> You can get rich in a place called China or in a place called Russia, but you can't criticize the government there AT ALL or you will end up in jail or dead. Or alive and wishing you were dead. Americans, rich and poor, criticize the government all the time, and don't worry about this (much).

While this might've been true in the past, America has become pretty authoritarian recently. Dragnet surveillance, excessive use of police force, one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, people being imprisoned for writing the wrong thing on Facebook (look up the kid in Texas who got in enormous trouble over a joke), police departments taking bribes from i-banks and then beating protesters up etc.

It's a sad thing because America was founded on some really great principles and now you're just throwing it all away while still claiming greatness and refusing to take a hard honest look at yourself. I don't dispute that China and Russia are shitty places. I am disputing your claim that America is the absolute best country in the world. It might've been for waves of immigrants a hundred years ago. I seriously doubt that's still the case. I for one wouldn't want to live there.

> There are western countries (like France) where you can get rich and live (mostly) free, but you'll be constantly hounded by the taxing authorities to support their ever-grander uses for the money you earned.

America is known to have one of the most vicious and unforgiving tax system in the world where people routinely end up getting serious jail time over tax issues that could easily be resolved with a simple conversation. Then there is the issue of global taxation. I work with a number of Americans colleagues and they all complain how unfair it is that they have to keep paying taxes on their income here despite the fact that most of them haven't been home in years and have little intention of returning. One of my colleagues was unable to fly back home for a period of time because he would've been detained and arrested at the airport over a tax misunderstanding he had with the IRS. Couldn't go home until that got cleared up. I can't imagine something like this happening in my country unless I was wanted for murder or something.

Now granted, taxes in Europe are high, but my country doesn't tax me on my global income. Additionally, many countries have great social safety nets and medical treatment is usually completely covered by national health insurance. This causes our taxes to be slightly higher than in the US, but at least I know that if I or people close to me ever go bankrupt, they won't be sentenced to die on the street just because they can't pay their medical bill. I was pretty sick this summer - total expense: 30 euros. My father got a pretty bad case of cancer a few years ago and the treatment was completely free, from the surgery to the hospital expenses. I looked up online how much the same procedure would've cost in the US and the figure was around $100K. Since my dad doesn't have that kind of money and he's retired, he likely would've died if he lived there.

> Like political elites? Like enclaves of power you can't ever penetrate? France has 'em in spades. In America, you can go to a crappy school and still become President. We've had Presidents with only a high-school diploma. Some had no formal education.

Political elites like the Wall Street banksters who gave massive "donations" to the NYPD around the time of Occupy Wall Street protests? Political elites that get into Congress and Senate and then lobby and try to change laws in the favor of their multi-billion dollar businesses? Political elites who instigate wars to keep their sponsors and donators in the oil-military-industrial complex happy for the next campaign just so they could remain in the office? You know what I'm talking about here.

> What you can't find is a nation anywhere in the world that has the same level of disparate groups living in more-or-less peaceful coexistence to keep the country moving forward. We have every kind of person from every kind of place with every crazy religion you can imagine. We have so many choices that people make up their own religions. We have so many mixed nationalities in offspring that we have almost lost the idea of what it means to be from-somewhere-else.

I am not convinced. While there is this illusion of multiculturalism and acceptance in America, the moment you scratch under the surface you realize racism is still alive and well. A lot of my American friends tell me they would never raise their kids near a black neighborhood. A friend of mine from San Francisco was amazed by the fact that there are no homeless people here and that you can walk anywhere at any time of the night without fear of getting mugged/stabbed/shot. Oh and... there are no ghettos here. Most of the population is uniformly upper-middle class and ghettos are nonexistent. You could fall asleep on the street with a wad of cash sticking out of your pocket, wake up in the morning and it would still be there. I have seen it time and again (literally).

Anyway, this is turning into a rather long discussion so I'm going to leave you with this. My point is not to belittle America, but to say that there are plenty of amazing places in the world that would objectively rank much higher in terms of livability. Just look at any list of the most livable cities in the world, most are either in Europe, Oceania and Canada (haven't found such a list for countries):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer_Quality_of_Living_Surve...