Over the next decade or so, US cities (especially the "major" ones) are going to go through a rough time. Due to NIMBYism and... - no, actually, just that alone (NIMBYism touches on all things, after all) - we've been in a state of "urban decay" for about 2 decades now.
The folks in power can say whatever they want, but objectively speaking, people are worse off in these places than they were a few decades ago on pretty much every level. You'd have to have to head pretty far down in the sand to kind of say otherwise.
The reason why you see Hollywood making so many retro-themed stories is because they lost their ability to be optimistic about the future a long time ago. Again, people can say whatever they want, but the art itself doesn't lie - just look at all of the apocalypse, zombie, and "survival" themed shows out there. You don't need a humanities degree to realize something is "off" about the way we talk and think about the future. Increased suicides, school shootings becoming "normalized", young people losing access to homes and having less children - it's all there.
The data doesn't lie about this stuff - it's just something that people have chosen to ignore because it's "too hard" to deal with these issues head on.
So lots of people I know opted to move back to their hometowns, rural areas, smaller cities and even escape the country (literally, not just threatening to), in order to escape "the great decay" facing all cities right now. From what I've seen and heard, they're much more happier there and many of them will say it was "the best decision they ever made". It's sort of sad that our once great cities are thought of that way right now but it is what it is and I believe them, honestly.
So for myself - well, that's not really an option. If I went back to Hawaii, the fact that I do my work in crypto will immediately flag me and I pretty much dead in the water before I even start. I don't have any connections to rural areas since I consider myself to be an urbanist so that doesn't work, either. So the plan is to be somewhere where we can "rebuild" the cities once it craters deep into the ground.
That moment is coming - I think the more observant ones already know this, and can almost "feel" it at this point. All that BS we've been accumulating over the (largely irrational) markets over the last few decades are going to go out in a bang, and the norms as we know will be shattered from beneath, all at once.
Scary? For most people, probably. Then again, if you look outside, we are already there. It will just be made more obvious, even to the people who normally are shielded from such things due to their privledge, luck, or wealth. A tiny sliver of reality creeping in...of the things the average person has to deal with day to day.
But in that also lies opportunity - if you look at the history of cities in general, they go through similar cycles of decay and growth, and the cities that we now know as "great" have had similar turbulent pasts, too - and in the bigger scheme of things, it really wasn't all that long ago, if you think about it.
So that'll be the next era for American society for the foreseeable future - "urban renewal". That's the elephant in the room that everyone's avoiding right now, but the elephant is starting to get tired of being ignored and will probably make itself "known" very soon. Most people aren't even aware of what's going on and and probably have no idea what I'm talking about, but once the crap hits the fan we'll find out very soon who has what it takes, and who doesn't.