You have got this right! My take on Europe has always been that 'anyone who was any good...left!'
In fact, most came here to the U.S. We received the biggest risk-takers (those who left there homelands not speaking a word of Engish) and thus the entrepreneurs, and the most ambitious (those willing to work hard) from across Europe by the millions. Europe was then left with a population that was demographically disproportionate; more than the usual number of those 'playing it safe' and staying put - and thus the bureaucrats, and the apathetic, thus the large number who take a permanent place on the sloth-enabling European unemployment rolls.
Reagan80
Listen to writer Burt Prelutsky as he explains why he bought and displayed an American flag, in gratitude to his four grandparents who emigrated to America:
"You see, one day, on my way home, I began to think how lucky I was to have been born in this country. Through no effort of my own, having made no sacrifice, taken no risk, I was the beneficiary of freedom, liberty, education, comfort, security and, yes, even luxury. It was not the first time I had acknowledged this good fortune. The difference this time is that, for some reason, it suddenly occurred to me that my good luck hadn’t just happened. It had been the direct result of these four people pulling up stakes and moving thousands of miles, across an entire continent and the Atlantic Ocean, to a new country, pursuing a dream that their children and their children’s children, of whom I am one, might, just might have better lives."