Are Americans more critical of their own country as compared to other
countries with similar levels of development?
it appears to be extremely common to hear people fault U.S. society in
various ways, like income inequality, lack of universal healthcare and
other welfare benefits, gerrymandering and different kinds of voting
obstruction, high incarceration rates, and many other things; but
actually, that the U.S. is actually an extremely successful and
prosperous country, and, seen from a different angle, it actually
performs excellently in many of the sectors it’s often faulted in.
Not really.
It is true that people complaining about the U.S. are complaining about the things that other countries do better than the U.S.
The U.S. really does has more income inequality that other developed countries.
The U.S. really does lack universal healthcare, pays more in the aggregate for healthcare than other countries, and gets worse results than other countries despite spending more. The U.S. is bad at most aspects of national epidemiology and public health and dealing with opioid overdoses and abuse and prenatal and infant health, although it has done an outstanding job of reducing tobacco use by international standards. And, there are particularly cutting edge medical procedures, like the care provided at its level one trauma centers and DNA therapies, that the U.S. is near the top in providing.
The U.S. really does have a weaker social safety net and is much more expensive to get a higher education in.
The U.S. really does have gerrymandering problems that are found in only a handful of other countries and fails to adhere to many basic principles of democratic electoral systems found in other countries (e.g., no other country has election administration handled predominantly by partisan elected officials). No other democratic country has such extreme deviations from the principle of one man, one vote, as the United States Senate does, and no other democratic country has a national political system so prone to gridlock and government shutdowns.
The U.S. really does have an extremely high incarceration rate compared to anyplace else in the world and has very harsh jail and prison conditions compared to most other developed countries and longer sentences for many comparable crimes. The U.S. also has very high murder rates compared to most other countries (developed and undeveloped alike) that are not actively involved in major wars, although a few countries in Latin American have higher murder rates driven mostly by drug cartels serving U.S. demand for illicit drugs made possible with U.S. sourced firearms.
It is true that critics of the U.S. compared to other developed countries often fail to note that other countries have their own different problems, in areas where the U.S. may be superior to other countries, although this is almost never in the same sectors it is often faulted in, and what constitutes "superior" is often a matter of opinion.
For example, the total tax collections of the U.S., particularly in the areas of corporate taxation, and the taxes paid by upper middle class and high income taxpayers in the U.S., and particularly in states with low state and local taxes, is quite low by international standards, which makes the U.S. an attractive place for a very economically productive person who can earn a high income to live in that respect.
Gasoline and diesel fuel prices, and the cost of owning and operating a motor vehicle generally, in the U.S. is much lower than in most other developed countries.
The U.S. has fairly high rates of home ownership, and particularly high rates of single family home ownership compared to other developed countries.
The U.S. has more robust protections for the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion than many other developed countries. The U.S. also has a high level of religious and cultural diversity compared to most other developed countries. And, while it doesn't have the highest levels of immigration, it welcomes a very large number of immigrants every year and compared to other countries has one of the higher percentages of foreign born people.
For better or for worse, U.S. data privacy regulations are much weaker than in the E.U., resulting in slighter burdens on businesses but less privacy protections. Business ownership information, however, is more private in the U.S. than in all but a handful of tax and asset protection havens.
While the U.S. has had some back sliding in the past few years, parts of the U.S. have easier access to abortion than many other developed countries, and the U.S. is still a leader in LGBT+ rights despite some setbacks in some U.S. states in the last few years.
The U.S. has a high per capita GDP by international standards, even though its national wealth isn't very equally distributed.
While undergraduate higher education in the U.S. is much more expensive than in most developed countries, and while the rigor of its high school level educational programs is lower, on average, the U.S. has very high rates of high school completion and has some of the most rigorous higher educational programs in the world. The U.S. is particularly exceptional in the area of graduate education in the sciences and engineering, where it educates an outsized share of all people in the world with graduate educations of this kind. On the other hand, the U.S. is one of the worst countries in the developed world when it comes to foreign language instruction through its schools and universities.
The U.S. has the most powerful and technologically advanced nuclear arsenal, Air Force, and Navy in the world, and the most advanced satellite intelligence and electronic and signals intelligence resources in the world, albeit at the cost of having the largest annual military and intelligence expenditures in the world by a long shot. Whether this power has been used wisely by the U.S. or not is a matter of opinion.
For better or for worse, the U.S. has a very weak labor movement compared to most European countries, and has historically been far less prone to "street politics" such as general strikes, mass demonstrations, and the like. An individual non-union employee in the U.S. likewise has some of the weakest pro-employee laws in the world, particularly with regard to vacations, sick leave, retirement benefits, and wrongful termination of employment, although U.S. workplace safety is at least par for the course by international standards.
The U.S., by virtue of its sheer size and by the amount of economic regulation that is either done at the national level or is standardized through similar state legal regimes or private sector standardization, has a massive free travel and free trade zone with a common language and currency, and the regulatory burdens of operating an interstate business in the U.S. are far less than those of operating a multinational business in the E.U.
U.S. treatment of racial and ethnic minorities is, rightly, criticized a great deal, but some of the reason that this issue is more visible in the U.S. is not because Americans are more prejudiced that people in other developed countries, but because its society is far less homogeneous than many other developed countries.
There are also domains where the U.S. is neither exceptionally good, nor exceptionally poor.
For example, the U.S. is neither the least corrupt, nor the most corrupt developed country. The U.S. does not have the strongest manufacturing sector, but it also doesn't have the worst. The U.S. is in the middle of the pack when it comes to being environmentally friendly and safe from accidents. The U.S. criminal justice system is neither particularly accurate, nor particularly prone to wrongful convictions compared to other developed countries (although it is much worse when it comes to correcting its mistakes and wrongfully executes more people than any other developed country). The U.S. is neither particularly high, nor particularly low, in the rate at which children are born to non-married parents, by international developed country standards.
In sum, every country has some things that it is better at and some things that it is worse at. Americans making international comparisons that are critical of their own country aren't wrong. And, it is perfectly natural to focus on what is wrong in your own country as you try to fix its flaws. But critics of things that the U.S. does poorly by international standards do indeed often have much less awareness of the things that the U.S does better than other countries, which are easy to take for granted.
I recently came back to the U.S. from Northern Europe and I was
surprised by how fast and easy it was to sign up for Medicaid and
Medicare and get benefits like food stamps. I feel like it’s not that
common to hear people say, “In America, the government gives you free
money for food,” but usually something more like, “there’s no social
safety net in American society,” or the like.
In the U.S., a significant proportion of the population does not have any health insurance or government provided healthcare (about 27 million people as of 2022 according the U.S. Census Bureau via the 2024 World Almanac hard copy), and those who do have private health insurance often pay very high prices for their health insurance (often their single largest monthly bill) and also have to pay large sums of money after insurance for that care. Medicaid is income and asset tested, and Medicare is limited to the elderly, certain disabled people, and a few other small categories of people. No other developed country (and few undeveloped countries) have so many economic barriers to receiving health care for such a large share of its people, and the health care outcomes are still poor. Yet, the U.S. spends 18.8% of its GDP on healthcare ($11,702 per person), while runners up Germany and Canada (among the 50 countries with the largest populations) spend less than $6,000 USD per capita and less than 13% of GDP on healthcare (per the WHO via the same hard copy source). The U.S. also has a falling life expectancy.
Food stamps and other means based aid is also stringier in amount and availability in the U.S. than in most developed countries. And, in areas like unemployment insurance and government housing assistance, the U.S. is much weaker. Social security in the U.S. is also less generous to elderly Americans than most developed country retirement systems.
A decent personal anecdotal experience doesn't negative overall systemwide problems.
