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.