Is American Progress Becoming More Liberal Or Conservative?

Recently I had read an article that attempted to answer a simple yet complex question we all probably have questioned at some point in our lives: Is America making any sort of progress compared to before? It gives an understandable answer that we are going in both positive directions and negative directions. "Over the past two decades, what have the U.S. trends been for the following important measures of social health: high school dropout rates, college enrollment, ...teen pregnancy. The answer for all of them is the same: The trend is positive. Almost all those varied metrics of social wellness have improved by more than 20% over the past two decades." And yet, "The number of Americans living in poverty has increased over the past decade, after a long period of decline. Wealth inequality has returned to levels last seen in the roaring '20s. Today, the U.S. unemployment rate is still just under 8%, higher than its average over the past two decades... and while the story of water and air pollution over that period is a triumphant one, the long-term trends for global warming remain bleak." 
So now that the question has been answered, what is the point I am trying to make? What I could not help to notice and analyze was that from the political spectrums of liberals and conservatives, would they see our current state in the same shape and condition as Johnson writes in his article? From the liberal standpoint,  I would imagine that positive trends would seem even better. They serve as indications that the 3 aspects  essential to the well-being of society are all improving: equality, general welfare, and efficiency. These innovations will indefinitely make a bigger impact on the classes that are not as well-off and eventually possibly continue to minimize the "social gap". With a conservative stance, this forward social progression is great, but not as great as the social and liberalists would see it as. Why? We all still get the overall benefits, but social institutions and traditions would be unable to minimize the social gap at a rate that liberalists picture. For instance, say everyone has access to a better vaccination or medication or some sort of medical benefit. Those who would profit most from the medical technological breakthrough would probably be those who have lower health standards, but there will be some people that feel that it is not as beneficial to help the lower class. In addition, some types of social constraints become as issue, such as money. Thus, it is most likely that the social gap will be maintained, which is no surprise being "conserved"; however, at least there still is the benefit. 

So what would they both say about the negative trends America has faced? I feel that conservatives would not see unemployment as big of an issue mainly because unemployment tends to target those with lower abilities in society, which some conservatives would feel as justified because it would make our economy potentially more stable with less sources in society that would "hold us back". On the other hand, liberalists would feel a greater drive to solve this issue to attempt maintaining equality because rising unemployment erases the possibility of having almost all individuals being an equal opportunity for jobs in our time. Of course, not everything is clear-cut defined, but nevertheless, liberalists and conservatives both agree to an extent of which way our country is headed; it just depends what we would do and how we would to make us even better.

Sources:

Pictures: 
http://www.stephenpratt.net/Politics/illusionOpposites.htm
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LNS14100000