I think you'd get a better reaction if you dropped the straw men and the persecution complex. The thing is – you are in some ways correct! The US has a large w

I think you'd get a better reaction if you dropped the straw men and the persecution complex. The thing is – you are in some ways correct! The US has a large welfare and social security system. It's hard to compare directly, but it's probably reasonable to say that US social spending is in the same ballpark as many European countries. The point about an "exceptionally progressive taxation system" is of course nonsense, and the idea that the "popular narrative" claims the US has "no welfare state, no social safety net" is misleading. In reality, the popular argument is that these services is the US are exceptionally broken. There is no effective "social safety net" if that system fails to capture people so often. It's like US healthcare expenditure – spending that's fare above that of many countries with efficient, effective, and universal systems, but with a huge chunk of the population unable to access it. However, even an article like this—which tries to choose a comparison to make its ideological point as forcefully is possible—only manages to claim that income inequality has shrunk to a relatively limited extent, if you count all forms of government spending as income! Not a ringing endorsement. The US is so weird with this stuff. Massive government spending programs with a culture that wants to deny it, resulting in this messed-up system with massive spending and rubbish outcomes.