> The reason people want to move to the US is the US's culture.
No dude, it's the money.
I have at least a dozen friends who are on H1Bs working in SV for different large software companies. They're either going there because that's where the best-paying jobs are or they're staying for just a couple of years to save some money.
If you were to beam all the Americans into space and them beam all the Mexicans into their place, they wouldn't magically achieve US levels of income just because of their physical location.
The culture doesn't enable the money. Historical reasons going far beyond that explain it very well, among them: the size of the internal American market, the amount and ease of investing capital within the US, leverage of the US government's global projection of power by its industries, ease of immigration (prior to this past decade's immense increase in difficulty for migrating legally for skilled migrants), etc etc.
It's true that just swapping people places right now would not substitute anything. But you can bet that the immense natural resources, available land and influx of immigrants through the 20th century have impacts as much, if not more, important than whatever contemporary cultural trends exist.
Natural resources don't guarantee success; conversely, lack of natural resources does not guarantee doom. Russia and Brazil on the one hand, and Japan and Britain on the other hand, tiny island nations, relatively speaking.
Culture has a lot to do with it. Brazil had the immigrants (and still does have LatAm immigrants). On the other hand Japan has been very averse to immigration.
No dude, it's the money.
I have at least a dozen friends who are on H1Bs working in SV for different large software companies. They're either going there because that's where the best-paying jobs are or they're staying for just a couple of years to save some money.