I would imagine if we compared literacy rate, infant mortality rate, life expectancy, median net worth, retirement age, etc, we'd start to find some stark differences between california and a "developing country," though I'm curious what we define as "developing country."

This from my time living on the border of Mexico. Everyone always talked about how the roads on our side were as bad as on Mexico's side as a criticism of texan infrastructure. It's fair, by the way, American infrastructure is a mess. But then the life expectancy was like ten years lower just a couple miles away because of an invisible line (and a fence you could easily hop over with a ladder).

Did you know that life expectancy of Cubans is higher than that of Americans?

It’s most likely not. Doctors in Cuba self-report aggregate statistics and are penalized if they underperform. That tells you all you need to know.

https://www.econlib.org/about-that-cuban-life-expectancy/

Independent studies have shown giant anomalies in other metrics that suggest the favorable metrics are being fudged:

https://mobile.twitter.com/wwwojtekk/status/1233017228792082...

Also a lot of reports that women are pressured to get late term abortions if there are any potential issues observed with the fetus, as this will ensure it doesn’t count as a mortality and not hurt that clinic’s stats.

Careful with that argument though, some of this is based on US propaganda.

How so?

Yes, Hollywood’s vaccination rates are worse than South Sudan’s for example. No developing country would allow kids going unvaccinated. So in a sense California is worse than an average developing nation.

This smells of untrue American exceptionalism. Being a very well traveled person with a spouse from a developing country that we travel to often, I would expect so-called “poorer” countries to do better on nearly all of those metrics you list (the exception being median net worth, unless you correct for cost of living in which case California lags behind on all metrics listed).

This is where the definition of "developing" matters.

It's also worth noting I would never try to compare the USA to other nations typically lumped under the now-vague definition of "first-world." The USA fails at many things.