What distinguished the Founding Fathers, in launching a social political vehicle-- a Constitutional federation with a near total lack of dependence on bureaucracy--was a near total dependence on individual responsibility. What they unleashed, was a dynamic, creative power, involving a far higher percentage of the citizens, than could be reasonably expected in any of the major, dependence based, contemporary powers.
America was seen as a federation of "promised lands." Here, no one was guaranteed material success; yet each individual was free to try, free to excel; indeed free to achieve greatly; inherently free to retain the benefts of personal labor & ingenuity; to pass them forward to posterity, without arbitrary ceiling on wealth or social status.
In America, we respected, honored--hoped to emulate--our high achievers. Emulation, not brooding envy, was the order of the day. An obvious result, was that virtually every ethnic group that came here, rapidly achieved at a higher level than their cousins, who remained in ancestral lands. Over and over again, the same experiment; the same result!