>>513968620In my view, so much of the economy is going to support "consumption". Literally just consuming things you don't need or even really want. It's so unnecessary, that we need a megabillion dollar advertising industry to foist these products on people. A country like China for example is literally unable to consume as much, because they don't have all the advertising infrastructure and the culture of rampant consumption that America has.
This consumption is
1) wasteful
2) unnecessary
3) temporary
Imagine. Instead of working on a debt hamster wheel to gin up consumption as high as possible, we only consumed more or less what we need. We saved our money, and worked less hours.
True, less people would be working less hours, the GDP would go down. But people would be happier and have more time for creative pursuits. We might unlock a massive vault of creative potential, art/music/engineering, provided we facilitated a culture of creativity within our people.
You might work 20 hours a week, earn easily enough to live, and spend the rest of your time on your hobbies and inventions. More people would go outside, and volunteer to create an "outside" that is actually worth living in. New hiking trails, public art projects, public monuments, instead of strip malls and parking lots.
Most of our actual economic progress does not come from the consumption machine, it comes from core research into science and technology. If more people had their creative potential unlocked, we could make faster progress than ever.
Instead we're using all our people as delivery drivers, gas station employees, and advertising managers. Just to gin up unnecessary consumption.