I disagree everything is declining. A lot of things are working really well these days, but there are places worth improving. My thoughts here somewhat shaped by living abroad a few years and learning to better appreciate US along with reading favorite blogs like Noahpinion
It’s hard to forget a few factors involving news in the USA. It’s the 3rd largest country and has substantially more free press than the first 2 populated countries (one of which has no free press and the other is 150 out of 180 on the freedom scale). Also police generally acknowledging things happen. So the big picture stories here tend to blow up around the entire world but they almost never ever directly affect us. Other countries seem like Utopia or something just due to not appearing in the news as often due to their smaller populations. I believe this is a large part of what fuels “life in USA is on the decline!” topic.
Regarding the police: I reported my car stolen about 2 weeks back. The police found it and got it back to me in an hour after I called. Yeah, the tech helped them, but I wouldn’t call that not giving a shit. Their help in my time of need helped me appreciate their response times.
Economically, North America is still fairly abundant in resources. Canada and US jointly get to enjoy these due to free trade policies. And much of the confident has policies preventing resources from just being stripped off of or out of the earth as quickly as possible. We could be entirely fuel independent if we had more refineries. This is an economic advantage few parts of the world can enjoy.
Religiously, becoming a secular county has been positive for all kinds of equality. I say this as somebody raised in church!
Guns: the bipartisan gun safety policies coming out the past two years are exciting. I see news about red flag laws being applied (even in like Florida?). It required liberals to dial down the “take all the guns” and it required conservative to dial down the “guns at any cost”. I hope both parties can make more progress on these lines and 10-20 years down the road we can look back and say things have really improved
Sure, there are situations that need some work:
* water availability. Not looking so great in the west! But we can afford to build enough desalination to get California off the Colorado river if we wanted to. Everybody is so scared to build these plants we can’t really access economies of scale for them.
* street people - homelessness is a poor word for what’s going on in cities. People down on their luck who lose their homes can get back on their feet many times. The people who are occupying the streets of cities are the ones who have traditionally been housed in asylums, which closed to due public frustrations of care quality. Society should have worked on making those more ethical and improved patient care instead of removing them. Newsom’s forced care law might actually lead to asylums coming back?
* birth rates - maybe one day the GOP will wake up and realize their electorate is declining due to this and decide to make a 180 about government funded childcare support. Tax credits aren’t enough anymore.
* housing - it seems to me like a lot of people live alone which pushes up rents. Roommate tax credits seem worth exploring.