Completely based on the lens through which you are viewing it. I myself am American and have seen the quality of life for the average citizen declining in my life time. If I wasn't a part of the new middle class provided by technology, my children would have a worse life than me, combine that with the recidivism displayed by our judiciary recently and some could definitely argue we are declining. But with a user name like that, you already know all that. You might say our gdp and other metrics still show us as a giant on the world stage, I'm sure there are other metrics we can crow about, Yet it feels like little of that is trickling down to our citizens.