I constantly have to remind myself that people who browse HN learn strongly libertarian and are mostly well-off white males. Otherwise, saying that the US quality of life exceeds that of the UK, Germany or Switzerland is just blatantly false.
Before that, it was Arab World, before that Ancient Rome, before than Ancient Greece.
Today that status belongs to America. If you want to produce anything which would make impact in the world, the most fertile ground for that is America. Even if a talent rises up say in Germany, the network effect of America attracts those individual to come to America. Maybe there is a smarter Elon Musk in South Africa, but the main point is that Elon Musk never came to America, this Elon Musk did.
I am not saying that somehow by being in America you automatically will be more likely to produce great thinking. Rather its more like being among more challenging and talented peers will bring your exposure and contribution to another level, something which isn't possible currently (even with the Internet) to be in Germany or Switzerland.
I'd accept such a claim for web scale technology and some other fields but for all of the above definitely not so much.
If we use Nobel prizes as a metric, then US beats other countries by a wide margin in everything except Literature. (Surprisingly Germany and UK, the old world leaders still come close second, but then we ARE considering nobel prizes awarded between 1901-2014). In terms of per capita, US is ranked 19th, and UK, the only large country in terms of population ranks higher.
It's true that USA is world's third largest populous country, so in terms of absolute numbers it beats other nations hands down, but there are two things which need to be considered. If EU was a single nation with single language and no immigration restrictions, then you will get the same benefit of being in EU(400+ Nobel prizes) as much as you'd get of being in America(350+ nobel prizes), that is, more integrated intellectual networks. But EU is fragmented into different nations, and despite of being an open border, the linguistic and cultural disparities do fragment the number of people you could have been connected to.
Second point is, almost all major figures in art and literature in America have lived in NYC at some point or the other. This usually means that if you lived in NYC, there are future nobel laureates living here with whom you might be interacting. So I think that not only you need to be in America in order to access the biggest network effect of anything, you need to be in one of the larger cities like NYC or SF.
2. Where you see fragmentation, we see diversity and a richer ecosystem. Where you see cultural disparities, we see a complex interplay of different cultures over millennia. Homogeneous populations are actually at a disadvantage because they don't have that kind of activity.
Switzerland: 3
Germany: 6
US: 8
UK: 14