For some context, I travel about 20% of the time for work. While the amount of that that is international varies from year to ear, it's usually the majority of said travel. I've been to every continent on the planet, except for Antartica. My opinion here is not formed by lack of exposure.

While I generally try to avoid talking like this on HN, I don't see how to avoid it here:

The author of this piece is a pretentious asshole. Basically every premise he argues is wrong or purely opinion based. Taking a quick look at his Medium post history, this sort of article seems to be his bread and butter of writing subjects, as well.

Some people have to work earlier than 9 or 10am in these countries. (Who does he think is making the trains run and brewing the coffee he drinks? Do they not count as people working?)
Plenty of people in the US don't have to work until 9 or 10. Plenty of people go home at 5 in the US.

US food tastes worse? Man, I've been to London. I've been to Berlin. Two of his examples. I've had a variety of food at each. Were their non-chain cafes and restaurants better than some of the US chains? Sure. Were they better than non-chain cafes and restaurants in the US? No. And the US has EVERYWHERE else beat on food diversity. Not a single city in Europe can hold a candle to the food diversity you get in New York City, Los Angeles, or even Houston. With average quality being similar at non-chains, and the absolute diversity being significantly better in the US compared to anywhere else in the world, the American diner that wants to eat more than Chile's or Applebee's or whatever is in a better position than the average diner in the UK. On the top end, in the Michelin world, I don't think there's a clear winner, but having eaten at a variety of 3 star places in the US and abroad, I can say it's comparable.

You can't watch documentaries on US TV? Completely false. You can't watch Swedish crime noir? Well, probably true. But we're also living in a post-cable world. Things like Netflix and other streaming services open up much more global access to media. And the idea that America is incapable of producing quality and interesting media is insane.

Fashion, art, etc? All somehow objectively worse in America? The suppositions here are just blatantly influenced by personal opinion.

I don't think America is the best at everything in the world. Basically everywhere I've spent time internationally - and some of that is a lot of time! - there are specific things that I think are done better than their American counterpart. But I can also point at things that are done worse. Even things that people laud a country for. People act like Germany has the best beer in the world - yet from an objective standpoint they have been largely at a creative standstill for more than a century. America is clearly at the forefront of craft beer, experimenting more, creating more, doing more and better than anywhere else. And beer might seem like a silly thing to measure anything by, but this whole article kicked off by talking about coffee, so whatever.

He pulls out one statistic that he can prove - life expectancy - and then lists a string of others stating that they are the same. Some of them are so vague as to be meaningless - America is statistically worse at "stress" - what does that mean? Others, you look, and sure enough, America isn't on top. But then you look at something else. Japan is #1 in Life Expectancy - but then press freedom, another one of the things the author is championing as an important measurement, Japan is significantly worse than the US. Or the UK is ranked basically the equivalent. Quality of democracy? The US ranks higher than portions of the EU, lower than some, but the absolute quality is so similar that the first 30 points in ranking are largely indistinguishable.

There are things wrong with America. There are very few things I can say that I think America is best at - though there are some!

But it's a pretty good place to live. And if you look at the balance of all of these important rankings, the US averages out pretty well, because while it isn't topping any of them, it'w consistently good to okay at worst, whereas some other countries that are exemplary of some of what he claims as important have crazy swings on their rankings and are terrible at others. The US ranks higher in happiness than the majority of the EU. It ranks lower in suicide rates. If we're going to look at specific sets of statistics, are these not important too?

If this article was "Why don't Americans understand that they're not the world leaders on every single aspect of life", it would make sense. The US could do with understanding that it is a world leader in very few things. That there is a lot of room for improvement. But the idea that life on average is so much worse in America than it is in the rest of the world is stupid.