This is true, but understated in a crucial manner. By global standards, the greatest enduring strength of the US economy has been its ability to recover from downturns. More than anything else, that has pulled it ahead of competitors time and time again. When the early '80s financial crisis hit Japan with a lost decade, Volcker (PBUH) pulled the US out of the doldrums and back into a growth phase within three years. When the Asian financial crisis hit at the same time as the dotcom bust, the US recovered more efficiently than the erstwhile "Asian tigers". When the 2007 financial crisis went worldwide, aggressive measures by the Fed and a willingness to risk inflation restored growth faster than in Europe. When COVID hit, economies around the world dived, but even with political divisions running at their highest since 1876, the US again restored growth more quickly than almost anywhere else — now growing at competitive rates with China.
There are a variety of theories about this, but one iniquitous postulate I've heard is that the US makes it a lot easier for companies to do layoffs — not a happy proposition for those directly affected, but what could be worse for an economy than having thousands of people working on something that just isn't working? Many worker protections — for health, safety and family — have become more popular with economists recently, but when the subject of being able to fire people comes up, there is still a sort of grim understanding transmitted in whispers: paying someone who isn't making progress makes us all worse off in the long run.
Of course we can also trace the roots of some profound social malaise — including the collapse of whole cities — to the cutthroat nature of employment in America; there is no free lunch.