This is an article about economics. 9 times out of 10 when you talk to people about the US (especially on the Internet), they want to talk about politics. The

This is an article about economics. 9 times out of 10 when you talk to people about the US (especially on the Internet), they want to talk about politics. The reality is that US politics is utterly fucked up, but the US economy is by far the strongest in the world, it might be the most resilient economy in all of human history, it's continually astounding how it manages to surge forward, overcome obstacles and grow. If you are a US citizen, you have access to this economy in ways that other people don't. So let me throw out a couple examples of this. * Energy. A shale revolution is now well underway in North America, what this translates to is energy independence and some of the cheapest oil on the planet being well within the USA's grasp. But what you will hear Americans talk about if you bring this up is the POLITICAL problem of how we can't regulate emissions and the climate apocalypse is going to cook us all. Look I'm not saying that climate change isn't a serious problem. It is. But keeping with my theme here, it's going to cook India a lot sooner than it cooks the USA. And the ECONOMIC benefits to the US of the shale revolution are enormous. * Home-shoring. The amount of money going into rebuilding domestic manufacturing capacity right now is staggering, we're in the early stages of an enormous boom and a resurgence of stuff that's made in the USA, including very high tech companies like TSMC building factories in the US. Again people want to talk about the POLITICS with China and how messy they are, but ECONOMICALLY, the US is going to benefit from a ton of manufacturing growth over the next decade. * Demographics. In the long run, economically, China's doomed, Japan's doomed, the outlook for much of Europe is bleak because they're not having kids. The US still has kids at a somewhat decent rate and has tons of immigration. So again everyone will want to argue about the POLITICS of illegal immigration, but the fact of the matter is, ECONOMICALLY the US will benefit greatly from its demographics. * Tech, rocket ships, you name it - in virtually all bleeding edge industries, the USA is #1 or #2. Betting that the US economy will win (even just in a simple form like using your spare cash to buy the S&P 500 and hold it, something that billions of people in this world can't easily do), just keeps on being the right call, almost continuously since WW2. I'm not saying the politics aren't totally fucked up. They are. I'm not saying the wealth this economy creates is distributed fairly. It's not. But especially online the discussion is way way way way way skewed towards "look how bad these awful US political problems are" meanwhile the one big advantage you have as an American is you have direct access to this unbelievable economic machine, you are actually a member of it, you can buy and sell things in it (and that is how we get to why the entrepreneurial stuff is important!).