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Comment by leosanchez | Hacker News Reader

> Nevermind that society dictates everyone must work to survive by default.

What is the alternative ?

A little over 100 years ago women were only 20% of the labor force. [1] Which is to say, most women did not participate in wage employment.

Now they're ~47%. Which is great! But it also hints that society doesn't need most of the labor for the system to still function.

[1] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/about/history

"Work" does not exclusively mean "work full time for a wage".

yeah but carrying and raising kids?

Rather like subsistence farming, everyone got out of housework as soon as possible and into a far less onerous office.

Housework isn’t as onerous now as it was 100 years ago, though.

if I could retire, raise my kids and homeschool them, and do housework instead I would in a second. Nothing is more interesting, more fulfilling, and more challenging then raising the next generation.

People didn't get out of housework. They're doing housework and office work.

You appear to be asking a trick question, disingenuously.

There's a vast continuum between grossly-unequal homeless everywhere like many corrupt, third-world countries with masked, paramilitary disappearance squads and a large, happy middle-class paid well that can afford to buy things, take vacations, and enjoy life where corruption is lesser.

The disappearing middle class in America is becoming the upper class.

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