Before pontificating too much about the doom of Hong Kong, you should observe that compared to the US, HK has:

- Far lower crime and incarceration

- Better education (measured by PISA scores)

- Incomparably better infrastructure (compare beautiful, clean HK subways with laughably pathetic US ones)

- Better health outcomes than the US, 84 year life expectancy vs 79 for the US

- Preserves an incredibly large percentage of its territory for parks (most of HK island is a park)

- No natural resources like the US

- All of this with far far lower taxes than the US (government % of GDP is roughly 14% compared to 38% in US)