I think that it has to be?

I like Rust well enough, but thinking about memory management is a reasonably large effort that I generally don't have to make in most languages. Rust, in not having a GC, strictly adds to that load compared to most languages out there. The exceptions are languages like C, C++, and assembler, and there I agree that Rust seems to make things a fair bit easier.

(Though, disclaimer, I never got around to learning modern C++, which I gather is a huge improvement over the style of C++ I do know.)

I'd be willing to accept, though, that Rust's lack of full-blown OO features, and its strict controls on mutation, often makes things easier in large shared codebases. Perhaps not letting people do some particularly wild things that I'm used to seeing in Java and C# at my day job. I'm not in a position to have a worthwhile opinion on that claim, though.

Imagine if someone said "I've used Python and Scala and Python is way easier since I don't have to deal with a type system". That's where people are coming from.

The borrow checker isn't a hindrance, it's an aid. Rust gives me syntax to describe lifetimes and a tool to check that syntax.

Yes, but if you have immutability and a garbage collector (and can afford to use some extra memory overhead), the borrow checker and lifetimes aren't really all that necessary to bother with.