Can you scope that question a little more tightly? (frex, who is "we"?) I can tell you that I live in a country with a population well under 10% of the US', an

Can you scope that question a little more tightly? (frex, who is "we"?) I can tell you that I live in a country with a population well under 10% of the US', and memories of WWII giving us pretensions towards autarky, yet we still do cutting edge research, and most tourists consider the local standard of living reasonably high. (in particular, we do not rely upon —as in my memories of the US last century— having pools of day labourers standing around waiting at "the wall" to be at your beck and call for all your low-productivity economic needs)