Lets assume that whatever next big idea that might pull the economy out of its slump will not be manufactured, since anything that can be made will be made overseas. The jobs that remain will likely be service jobs, which require little to no skills in most cases. High paying and skilled exceptions would be medical, which require an investment in education and face-to-face interaction that cannot be outsourced. However, most service work is low to no skilled labor, with its paltry pay and benefits.
What are the implications of this?
Workers will not be able to afford their own homes. Their parents, struggling to retire, will likely leave nothing for them to inherit short of the house they die in. Renting will be the way most will house themselves, but those accommodations will prove expensive when demand will be so high. In time, it will be difficult for children to leave the home at all, which will prove advantageous in the end. Aging parents will have family to take care of them in their advanced years, and children will not need to resort to daycare to watch their kids. In short, the family unit will return to what has been the norm for most of human history, to say nothing of American history.
The idea that once a child has graduated from school they should set out on their own came along with the rise of cities, which were structurally unsuited for multiple generations to live in one unit. In the US, home ownership became possible in the years following the first and second World Wars as America's economy produced the goods that the world demanded while Europe rebuilt. By the 1970s these European and Asian nations recovered sufficiently to be our economic competitors, and the workforce adjusted. In pursuit of ever cheaper labor to drive up profits, companies hired immigrants, and eventually outsourced labor overseas. The boom economic years were unsustainable, since by the 70s our factories had competition. The wages and guaranteed lifetime employment for those that fought the wars allowed a standard of living that cannot be realized today.
The tax base will shrink as well, as high paying jobs become a rarity, and the reliance on government support will strain the social safety net further. The notion that graduates should immediately leave home and incur a lifetime of debt in order to support an unsustainable fantasy is both financially harmful and psychologically stressing. Much better to recognize the reality, and carry on the tried and true practice of having multiple generations live together!
Everyone will benefit from it.
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