As someone who's invested pretty heavily in real estate over the last few years (Seattle) I sometimes ponder if we are all eventually destined to a fate similar

As someone who's invested pretty heavily in real estate over the last few years (Seattle) I sometimes ponder if we are all eventually destined to a fate similar to that of Japan's. It seems to me that the US is only a superpower because we were geographically fortunate to not share contiguous borders with Europe post WWII and we've taken that for granted. Policy makers in the US don't have a long enough horizon to adequately plan for the future; and birthrates are projected to fall—it's hard to say how much, but, eventually, even below replacement rates (?). As of late I have started to question the long-term prospect of indefinite economic growth, and what the implications of challenging the status-quo here are. I would be interested as to what people's perspectives are around the likelihood of advanced nations inevitably sharing a fate similar to Japan's.