I think a lot of folks are missing the forest for the trees, here. OP is (presumably) a competent professional who has fallen on hard times despite record growth of the private enterprise and their immense profits. Their story is not unique, and Microsoft is adding another seven thousand bodies to the pile alone this week.
The fundamental problem is, as the OP gets at towards the end, what happens when a society built upon the trade of time and labor for income to provide for one’s needs, meets innovations that threaten to wholesale eliminate vast swaths of labor, permanently. A society that demands labor for survival, against corporations that demand growth at all costs, inevitably creates a zero-sum conflict between the working class and the Capitalist classes.
Workers, desperate to survive in a society hostile to the under or unemployed (and increasingly hostile to the presently employed), will continue to resort to more desperate means over time and as their numbers grow. This is an inevitability bore out through history time and time again, OP is just joining the chorus of voices warning that we are rapidly approaching such an inflection point if we continue soldiering onward “as-is”.
Many a healthy above median earner is unaware of the privileged shortcut to capital class available to them. Spend a third of your income for nine years and you're there. Make that a quarter to finish in six years. Especially for dual income people without dependents, that's quite feasible.
Not diminish your analysis. I just hope it adds a bit of perspective.
There is no “shortcut” to vast wealth, because if there were then everybody would be using it as the default and it would no longer be a shortcut. What are often described as “shortcuts” are highly situational opportunities with lower-than-typical risk, which by virtue of announcing them to others means the opportunity has passed and the risk has increased.
For there to be vast amounts of wealth hoarded by a few, there must also be vast amounts of exploited people desperately getting by on table scraps. There is a finite supply of wealth, and if we do not build systems to redistribute it equitably then it will always and inevitably by hoarded by the few lacking a moral compass or basic empathy for their fellow man.
It is nature that demands labor for survival, not society.
Society has been gradually diminishing that demand, and may theoretically be in the position to remove it entirely, but such a state of affairs has never existed.
> Workers [...] will continue to resort to more desperate means over time [...] This is an inevitability [...] that we are rapidly approaching
And how does one prepare for this inevitable inflection point? Buy a plot of land and hide from civilization? Prepper stuff? Buy lots of guns? Learn to barter?
I obviously can’t win over someone as receptive to the idea of change as yourself, but on the off chance a passerby sees this and actually is interested in different perspectives or growing their knowledge, here’s what you can do to not be as blindingly trolling as this commenter here:
* Read more books about systems and history. Understand that the times we’re in now aren’t as novel or unique as we’re lead to believe, and that we’ve solved worse problems before.
* Join local community-based organizations. Donate your time and expertise to those who need but cannot afford it.
* Learn different perspectives and backgrounds from others outside your immediate social circles or class. Spend more time with people who work more than you do, for less than you earn. This will teach you that many of your plights are shared, and that you have lots of allies already.
* Study systems. No single solution will fix all problems, no innovation will lift all boats. Changes reverberate, having unintended consequences. Failure to understand systems is failing to remedy or maintain them.
* Accept you cannot fix these issues alone. It will take time, it will take collaborative effort, and it will take compromise.