Economic Growth comes with Social Regression

The American economy has expanded enormously in the last 36 years. In contrast, the same time period had seen an equally precipitous breakdown in our nation’s social institutions. For instance, violent crime increased 560%. Divorce rates have quadrupled, and average SAT scores have dropped 80 points. There are many other examples. What is going on? Why is America changing?
Among those events which have contributed to the contrasting economic and social changes in America, two of the earliest were the Vietnam War and the Watergate affair, both leading to a widespread distrust of government. Even the excuse for shipping American combat troops into Vietnam was possibly fabricated through the Gulf of Tonkin incident. President Johnson promised no American deaths in Southeast Asia, when in fact he was escalating combat operations. Subsequently, the government lied to the American people about body counts, war success, and operations outside of Vietnam proper. Corruption was also rife in ...