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Realistically I suspect it has everything to do with the contrast, or with where you're coming from?
I've never understood the magic hold that America seems to have over the minds of many, but then, I'm from Australia. Every time I've visited America, my reaction has been that it's a perfectly nice place and the people are friendly if exhausting, but the whole place is just... slightly dirtier than Australia. Everything is just a little bit poorer, or a little bit more garish, or a little bit, well, scuzzier.
But then, both Australia and Finland have a higher HDI than America. Of course it isn't going to have that magic for us. While there's immense regional variation within America and while personal taste counts for a whole lot, it's hard to point to objective metrics where these countries do worse than America.
There are bits and pieces of culture you can argue - there are things about America I envy! - but as a complete package, it is pretty clearly a close judgement call that's going to be a matter of taste.
HDI is a meaningless number. It combines the America I live in with the part of America that lives in third world squalor and violence. I don't live there, and they barely affect me. The meaningful comparison is the America a mottizen lives in, compared to the Australia a mottizen lives in.
Those two places are almost identical. Australia may be the only country more culturally egalitarian than America. The Australian cultural values of loyalty and fairness may be my favorite memeplex on earth, and I think the culture encourages a sense of decency, unpretentiousness, and integrity that is sadly missing from my country. We are, as you say, a bit garish and a bit shallow and flighty besides.
There's only one problem with Australia, and that's the tall poppy syndrome. For the median Australian, that's not a problem. For the dreamers, it is.
If you want to be average, Australia is unquestionably the better place.
If you want to be a surgeon, the two are equal. If you want to be a good surgeon, America may have more opportunities. If you want to be the absolute best surgeon on the planet in your subspecialty, you're moving to America. Substitute nearly anything you want for surgeon, from actor to programmer, and you'll get the same result.
When little Australian kids dream of being astronauts, they know they only way they'll ever do so is to train in America to fly on an American spaceship, launched from America.
Most Australians, of course, will never become astronauts. Most Australians (and perhaps most Americans!) would be happier in Australia. But if you want to dream, your dreams will be in America and of America.
It’s simply a myth that a big chunk of the population living in squalor and violence “doesn’t affect you”. Yes, living in a nice New England suburb with a Danish-level homicide rate is different to living in St Louis, but you’re kidding if you don’t think St Louis being the same country as you doesn’t have a big impact. Redistributive taxes, internal migration, government policy around everything from education to healthcare, college admissions, entertainment and media, all of these things are impacted by the sim of the population, which includes the ‘third world’ parts.
A wealthy Parisian, too, can say that what happens in the squalor of the banlieues “doesn’t affect him”. It still does, and it affects him more each year.
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I'm not sure how much any of that is attributable to culture? Yes, if you want to be world-class in something you probably need to move to America, but that's because America has a much larger population and a lot more of the world's wealth flows through America. It's just location. It's no different to the way that, for instance, talented and ambitious New Zealanders tend to move to Australia - not because Australian culture is better than (or even very different from) New Zealander culture, but just because it's bigger. There are more people, more jobs, more network effects.
I think it's probably true that a particular image of or sense of ambition is more prized in American culture - though I also experience this in part as Americans tending to come off as selfish or arrogant more frequently than Australians. One of the most shocking things I noticed in America was the near-total absence of self-deprecation. If an Australian says "I'm the best!", there will always be some sort of self-deprecating smile afterwards, or gentle laughter at one's self, or something to undercut it. You can't let that judgement actually stand, and if you try to let it stand, you're an arse and you deserve everything you're going to get. An American, however, will say "I'm the best!" and genuinely mean it. No matter how absurd or obviously false it is - they tend to get wrapped up in their illusions more.
Does that make them more successful? I doubt it. The British self-deprecate in the same way Australians do, in contrast to that weird brand of earnest selfishness the Americans have, and yet it didn't stop the British building the largest empire in history and creating the international framework that the Americans later inherited. There is still a large and visible cultural gap between Empire/Commonwealth Anglos and American Anglos, but framing that in terms of the Americans just being better at achieving things seems wrong to me.
And on the purely subjective level - yes, America has massive diversity, and you can't treat it all the same. I understand. But it's also, well, true, that every American city I've been to, even the famous centres of commerce and technology and progress, has struck me as, well, a bit nastier than its Australian equivalent. It's possible that it is just an artifact of where I've been. I'm told that the Midwest is actually much nicer than the big coastal cities I've visited, and maybe that's true.
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