I’d add c) environmental (i.e. the effects of global warming). But a) is critical. The postwar economic anomaly in North America and, for a shorter duration, elsewhere in the West was not going to last forever. In fact it began winding down at least a decade ago, and a lot of the hoarding and ladder-pulling and wall-building behaviour we see in the U.S. now as wealth and opportunity concentrates upward is a reaction to that.
More to your point, that behaviour is also directly enabled by economic policy decisions made (and supported) over the past 30-40 years ago by American born before approx. 1964 who were too selfish, self-deluded, and complacent to see their logical outcome. The same can be said about the effects of global warming, where bad policy decisions were put in place by the same group at the expense of their children.
To be honest, though, I don’t know if a service and information economy is going to cut it. For various reasons, and especially if policy makers continue to act like it’s still 1992, that leaves about 80% of the U.S. population in the roles of precariat and unnecessariat. Both establishment parties in the U.S. have come to the conclusion that some sort of UBI will have to be put in place. I would prefer to see a more equitable one approaching Fully Automated Luxury Communism increasingly suspect it will be a neoliberal one meant to prop up a sham consumer economy and continue to concentrate wealth upward to the top 1%.
Given that such a UBI would depend on the elimination of all other social safety nets, my suspicion that this is the direction we’re headed was only increased by this recent story, since it’s easier to eliminate one mega-agency than it is a dozen:
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/06/donald-trump-mick-mulvaney-welfare-department-plan/563432/
