With the greatest of respect, I've heard about "industries dieing" before. I always take these pronouncements with a very large grain of salt.
On closer inspection, one usually finds that there are members of the industry concerned making money hand over fist, but keeping very very quiet about it. It's the less successful that complain. When you compare the two types of operators it becomes obvious that the poorer ones are badly managed or have either under, or over invested.
I think some hard data on operators would be needed to convince Government that GA was in fact "Dieing".