the costs of living with the consequences in your own backyard. Early Americans recognized this in their own terms, calling America a new Promised Land, implicitly acknowledging the role of good fortune (which they later turned into the abusive idea of manifest destiny). Modern Americans mostly conveniently forget this.
About 20% is timing. Many people who understand the clean slate effect forget the timing: 1776 was a pretty good time to start a country. You could use all the lessons in state formation from Europe and Asia. If American independence had played out before the English Civil War (1642 - 1651) we might have seen very different outcomes. The timing was also right in being just 20 years before the start of the Industrial Revolution. Europe did the work of figuring out the main ideas during the enlightenment. Britain served as the laboratory to work out the kinks in the Industrial Revolution. A clean slate was needed to scale the operation. Look around, presto, you've got one a few thousand miles to the west, wiped squeaky clean by guns, germs and steel.
About 20% is probably attributable to the nearly-free wealth-creation by slavery. If you count the social costs that we are still seeing, including sky-high incarceration of black males (no other country has such disproportionate representation of an underprivileged minority in prison), those chickens have not yet come home to roost. And don't forget some "minor" externalities in West Africa, like the history of turmoil in Liberia, which counts as a free lunch in America. Today, about 85% of Liberia is under the international poverty line.
About 20% is inheriting the right piece of European culture, as in "not screwing up the advantages of clean slate/slavery the way Central and South America did". This includes things like the Protestant ethic, Anglo-Saxon individualism, etc. Note that this is not the "unique" part of American culture, but the inherited part.
Another 10% was just plain physical distance from the old world. Americans like to brag that they saved Europe twice in the twentieth century. Well, the wars were the long-term consequence of the dynamics of which America only saw the upside. And America could participate, but keep the home base secure in the distance. The Marshall Plan may have been generous, but not having to deal with the consequences of the war at home (bombed out cities etc.) was more of an advantage than people realize. Not only did WW II help America break out of the depression, its aftermath gave it 2-3 decades to be the first to market with all the technologies the war created, while the rest of the world was rebuilding. Vietnam's neighbors in Southeast Asia bore a lot of the direct costs of America's war there. Pakistan and Indian Kashmir have paid most of the costs of America's war in Afghanistan with the Soviets. Besides all its major wars (except the Civil War) being offshore wars, the distance effect has had plenty of other benefits.
The last 10%. Alright, I'll grudgingly attribute some of the wealth differential to uniquely American attributes. Between about 1812 to 1920, a truly differentiated idea of "America" was born that had roots in the specifically American culture, innovation and traits. These probably explain the last bit of the edge in wealth. The modern research university and its creations -- things like landing on the moon, the Internet etc. are uniquely American kinds of wealth creation. I doubt the Internet could have happened anywhere else on the planet, and it may still create so much new wealth around the world that America ends up paying back what are in effect its historic debts to the rest of the world.
We're talking about the wealth differential, both total and per capita I assume, adjusted for the effects of illusory wealth based on debt that we might end up defaulting on.
About 20% is the effect of starting a country on a clean-slate, large and resource-rich continent, thanks to a partly accidental, partly deliberate ethnic cleansing of previous inhabitants. Americans who only know their own history simply have no appreciation for how big an advantage this was. America is practically a "do-over" for all of humanity. All the benefits of humanity's accumulated knowledge and mistakes could be applied without paying the costs of living with the consequences in your own backyard. Early Americans recognized this in their own terms, calling America a new Promised Land, implicitly acknowledging the role of good fortune (which they later turned into the abusive idea of manifest destiny). Modern Americans mostly conveniently forget this.
About 20% is timing. Many people who understand the clean slate effect forget the timing: 1776 was a pretty good time to start a country. You could use all the lessons in state formation from Europe and Asia. If American independence had played out before the English Civil War (1642 - 1651) we might have seen very different outcomes. The timing was also right in being just 20 years before the start of the Industrial Revolution. Europe did the work of figuring out the main ideas during the enlightenment. Britain served as the laboratory to work out the kinks in the Industrial Revolution. A clean slate was needed to scale the operation. Look around, presto, you've got one a few thousand miles to the west, wiped squeaky clean by guns, germs and steel.
About 20% is probably attributable to the nearly-free wealth-creation by slavery. If you count the social costs that we are still seeing, including sky-high incarceration of black males (no other country has such disproportionate representation of an underprivileged minority in prison), those chickens have not yet come home to roost. And don't forget some "minor" externalities in West Africa, like the history of turmoil in Liberia, which counts as a free lunch in America. Today, about 85% of Liberia is under the international poverty line.
About 20% is inheriting the right piece of European culture, as in "not screwing up the advantages of clean slate/slavery the way Central and South America did". This includes things like the Protestant ethic, Anglo-Saxon individualism, etc. Note that this is not the "unique" part of American culture, but the inherited part.
Another 10% was just plain physical distance from the old world. Americans like to brag that they saved Europe twice in the twentieth century. Well, the wars were the long-term consequence of the dynamics of which America only saw the upside. And America could participate, but keep the home base secure in the distance. The Marshall Plan may have been generous, but not having to deal with the consequences of the war at home (bombed out cities etc.) was more of an advantage than people realize. Not only did WW II help America break out of the depression, its aftermath gave it 2-3 decades to be the first to market with all the technologies the war created, while the rest of the world was rebuilding. Vietnam's neighbors in Southeast Asia bore a lot of the direct costs of America's war there. Pakistan and Indian Kashmir have paid most of the costs of America's war in Afghanistan with the Soviets. Besides all its major wars (except the Civil War) being offshore wars, the distance effect has had plenty of other benefits.
The last 10%. Alright, I'll grudgingly attribute some of the wealth differential to uniquely American attributes. Between about 1812 to 1920, a truly differentiated idea of "America" was born that had roots in the specifically American culture, innovation and traits. These probably explain the last bit of the edge in wealth. The modern research university and its creations -- things like landing on the moon, the Internet etc. are uniquely American kinds of wealth creation. I doubt the Internet could have happened anywhere else on the planet, and it may still create so much new wealth around the world that America ends up paying back what are in effect its historic debts to the rest of the world.