The other parallel to what you describe is that the shift of populations from rural, agricultural areas to citys, is over in the west, no more strong healthy polite civilised people with strong work ethics, who knew that hard work would pay off, and they could have a house and 3 or 4 kids and buy a bunch of the shiny stuff in the magazines and there kids could go to college, work at the plant and get a gold watch, precisely what my grandfather did, and millions of others.
But starting in the 1980's there were not enough men to do those jobs, so those plants were offshored to cheap plentiful labour countrys.
But there were still enough farm boys to take the higher payed jobs IN the citys, and do trade work, but the wealth dwindled, and there kids have zero interest in busting there knuckles, and so skilled, self starting,enthusiastic,labour, is gone.
My personal experience is that I will show up to do an estimate for something for a larger company, and before I can even get to look at it, they are suggesting that I "could get on with them"
Many franchise companys ,"franchisese"?, are from familys that used to own and operate companys in the same business, under there own names, but those situations are now also gone, with very very few people growing up in the family business anymore.
So it's down to money people and advertisers, trying to puppet clueless jobby job kids into running serious businesses for nothing.
what could go wrong?
In wealth management there is a saying ‘the first generation builds it, the second generation protects it, the third generation smokes it’.
I’ve seen it play out. It certainly isn’t universal, but it’s a common pattern.
What you are describing also lines up (roughly) with generational demographic trends from the post WW2 generations to now.
Notably, the post WW2 USA was in a very unique place - most everyone else’s economies had been blown to smithereens, it had the worlds reserve currency as everyone else had to take loans from the USA to survive (or had been conquered), and it had a (mostly intact) highly motivated and trained workforce that had just won the major world war as ‘the good guys’ and had a relatively consistent self-image and cohesive society because of it.
All of these factors - including even a cohesive society, have now mostly ‘gone up in smoke’. Even major Capital has devolved to equity and leverage, typically the weakest type of Capital.
Don’t worry, there is still a lot left to burn though!
