Civilizations prosper when they reach a level of labor efficiency that allows for sufficient food and protection from the elements
, with some hours daily to think and analyze what is about them. By this we historically meant every able bodied person over age 14 was in the labor force other than those remaining home to care for children . That and a work schedule under 10 hours/day with at least one day of full rest.Civilizations begin to fail when a majority of the population has a means of survival without needing to work much if at all, thus allowing excess idle time without focus. Watching TV or gaming hours upon hours every day is a pretty good metric.
You peg where we are in the U.S. A. with a 61% (and dropping) labor participation rate of working age bodies and have a look at the percentage not working that could be , receive taxpayer funding to not work.
Factor out children, the aged and women raising children which means about 60 million out of 330 million are full time workers with maybe another 30 million part time or underemployed. The U.S. ratio is about 27% of the whole population productive (private sector) to 73% non productive. Note that government workers are non productive or negative productive depending on how you choose to define it. Persons that work in service industries, not making tangible products are partially productive.
This is not tenable. We as a nation must decide to move as much production of tangible goods back to U.S. soil in order to shift the participation rate upwards. While machines now do a lot of things that displace human workers, increasing production domestically does require more humans to feed and maintain the efficient machines. Growth is possible and higher levels of employment as well.
Sadly, too many that end up setting policy and determining actions have zero understanding of economic systems and human nature. The latter being more important than the rest. Our founders studied classical history and were very aware of the myriad of economic and government systems that have been tried over time (and failed). The U.S. Constitution is one of the finest creations of man in that it recognizes our nature and was structured so as to allow individual freedom to pursue our interests without the hindrance and interference by government (loosely translated to mean all those who seek power and wealth by coercion of the free individual).
We stand at a crossroads and must choose the path of individual freedom and self made opportunity. TANSTAAFL
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