I've never understood why people say things like this.
The USA is supposed to be a developed country, and supposed to be at or near the very best.
What do you have to gain by comparing it to undeveloped countries that are clearly not in the same league?
For example, you just said: Sure, my pro baseball team finishes bottom of the ladder every year, but it's clearly better than all the highschool teams out there. - I sure as hell hope so!
Compare the USA to all the developed countries, aspire for better, and work towards improvement.
You'd be surprised. Most western countries, for example, are far better.
And for all countries in general, including the most backwards ones, the overall system is quite better for their citizens, in the sense that the US is (by a large margin) the king of incarcerations. 4% of the world's population, but 25% of the world's inmates.
Then there's those medieval ideas like the "death penalty" which almost all the modern world has abandoned.
I realized a massive high school being built in my (then) home town had an architecture based on prison design. Not only were prisons a political innovation, but they had a lot to do with how architecture developed.