The linked article is longish, but it deals with certain economic and social fundamentals of the USA. Uncle Sam being my neighbouring elephant I can't ignore his thrashing about, and there are some things which have wider application.
The basis of any real democracy is the Middle Class. Starting from there it follows that what strengthens the middle class strengthens democracy, what weakens it has proportional deleterious effect. The modern economic age of the middle class followed WWII with the economic expansion and near-universal lifetime employment, or at least the expectation of it. It's pretty obvious that those days are over and that there has been a seismic shift in our consumer society; what is not so obvious is where it's trending now.
In the end it all comes down to debt and the management thereof. This bit struck home for me:
The transformation of Americans from a nation of savers and entrepreneurs in the era of the family farm to a nation of consumers in the last eighty years was a fateful one. Our ancestors thought that debt was shameful and a burden; we’ve come to think of cheap debt as part of our birthright. The American Dream as we’ve known it entailed a lifestyle based on permanent debt. The growth of the American economy depended on growing debt at every level from federal Keynesian stimulus to credit card and mortgage debt.
"Shameful" is a bit harsher than I see it, but embarrassing is close enough for government work, and "burden" is bang-on. The choice faced by most people is to have more stuff and wonder (I hope) how to pay for it all but look good to their peers, or to have less gadgets and fail to keep up with them, but not have the sword of Debtmocles hanging over their finances. Most people are sheep, and even the ones that aren't don't want to lose what status they have, so they all buy new cars and plasma TVs and their kids get the newest iPhone.
Few of us are immune to this, and even I am only resistant to it. What separates me (and presumably you, my readers) from most people is that I think about how it all works and ties together, and I DO NOT assume that it'll all sort itself out no matter what I do. Yes, that nasty, non-PC word: Consequences.
Thinking is not doing of course, and you'll only get as far as you're willing to go. Much could be accomplished by once again making a virtue of restraint, but the Economists would have a fit contemplating the impact of that on our current economic model. If people stop buying things the economy takes a tumble (happens; think of those reports on "consumer confidence") and I don't pretend to have a solution to that.
There's the rub of course. We are officially encouraged to buy things, primarily national, but things in general, to keep people employed (in China?) and sales tax revenue rolling in. Building houses employs a lot of people, so buy houses too. That last bit is handled much more responsibly in Canada than the US, but the basics are the same across the 49th //.
We can't of course blame the government, as it's a tiger created by our fevered dreams of cradle to grave security and services, but those expectations will not allow us to dismount. In the end the whole thing comes down to Expectations, and those need to change.
Our standard of living is already decreasing, a thing in itself which is directly counter to what we were raised to expect. I've ridden this hobbyhorse from the direction of energy costs, but it's bigger than that. Our system is as prone to entropy as any other, and what we're trying to keep afloat has run out of steam. Unless there's some fundamental change we're all going to have to get used to a lot (or at least a bit) less. For the record, even the most charismatic politicians are Change, not change, e.g. superficial; replacing our entire economic model is almost beyond me to envision, but I'm open to reasoned suggestions...
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