If the answer is the end of - I'll call it - "Consumerism", and the industries we choose to subsidize are those that are more essential to a community driven life (e.g. food, shelter, health, education, transportation, communication, etc ...), I think it is possible to lower the "Standard of Living" as reshaping what the term means, undoing years of advertisement based conditioning.

Americans may no longer have an unnecessarily large or luxurious automobile, or a screen in every room, but I would argue excess becoming the standard is the problem and a major cause of the imbalance.

The solution doesn't feel very democratic or free though, values that have been critical to the identity of the USA.