Langel, you are looking up the ITTF rankings for the USA male players. That is how Americans would say "Barking up the wrong tree".
Not so many American males get to compete in ITTF events and actually win to get ranking points. A player pretty much has to pay his or her way to an ITTF tourney, USA national players get sent to a scant few ITTF tourneys. There simply isn't money in the budget pot to support it a lot.
The USATT rating points system works pretty much for its intended purpose - to classify players as best can be done for ranking purposes and to have other players have an "Idea" what a player's skill is like by looking at the rating.
The problems are that over time, for some reasons already discussed, there is downward point pressure making over time the same skilled player have less ratings points 1-3 years down the line. This is a mission creep kind of thing.
The ratings system still pretty much works, but you got to have an understanding over time relative to times and also relative for regions what a certain rating level means.
In the US Nationals tourney just completed a week or two ago, K. Jha and opponent were rated pretty close to each other Jha at 2697 and Feng at 2662. However, at that level, 30 points is still a big difference, way more than it is at 1700 USATT level.
