Again, I don't disagree about the downside of the American system. And I certainly don't claim to be an expert on this. You seem to have looked into it more than I have.

However, the crux comes in your last two paragraphs. How do the graphs or the numbers show, for example, that the political system determines the culture rather than the other way around? That's a deep question that takes us into philosophy and history. Surely the American culture of individualism/libertarianism came first, which is why the Founders wrote the Constitution they wrote.

But that needn't exclude the other kind of impact since indeed a political system can exacerbate cultural tendencies or reinforce certain values.

I also don't see how you can prove with these kinds of charts that some political systems have no strengths or upsides at all. Of course, if a country doesn't rank well on any question of social standing, that would indeed be a rotten place to live. But it all depends on what's being measured. There are likely to be tradeoffs in any developed country. The US ranks poorly in lots of areas, but it scores higher in others. American culture enables Americans to live with that tradeoff. And when the tradeoff proves too unbalanced, there's a revolution or a call for reform.