I can’t emphasize this enough.
Barry Ritholtz has written an excellent economic summary in his blog, The Big Picture.
His main points:
“Can the US resolve these issues?
1) An excess credit problem, left over from the 2000s Housing boom and credit bubble  being solved v e r y s l o w l y through deleveraging and passage of time;
2) Slowing economy and high unemployment (including increasing High School drop out rates creating a structural employment problem);
3) Crumbling infrastructure: Electric Grid, Bridges, Tunnels, Roads, Naval Ports, Airports;
4) Medical Costs that are double the rest of the industrialized world’s yet produces worse results.
5) Systemic deficits caused by unfunded tax cuts, unfunded entitlements, and a military bigger than the next 20 countries combined, (plus a lack of fiscal discipline);
6) A wholly dysfunctional electoral process, including corporate control of what was once a democratically elected legislative branch;
7) Increasing wealth and income inequality (Historically not a long term positive for social unrest and political legitimacy)
8 ) An overt hostility to empiricism and science (which helped create most of our wealth) and an embracing of “magical thinkingâ€Â
9) An intellectually bankrupt political class married to outmoded, disproven, fantasy based economic ideas.
Note that the last of these is directly responsible for much of the prior 8 problems.”
You can read the whole post, and others, here.