Alright noob (coming from someone who isn't that great himself) listen up!
At the lowest level of play, USF is difficult to play. Why? Because with the USF, you're always attacking, have to apply constant pressure, and your units are fragile. For example: 2 jacksons beat a panther, but a noob will lose one of those jacksons in the first engagement, the panther slips away wounded, then comes back and solos the 2nd jackson.
Because it's harder for a noob to get potential out of his faction for USF than axis factions, you could say that USF is UP at the noob level.
But no one balances the fucking game for noobs. For 1v1, at the pro level, the factions are all close to equal*
Really though, think about what you're saying, that Relic simply instituted these features so that opponents could make a "comeback", or simply to restrain the size and strength of an army.
Excuse me for being insightful but those are two interconnected ideas.
I never understood the idea behind nerfing OKW ammo and fuel but leaving manpower normal. This was kind of the opposite of OKW's historical problems post DDAY. Sure the economy was struggling with material shortages but economy wasn't the problem. Manpower was. There were plenty of tanks but not enough good tankers. Arracourt is a good example of this where 75mm shermans and hellcats rekt panthers in CQB tank combat. In the infantry units, squads were reduced in size and given higher compliments of automatic weapons to make up for the firepower shortages. It wasn't until after the Battle of the Bulge that OKW started running into severe shortages of weapons, in part due to the mass quantities lost in the battle.
So, why the hell is manpower the smallest OKW problem and why isn't it the nerfed resource, if any?