""The U.S. isn't nearly as badly off as a lot of places"

Presumably true - but those places are a lot poorer than the USA. That's no excuse for unfair distribution between the rich and the poor in such places, but even if things were fairly shared out there's less to go round.

The question is how a country that is quite incredibly rich by world standards can manage to have sections of society that are genuinely hard-up, including hard-working people.