"Whether or not you believe that America's conservative Christian principles were central to its development and mastery of the world's geopolitical and economic domains for almost two hundred years, the fact remains that that singular point distinguished it from all other countries."

It is still weekend, so I dare to contribute a few words to this discussion. For those that want to get one angle (there are certainly more) on the foundation of the US that enabled it to make it a fertile soil for economic growth I recommend reading Russel Shorto's "The island at the Center of the World, The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America. It sort of tells how the best of what enabled the Dutch Golden Age (freethinking, tolerance, opportunism, hard work ethics and sound business practices) came to Manhattan and shaped New York and a lot of the rest of the US. There might have been a few Calvinist principles in there, but it was definitively much more than that, because it incorporated also an eagerness for the Enlightment and scientific development that had started of in Europe in the early 17th century.