Comment by TFNA

Drivers licenses haven't been the only form of state ID across the US for well over a generation now, and as national-level ID usable in any state there is the passport (and at less cost there was the passport card).

The physical Social Security card was never meant to be used as ID (the number on it is, de facto, another story).

Obtaining ID cards in other developed countries requires the same payment of application fees and visits to offices, so those steps being required in the US, too, aren't any refutation of the OP's comment.