We are practically third world in education, healthcare, and welfare. Standard of living is in free fall. As for the debt that you're so afraid of, it cannot be paid off. The money to repay it simply does not exist in our system. The GDP is an inflated economic measurement as the same dollar can be counted thousands of different times as it trades hands and is, in no way, a measurement of the money we actually have. The whole thing was designed to fail as it can only function in a state of continuous expansion. The founding fathers would turn in their graves if they saw what we had going here.