150 years ago leisure was rare and valuable. Being idle rich marked you as elite.
Now it's the opposite. Anyone in the west can easily be idle and afford an OK standard of living. It's having a "professional" job that marks you as elite, because there aren't nearly enough such jobs for those who are capable.
So you get large numbers of people hustling to land and hold various sorts of dumb office jobs. Mostly because the job is a coveted status marker.
Take a drive through any low income urban area or trailer park. Huge numbers of people who don't work. They milk welfare and so forth. The only reason these areas seem to afford a lousy standard of living is because your neighbors would be violent morons. The problem isn't lack of resources. There are large hasidic communities of unemployed people who mostly milk benefits and they have built rather nice neighborhoods.
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150 years ago leisure was rare and valuable. Being idle rich marked you as elite.
Now it's the opposite. Anyone in the west can easily be idle and afford an OK standard of living. It's having a "professional" job that marks you as elite, because there aren't nearly enough such jobs for those who are capable.
So you get large numbers of people hustling to land and hold various sorts of dumb office jobs. Mostly because the job is a coveted status marker.
How?
Take a drive through any low income urban area or trailer park. Huge numbers of people who don't work. They milk welfare and so forth. The only reason these areas seem to afford a lousy standard of living is because your neighbors would be violent morons. The problem isn't lack of resources. There are large hasidic communities of unemployed people who mostly milk benefits and they have built rather nice neighborhoods.