I have some friends from around the world who come here and say that America in a recession is still not as low as the status quo in a lot of countries.

We don't have much garbage on the sides of the road, very little (if any) door to door panhandling or streetwalker alley corner prostitution, kids rarely if ever beg in public.

While you may face some underhanded government scrutiny in business if your rivals don't like you showing up, it is not quite at the level where you come to your place of business one day finding the place smashed and torched because you did not pay for "protection".

Yes, certain aspects of the American lifestyle are declining, but also look at where people put their money. Young people now may not be as likely to have cars, but then when I was 17, I had a $62 per month car payment, no cell phone, was happy wearing $12 shoes, and worked two jobs to pay for A: my own food, B: my car, and C: my guns and ammo (most of which I had to buy at flea markets with no paperwork then hide from my mother).

Back in the 1970s, when Americans thought of ourselves as "rich" and there was a lot of talk about the highest standard of living in the world, two of the most popular TV shows on the three major networks were The Waltons (about a family during the Great Depression that lived in a mountain compound and ran a subsistence farm/lumber/sawmill operation, and Little House on the Prarie, about a pioneer farm family, with most of the story surrounding the lives of two imaginative sisters, one eventually blinded by sickness that went ill treated due to the family poverty, the other who eventually became a famous writer.

The families were not exactly "torn apart" by poverty, but drawn together. Now look at the other popular series of that time, Falcon Crest, Dynasty and Dallas, and the public was shown how wealth and status were not particularly beneficial when families had less than stellar character.