I blame the baby-boomers and their "It is all mine attitude". The baby-boomers have systematically dismantled all of the social advances since WWI. This is yet another indictment of their greed.
Also, baby-boomers didn't happen until after WWII, and there are a lot more social services [welfare, social security, medicare, Obamacare, more trust in banks thanks to FDIC] and regarding social advances, women are freer, the civil rights movement happened, the sexual revolution happened, and homosexuality is socially accepted [I, personally, don't think the latter two are positive developments, but I mention them because I am in the minority]. You have baby-boomers to thank for a lot of that. Social advances since WWI? Yep, lots! "Dismantled" is hardly the word to use for the 20th century.
Our infrastructure is crumbling, our young are getting poorer and poorer education and we are told we can not afford these public services as tax receipts go down. The babyboomers have been at the wheel for the last 30 years, and they have left us a mess to clean up from their greed.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10171591/10-Bab...
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/10/who-dest...
https://www.ced.org/blog/entry/are-we-about-to-let-all-of-th...
The babyboomers did not start running things until the 1980's, and they are definitely not responsible for very many social services, but I would agree that they did help facilitate a more tolerant view of minorities, and that is something to be commended, but that doesn't negate the their overarching negative impact on just about every other social program: housing, education, healthcare, immigration, out-of-work benefits, disability benefits. All of these have been massively cutback over "their" tenure, so they could cut taxes for themselves, during their most productive and prosperous years, so they can continue live their extravagant lifestyles.
The babyboomers are a disgrace to what their parents and grandparents did and stood for.
Obamacare is a positive development in the USA, but there have been massive (public) healthcare cuts (in relative terms) in every other country with a modern economy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_P._Huntington https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Daiches