I haven't found this to be blanket true. My dealings with the Danish government are a dream of transparency and efficiency compared to my experiences interacting with large American corporations. I had to go through more bureaucratic nonsense (including urine testing!) to get hired for a shitty summer job in high school, than anything I've had to do for the Danish government, and that even includes getting a visa.
All of those measures are not even close to homogeneous across the US, so any talk of the the "average person on the street" is meaningless, statistically.
You really have to segment the US in order to get an accurate picture for what it's like for a particular person (or kind of person, such as a typical HNer) to live here.
Everyone in America is impacted by the choice to put corporate profits ahead of public spending.
Corporate Profit is now the most important thing, and as those corporations expand globally and use their might and influence, we see more and more countries reduce public spending, cut taxes and make it easier for big business to flourish at the expense of the average citizen.
IMO this is a horrible thing for citizens of developed countries, and I genuinely hope countries can find a way to buck this trend and not focus purely on corporate profits. I don't know if that's possible when The United States has the best advertising agency in the world (Hollywood).
I think it likely happiness indexes will fall as more countries tend towards the US model, unfortunately.