ARE WE CURRENTLY UNDEREMPLOYED COMPARED WITH OUR GRANDPARENTS?

James "Long Emergency" Kunstler lays out a "going Galt" scenario in which the people reject their failed rulers.

Emergently, then, the Big Box business model could fail, and in fairly short order, which would at least give Americans a chance to self-reorganize the production and distribution of goods in our own country. It sure won’t be like 1957 again, but it would give an awful lot of idle people more to do when they get up in the morning. Wait for it, and plan accordingly.

In the meantime, we are treated to the sordid spectacle of Democratic Wokesters endeavoring to destroy what remains of American cultural life. It’s an incomparably stupid and malign distraction from the imperatives of this historical moment. They will not succeed in cancelling those who object to the systematic disassembly of our national language, myth, and meaning, even if we have to go back to the mimeograph machine to keep these things alive.

For all the nostalgia about the twilight years of the American High, we're a lot richer now, although I suspect that twenty iterations of fifteen days to slow the spread have more people discovering the value proposition of tuna casserole or Jello salads, rather than marvelling at the benightedness of it all.  Yes, some of the productivity gains of the past sixty or so years might have gone to information technology types, and yet we use the expression "gains from trade" for a reason.  The wokesters, though?  Brain-brothers of Balph Eubank and Wesley Mouch.  Undermine them with mockery, or withdraw your sanction.