There's a very simple explanation: Unlike all the countries you mention, the majority of our US tax dollars goes toward military spending.
The npr graph from the parent post is extremely misleading, and understates the US military budget by roughly a factor of 2. Huge portions of the "non-military" budget entries are covers for military spending.
For example, the npr graph counts $141 billion dollars in VA health care for soldiers, but this isn't listed as part of the military budget. The same games are played with weapons r&d (often budgeted to the Dept. of Energy). Our recent Dept. of Homeland Security contains a great deal of military spending as well.
When one separates the budget by spending intent rather than the politicized department budgets in the above graph it becomes quickly apparent why we don't have good social services -- we're spending it all on military.
The npr graph from the parent post is extremely misleading, and understates the US military budget by roughly a factor of 2. Huge portions of the "non-military" budget entries are covers for military spending.
For example, the npr graph counts $141 billion dollars in VA health care for soldiers, but this isn't listed as part of the military budget. The same games are played with weapons r&d (often budgeted to the Dept. of Energy). Our recent Dept. of Homeland Security contains a great deal of military spending as well.
When one separates the budget by spending intent rather than the politicized department budgets in the above graph it becomes quickly apparent why we don't have good social services -- we're spending it all on military.