Except the American economy is far from being in decline. Healthcare costs may be up, but outcomes are far better than they had been historically. Housing costs

Except the American economy is far from being in decline. Healthcare costs may be up, but outcomes are far better than they had been historically. Housing costs are up, but the size of an American home is 3x larger per person than it was a 60 years ago during what people refer to the peak of American success. The third and only other real big thing whose cost has risen faster than wages is education, where it's the only clear thing whose marginal utility has not really gone up over time in the way other industries have. The problem with much of these things is that we're on a hedonic treadmill that we refuse to get off, even as further expansion of consumerism is destroying our planet. The big problem we have is policy that has promoted a society of which economic growth and even wage gains fails to provide a meaningful improvement in peoples lives. Policy reforms could allow for the majority of people to live in cities in relatively new buildings serviced by public transit all at a lower cost than what we have now given our current system of inflated land values and high automotive transportation costs (i.e. cost of new construction is still relatively affordable when compared to the cost of land and public transit is far cheaper to build and service than automotive infrastructure). Reforms around healthcare that currently restrict the availability of doctors and enable overcharging of medical components would go a long way as well, and lastly, reducing the overhead around university administration while restricting lending would go a long way. tl;dr: We aren't in decline, we just need reforms around housing, healthcare and education as their costs make poor economic sense and are only high due to protectionism and loose lending/insurance laws.