I think George Carlin had the right idea. He gave up on humanity, America is bought and paid for a long time ago. But his own personal developments for the future, he was very optimistic.
LOL, that's an easy one. American car industry (ex Tesla). It's a zombie industry taken to the extreme by the government support. The Fed is already "printing money" (low interest rates, asset purchases etc) and it benefits the current asset owners. It's one of the issues with the firehose approach that the central banks have taken globally, all the water ends up in a ditch. Instead (to continue the analogy), they need to figure out an approach that will irrigate the whole field. While there seems to be an unhealthy fixation on the MMT-style monetary policy (both from the left and, considering the recent growth of the US debt to GDP, from the right) there are fairly easy, albeit painful fixes.
The context you gave is they're comfortable enough as an asset owner to not innovate. They don't innovate because they're incompetent, not cause they feel safe. The Japanese just made cheaper, more reliable cars overseas while they circled the drain with ideas that didn't work. If you're willing to look the other way, our tech industry is always innovativing.
In the world without government bailouts, they would innovate or die (and in death give their spot to someone more innovative and more efficient). Instead, they trudge along at a leisurely pace because of the implicit government guarantee. I certainly would call this a "comfortable" position to be in. After some number of bailouts, they have no interest and no skill to innovate (lost good executives, lost good engineers a.k.a. they are incompetent, as you said), but the primary reason is that there is no pressure on them to do anything at all, as their survival is all but guaranteed.
Well for what it's worth, Chrysler is no longer around. Yes I know they didn't go bankrupt like they should but it's a decision they made, not with government help. Tesla can put an end to them by convincing the government that a US auto maker can be competitive and innovative - and ones that are not should be allowed to fail. Again I'm going to state the problems we have are cultural more than anything. We don't have any smart people in auto manufacturing because that's an old industry that had geniuses in the past when autos were the greatest gadgets. We still have smart people but they all decided to set their sights on the technology, medical and finance sectors. Which would explain why our tech and medical industry is the best no other country compares. Top 10 billionaires are in tech, that should paint a pretty clear picture of where our innovation went. Nothing is inspiring about auto engineering that attracts young talent to go into the industry. That is a cultural problem.
Well you aren't terribly wrong as far as the number of countries that compare, but a few do. Both Cuba and Costa Rico, for example, compare very closely with the US in "overall health system performance. " "Best" is not quite the right adjective however.