I started with Elements and yes that is a good option. I started on that one many moons ago. Adobe is the dominant company - way ahead of all others, the "Kleenex" brand of photo editors if you will. Elements is there simplified version.
There are several others, Corel Paintshop Pro is one I use most of the time - about the same price as Elements.
You asked about "ease of use" they will all require some degree of effort to learn a new skill.
Guess it depends on what you want to do, if it is just to crop and apply some very simple adjustments Nikon's NX does the job. For that matter the photo program that comes with Windows allows limited editing as does Googles Photo program. What level of editing did you have in mind?