What Happened to America?

Throughout the last century, we were the envy of the rest of the world. The place everyone around the world wantedto be. And we deserved it. We work harder than people in most countries. We have less vacation time than other countries; we are deep in debt; education and healthcare is very expensive in our country; and we have to compete for jobs with people from all over the world, through outsourcing and insourcing. And after all that it seems our economy is in deep trouble.
Our productivity is great, yes, and we are a great country. People from all over the world still want to come to America. At least that's what we hear.
And yet what is the price we pay for this productivity, and really who is benefitting from it. We are stressed out all the time. Pretty much every person I know is on sleeping pills, anxiety medications, pain medications, blood pressure medications, antidepressants, you name it. No other country in my knowledge uses drugs on a daily basis as we do. We have little or no job security, we move more than people in other countries for jobs, creating disruptions in our family lives, losing any sense of neighborhoods, and sadly, we are hardly the ones gaining from it - the income of most of us, the middle class, is stagnant, while the rich have gotten fabulously rich.
I often watch these TV programs where they show poor people living in India, in Africa, on the streets, with nothing to look forward to beyond mere survival, their children malnourished and often begging, or children working in dangerous jobs just to make their families make ends meet, & I've heard people say "aren't we lucky we were born in America!" And I wonder, why are people with a college education, with skills, born in a stable society so insecure that they have feel lucky they are not at the level of the poorest and most unskilled people of Third World countries. However it is a subliminal way by which the system says to the hapless worker "do not complain, be happy you are working here, otherwise you'll be like those people in Africa, so if you need to work 70 hr week with no vacations, have to come in when you're sick, move from city to city to get a job, miss your family, tough. Oh & you American worker, you have such a great work ethic!" Which is another way to say "OK, here's something to feel good, sucker!"
And the media rarely shows an typical middle class family in say, India, or Brazil, how their lives have improved tremendously over the last few years, they enjoy cheaper but very high quality education, cheaper healthcare, 5-6 weeks vacation time per year, a solid middle class lifestyle, and still have a pretty good productivity. And they are now getting ousourced jobs from US companies! But I've rarely heard people say "Gee, we are so unlucky, look at all these nice things people in many other countries are enjoying" - that would be like being unpatriotic. That would be having bad work ethic. Can't ask those questions!!
What happened to America? We were a nation caring about our people, our neighbors, now we are a market, giving jobs to people in other countries because it is more profitable, who cares what happens to our own countrymen. We at least could say we have the strongest economy in the world, well that hardly the case any more, we just heard if we don't bail out failing banks our economy may collapse. More of our youth are in jail than any other developed & even developing countries. We have college and high school shootings rarely seen in other countries. Our marriages break up at a higher rate than any other country. We are nervous about criticizing even the most atrocious behavior lest we be accused of racism or sexism. And we go to China, a country that was hard-core communist till the 1970s, to borrow money.
I believe in capitalism but with humanity. A theory becoming more important than human reality, than compassion, than empathy is a recipe for disaster. There was a time capitalism had a human face. Employers cared about their workers rather than regarding them as expense or potential lawsuits. Then came the professors & theorists with their free-market thoeries and got a bunch of pathetic politicians (including unfortunately some really powerful ones) under their control. And America suffered.