But yes, US poverty is much worse than poverty in other countries. But the flip side is also true - it's generally better being rich in America than in Canada, for example.
We spend $1.3 trillion dollars per year on medicaid, HUD, Food Stamps, and refundable "tax credits" like the earned income credit and child tax credit. That's $32,500 of spending for each of the 40 million Americans who live "in poverty" (before including state-run programs and private charities like churches and food banks), meaning our welfare spending per "poor indvidual is higher than the median income for an EU household.
America's poor are doing just fine.
I'm not sure how many pockets of, say, the Netherlands, look like Gary, Indiana.
My understanding is that the amount of money spent on people in poverty isn't the problem. The problem is that it's spent so inefficiently due to an insistence from certain parts of the electorate on not making things "too easy" for such people. It would probably actually be cheaper to have european-style welfare state, provide housing for the homeless, etc.
See also: the US spending many times what other countries spend on healthcare without actually getting better care.
You must be restricting your thinking to other Western countries, because there are a lot of areas on Earth that look like hell. At least no part of the US is in a constant state of war.