Current Situation - Pros & Cons

I don't think we'll see much of a swing back toward traditional American values in the near future, so I don't think that Government's increasing involvement in every aspect of daily life will slow much.  However, this article from American Thinker is not a bad summary of why things are unlikely to get better.  Here's my short list of the key positive & negative drivers:

Positives

• Discredited/abandoned Judeo-Christian framework still has significant influence & intertia
• Economy is relatively free
• Property rights remain relatively secure (though this could drop quickly)
• Demographics are better than rest of developed world (more young people)
• Social & physical capital/resources remain the envy of the rest of the world

Negatives

• Rapidly aging population (public & private retirement promises will be modified)
• Degenerating social capital - the 60's embrace of radical individualism & egalitarianism has virtually destroyed large swaths of local informal social ecosystems that used to encourage individuals to build and maintain a healthy identity & role within those ecosystems (family, church, community).
• Degenerating knowledge capital - the effect that social capital loss has had on education is understood best by teachers in the classroom.  However, the increasing power of public sector unions and increased government funding & regulation of education have also contributed to a growing divide between the educational "haves" (eg, those in (some) AP/IB programs) & "have nots" (eg, those who are just cranked through the school to get money from the state).
• Degenerating knowledge/social capital - the loss of any sense of telos/purpose beyond "survival of the fittest/happiest" & of any truth beyond "whatever works" has meant that our "wisdom literature" is seen as irrelevant at best.  At the core of Western social capital is the Bible, and, in the USA, the Declaration/Constitution.  All are increasingly seen as fundamentally discredited.
• Increasing gap between "haves" & "have nots" - degenerating social/knowledge capital is widening the gap between those who maintain/create social/knowledge capital and those who undermine/destroy it.  Regardless of the cause, this kind of disparity tends to be destabilizing at some point.
• Increasing economic & social control by government at all levels
• A worldwide level of private & public debt that is too large to be fully repaid.  And this does not include promises (eg, pensions, social security) that are not debt but are seen as inviolable.  It's inevitable that the unwinding of this debt will create significant dislocations over at least a decade.