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We need to work because we're barely at the productivity to sustain ourselves given our current obligations.

For instance, in order to fund CalPers, we need a lot of people to do productive work. That's on a multi-decade timer.




Which is odd, given that we produce more stuff than ever before.

We have a couple of problems - a lot of the things we need most (dedicated time from doctors, teachers, etc.) are affected by Baumol's cost disease and in other categories, like housing, we have legally mandated shortages (it's illegal to create enough homes near transit, amenities, and jobs) so we will, by definition, never have enough.


Doctors also have legally mandated shortages, yes. And cost disease is a characteristic of a system not really something you can treat while retaining the other constraints (no homes, guaranteed pension returns, restrictions on number of workers, etc.)




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