Your best bet to make it in America is to leverage yourself to the hilt. If you succeed, the benefits are privatized and you can sail off into the sunset. If you fail, the losses are eaten by the public.
I couldn't agree more but I would say that it applies not just in America, but in many other countries too. We are seeing it across the western world at the moment, where, because of low central bank interest rates, the virtuous savers are being burnt alive to repair the balance sheets of the wicked banks.