The United States is widely considered the most desirable country in the world. In many respects that is true — some objective, and some subjective.
But one area that we definitely are in decline is freedom. The Frazier Institute has been grading the countries of the world for many years, and have documented our decline since the turn of the century. In 1980 we ranked #2. In 2000 we were ranked #2. In the new 2015 report (using 2013 data), we rank 16th, 3 slots lower than the year before.
Sure, we’re still ranked much better than most countries. But the direction we are heading is disturbing, to put it gently. Even worse, the RATE of our decent seems to be accelerating.
http://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/economic-freedom-of-the-world-2015.pdf — the detailed U.S. history is on page 188 of the PDF file