Considering the not-so-well status of his family I think Michał like many from our country swallowed this "American dream" whole -- hook, line and sinker. These people are willing to defend it even if they are burned by it -- the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" syndrome.
Yes, being brought up on the east side of Warsaw in a crime-ridden neighborhood with a family struggling from paycheck to paycheck can easily make a man jaded and grim. Here he is right.
But you, jwr, are right, he's grossly exaggerating. Poland has moved really far and really fast over last 11 years -- thanks to all the EU money. I fear the times the money would run out.
Still, it's a bit foolish (no offence intended) to even attempt praising it over Western Europe. Poland is still at the beginning on the road to a real democratic, prosperous country. Most of all we need to finally shed this conservative clot that's holding us back and sometimes even making us and object of ridicule in Europe.
To come back to the original topic, for me personally it has been really worrying for years that we look towards US with these dreamy, hungry eyes. Ever since the big transformation of the 90's we blindly copy and import wholesome their ideas never asking if we should.
We should really look more to our Western European friends or even more successful countries from our "bloc" (Slovenia, Czech Republic). There's still much to be done to improve our workers' rights, health care, social security, etc.
It's a false dichotomy between the US and Poland as we're basically gravitating to their end with the EU actually being on the opposite one.