| > I would highly encourage you to reassess where you are getting your information about the world if you genuinely believe this. I have traveled extensively throughout the world and my assessment was based on my personal experience. But... > If you look at the data, almost any data which compares the US to other countries, you’ll see that the US is at or near the top. Not so. The U.S. is a peer to Serbia in infant mortality [1]. It is behind India and Lithuania in terms political freedom and civil liberties (as rated by freedomhouse [2] [3]) and a peer to Chile in terms of economic freedom [4] and government corruption [5]. The U.S. ranks 38th in math and 24th in science education. And an anecdotal but IMHO significant data point: I have lived in the U.S. for fifty years. I have NEVER had a piece of U.S. mail go missing, until this year, when I have had THREE checks vanish into the cosmic void. (The fact that paper checks are even still a thing here is a testament to how far behind we have fallen.) --- [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/infant-mo... [2] https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores?sort... [3] https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores?sort... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_economic_... [5] https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/corruption-rank [6] https://parentology.com/stem-education-statistics-2019-how-t... |
Rankings that use a metric complicated enough to give the compiler heavy discretion on the order (like your 2-5) are compiled by people promoting certain ideals. Major powers rarely score at the top, regardless of whether they "deserve" to, because that defeats the political purpose--if you're trying to promote X, then telling the world's most powerful country that they're also the most X has little benefit, just encouragement for them to get complacent and backslide.
In objective rankings, the USA's health care system is indefensible, unless you're both wealthy and in genuine need of unusually high-tech care; but that infant mortality is still just 1.3x Canada's. The American education system seems to be well above average; per your link the USA ranked 8/48 and 11/48 for science and math respectively, out of 48 countries that themselves are mostly well above the global average.
It's reasonable to hold the USA to a higher standard than other countries, given its outsize influence and resources. Indeed, the impulse among both Americans and others to criticize America's real faults, sometimes in hyperbolic terms, is probably one of the major forces pushing to correct them. Anyone who net believes the American standard of living--especially for rich Americans, but for poor Americans too--isn't spectacularly above the global average is dangerously mistaken, though.