What happened to American society ?

The system has evolved to a sad state where colleges have become more focused on business than education, and tuition has grown to near-prohibitive levels.  Also, for several reasons, the educated workforce has grown so competitive that it takes the joy out of having a trade.  American companies don't offer as much vacation time as other developed nations.  We're expected to grow up to be cogs in a broken machine.

If you surround yourself with the safety net that is suburbia, then you remove any NEED to work, and with it diminish motivation. Kids grow up having everything provided for them, and when they finally leave school nothing has changed - so they don't bother to put in a lot of effort and do something that is comparatively hard when they can continue having fun the way they always have. The only motivation for a lot of people is advertising: people chase expensive watches, fast cars and nice clothes - and they can't get them without work.

And I find it interesting that an American has bothered to look beyond their borders and find a newspaper article from England - although that may be the Russian side of your personality because I don't see PAM doing the same.

PAM - Around a 150 million people, I believe