I really think the old american model is over except for the highly educated, master degree or higher. We're going to have to adopt the immigrant mode of living with extended family, splitting living cost to have a decent standard of living.
That's probably the most likely outcome.
In a perfect world tho, people would smarten up and realize that it's the bloated corrupt government that caused all this mess.
For instance, this thread is about retail. Well there used to be a lot of healthy competition in retail. That's good for consumers and job seekers. Then a little something called NAFTA was signed.
Now in theory NAFTA was supposed to help us compete globally. That's how they sold it to us. The problem was that a lot of "global" companies have no qualms at all about using sweatshop, child labor, and many other unethical business practices that America won't allow.
Without Tariffs, Wal-Mart was able to flood the shelves with cheap Chinese crap and they priced it so low small companies who couldn't afford to import cargo freights of said crap couldn't compete. As soon as smaller companies died Wal-Mart jacked the prices up.
The rise of wal-mart couldn't happen without NAFTA. Where is Wal-Mart's head quarters? Arkansas. Who is from Arkansas and was the former governor? Bill Clinton. Who was president when NAFTA was signed? Bill Clinton. Hilary Clinton was also on the board of directors for Wal-Mart.
And that's just one instance of corruption tainting the free market. You got industrial hemp being straight up outlawed when it could have competed with oil as a fuel and energy source.
There's this
Invention Secrecy Act - Wikipedia which has probably derailed many game changing inventions that would destroy corporate monopolies, the list goes on.
The free market really is superior, but it only works if it is truly free. Not when certain companies can buy politicians to kill competition.