In my working life, from 1958 to date, I've seen the 'Western Powers' get steadily poorer, and I would attribute a good deal of this decline in 'wealth' to globalisation.

We/they used to import materials. Now it's importation of goods for sale. This means JOBS were exported, and the jobless are still around.
Disenchantment. How many people no longer TRY to get a job, because they are better off on the dole, because of the meagre wages available.
And how many turn to crime, because that is the easy option to poverty? How many of the worse-off suffer from crime, because they are the easiest targets?
The gap between the 'haves' and 'have-nots' seems to grow yearly, and I don't like it. A nations success is based on the success of its citizens. Once you had to be a pretty forlorn individual to be unemployable, and now you only have to be over 45!
I have no experience of the US, but the countries I have lived in were once reasonably wealthy.
OK, a simplistic view, but I feel that if everyone had a job, most other problems would sort themselves.