I've lived around 12 years of my life in the US, just on the East and West coasts. You can't really compare California to the rest of the US, for starters. It's like comparing Germany to Siberia. The only areas worth a shit in the US are West Coast (anything west of the Rocky's), East Coast and Texas(/New Mexico, kind of). Back in the day the Great Lakes area was the booming place economically, in a long decline for decades now though. Every other state is just a leech feeding off of the prosperity and technological innovation produced by those areas. Well that's kind of harsh, there's the grain/corn and beef and etc states, that are basically the bread basket of the entire country (and even then Cali and Texas are big players in those areas) but like in any other developped country they are heavily subsidized. Ironically, mostly the states that are extremely conservative and against "welfare" receive the biggest proportion of redistributed Federal funds. But it's mostly in "pork", so it's ok apparently. Don't even get me started on the retarded non-proportional electoral college voters distribution, that heavily disadvantage the most populated, economically active states in favour of the sparsely populated, economically stagnant ones.
For the "freest" country on earth, there's also a ridiculous proportion of the population behind bars, easily comparable to the most oppressive dictatorships in the world. And having gone through american public education system, I can tell you it's basically a baby-sitting/moronic propaganda hybrid. Sure, it's possible to excell, if your parents give a shit, if you're not a naive idiot who takes everything at face value, if you somehow manage to acquire critical thinking skills despite their best efforts to the contrary. Then there are the good private schools, and just like everything good and awesome in the US it is only accessible to a small elite minority. The myth that the US has better social mobility than similarly developped countries is...a myth. It's just engrained in the national conscioussness from an early age with the whole "American Dream" ideology. Just parroting idealistic claptrap doesn't make it real though.
The US is still a great country, and it has many positives, arguably the best higher education centers in the world, extremely well developped R&D sectors for the most cutting edge techs, if not the "freest" then certainly quite a free and liberal society (depending on states, and liberal in it's classical definition, not "democrat" modern sense), etc, etc. It's just not the paragon of all wordly virtues as they try so hard to indoctrinate themselves to believe.
