The point I am making is that the US does a much better job of lifting people out of poverty that a lot of other developed nations. As far as the social services are concerned, that may very well be a cultural issue. The US seems to do better when there is less government involved. With healthcare, cost wasn't very much of a problem until the federal government became more involved in healthcare about 50 years ago. With education, the United States had some of the best public schools in the world up until the 1970s. That is because public education was run mostly by local and state governments. When the federal government became more involved by establishing the department of education, the quality of education dropped quickly. With higher education, it was very affordable until the government got involved in the student loan business. It has been going up ever since. I can't speak for Canada and Europe so much, but in the US, it seems like every time the federal government becomes more involved in something, they screw it up.

Yes America is a developed nation but yes it also suffers from extreme levels of wealth inequality

Russia is also considered as developed countries (G8 countries). I'm pretty sure they also had high crime rate, high poverty is some areas, religious, high income inequality, homicide rate higher than US.

The US certainly has a higher standard of living than Russia. Higher GDP per capita, lower murder rate and Putin is pretty much a dictator.

Okay, since many use GDP here: GDP is also just as unreliable a marker as GINI. The latter only looks at inequality at the two extreme ends, therefore missed several important qualitative characteristics. The first (GDP) either as an aggregate or per capita, does the opposite mistake of obscuring inequality. A high GDP per capita country with a low GINI is a far fairer society than a high GDP per capita with high GINI (because in the second case, GDP per capita is a fictional number that does not represent the experience of the average citizen).

Example 1: A state with low GDP, low GINI: Consistently poor population on average, but also no major presence of elites / oligarchs. Not many states fall into this category.

Example 2: low GDP / high GINI: Many Africa states have this where GDP is low as inequality dominates. Indicates a very poor population with a number of ultra rich individuals.

Example 3: High GDP / low GINI: Most Scandinavian countries are here: Wealth abound and distributed fairly. Also probably indicates a state where there is very high taxation on the rich (also Scandinavian countries).

Example 4: High GDP / high GINI: China is the most typical example. The high GDP here is not actually indicative of the average citizen who is likely to be very poor. Most money is concentrated into few hands, and while the country as a whole is seemingly prosperous, the average citizen earns less than the stated GDP per capita.

Yea, I have never understood this hypocritical thinking by so many.

"All politicians are corrupt...Hey, I got a great idea! We should let them be in charge of every aspect of our lives! What could go wrong?"

Or one of my favorites, "Man, that law just screwed up something that wasn't really broken to begin with. Hey, government, pass another law to try to fix the first one. Oh, it just made matters worse? That's OK. Just keep passing them til you get it right."

Wait, you just said how both of those aren't very good markers, but then use them to try to make a point?

Everything is made into a competition here. Maybe we should make a thread comparing our dick sizes and see who wins that one? Let's compare the average reported size claimed by VGC users versus the average size as documented by a respected source.

My point: VGC users exaggerate their dick sizes?

Sorry, it's late.. :(

It was a developed nation.

But it is devolving into some kind of third world state.

The school system is failing (something that will bring a lot of pain to future generations) (It's also something you can see by just looking at the current president. If public schools were functional, he would never have been voted into office)
Access to healthcare is determined by your personal economy (just like in the third world)
And now it's entering a trade war that's going to leave it behind the rest of the world economically.

Under the administration of Trump it is difficult to argue against. He is letting the US fall off the stage.