From the PDF: the U.S.A. has fallen behind other western nations, such as Canada, Germany, Norway, Sweden in maintaining the concept of economic or upward mobility...
And this is the main reason, as I recall, why the U.S. was always portrayed as more desirable than European nations (and it was true in the 50s; part of my German family immigrated to the U.S. in the 50s). If you take that concept away - why would you want to live in the U.S. anymore:
- none of U.S. cities rank in the top 100 most livable places (Mercer Cities Ranking)
- high schools and many public schools rank low in comparison to other western nations
- education is much more expensive
- there is no organized trade school education, like in Germany, Britain etc.
- salaries for the lower third are less
- health care (don't get me started)
- hardly any social safety net
- crime, largest per capita prison population in the world
- infrastructure - roads, bridges, buildings etc. (don't get me started; it's almost third world country level)
- average lasting quality of housing (drywall, cheap wood framing, bad carpentry on windows and doors etc.)
- manufacturing quality and capability: look at American made cars or power tools (I always prefer foreign made)
- half of the government budget goes towards the military
- lack of public transportation (Standard Oil bought up the urban train networks in the 1940's and had them decommissioned: street cars, urban transit etc.)
- no functioning Euro-style city cores, urban sprawl, stuffed highways with commuters
- and the most important fact of all: the byzantine law system of the U.S. and the huge costs of lawyers and law suits (this affects many areas); lawyers can cost over $ 500/ hour and if you can't afford one you are out of luck; further, judges are not high-end lawyers trained as judges (like in Germany etc.) but can be any random divorce lawyer that got appointed regionally, as I understand
Final verdict: the U.S. has been badly managed in the last 30 years, and the poor carry the burden.
The final evidence is given in the study of Cliometrics and measuring average body height of nations (an indicator for health/ prosperity): it used to be (up until the 1950s) that U.S. Citizens were taller than Europeans; this trend has been reversed in the last 30 years - now the Euros are taller (especially the Dutch)