America is harder to live in the poorer you are, and it’s on a steeper scale than in other industrialized nations because there are fewer and less robust social services, especially health and child care, and declines in union membership have paired with a rapid increase in wealth inequality that is forcing the shrinking middle class downward and stomping on the poor even harder.

You can live a comfortable life (for now…) if you are firmly middle class and up. Your higher salary than your counterparts in Europe is eaten away at by higher costs, and you deal with risks that they don’t in the form of transportation being car dominated (more accidents and less walking exercise) easy access to guns (the most dangerous being the one in your own home, to you) and less strict food safety laws. Compared to those in Eastern Europe, however, your likelihood of suffering from a foreign attack is drastically lower, not that it was ever very high to begin with.

One thing that Americans take pride in (and rightly, mind you) and full advantage of is our First Amendment right to not have our speech be curtailed, so a large amount of the bitching about America, and especially in English, is Americans bitching about America(ns). So there’s a cultural element to it that may or may not exceed the truth.