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.)
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[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...