Capitalism Gone Bad

The reason capitalism works is that we work in order to increase our standard of living and build wealth to one day not have to work anymore.
Socialism doesn't work because people are not creating wealth and are only sharing what already exists. There is also no insentive to work if all of your efforts are wasted by being given to the next guy that didn't work at all.
What if we have no more insentive to work in America?

The problem is that in America we don't have the same capitalism that the theory supports.

• We work but we don't increase our wealth or our standard of living.
• We have to pay a cable bill for eternity instead of paying for the actual cable box just once. Are we paying to be tortured by the constant commercials also.
• All heating and cooling is an expense that we pay to the utility companies forever, instead of just buying the solar panels once.
• We have to pay for water indefinitely instead of getting it free from the sky and boiling it with solar energy. There are many other alternative methods of retrieving water though. See : Artificial aquifer.
  
• We have to pay for jam and fruits indefinitely, instead of getting it for free from surrounding nature, and making it ourselves.
• We have to pay for fish forever, even when it's not fresh, instead of getting them for free from a lake or river. "MMM sushi!"
  
• We have to pay off a house for the rest of our lives, and maintain and update it, instead of making it, and then being done with it right then and there, FOREVER. Why go big? Just make the same size cabin as everyone has in Alaska! With free wood or cheap and green technology. See : R- value in Alaska.
  
• Retirement is not earned anymore, but instead we force our children to pay taxes for us when we start to get our social security one day.
• We have to pay an electric bill instead of having free infinite energy from solar panels that are maintenance free when they are installed with weather and tamper proof structure.
• If you can't save any money at all to increase your standard of living in any meaningful way then you might as well not work, and instead just live in the woods, because your chances are better for capitalism to work there, where you keep what you produce, and you build your standard of living as you work. just think of what you could achieve at 8 hrs/day working on a tree house or on a garden.
  

All of our efforts these days are put into maintaining our standard of living, not into raising our standard of living.
The problem is when we're are adapted to city life, then we've also forgotten how to live independently in a rural life. Also some of us have never had the option of living outside of the city.
Is America all of a sudden "dependent", and no longer "independent"?