[triceratops]

> The reason people in the first world can even produce the thought of wishing for less work is because all of the heavy lifting needed for them to exist was outsourced to third world countries. That is why the number of people working globally has increased, even with automation, not decreased.

It's not because the number of people existing globally has increased? People in poor countries didn't work at all until developed countries started shipping their work overseas? What did they all do then?

[baconandeggs]

Some still don't. Just read the stories about villagers in China being brought in in truckloads to work manufacturing electronics. Not everyone is part of the labor-force, not even today.

[triceratops]

> Not everyone is part of the labor-force

That's flat-out untrue. They aren't part of the industrial workforce. Surely they were already doing something back in their village, even if it was low-productivity farm work or manual labor that paid very little. In developing countries everyone works because it's a matter of survival.

[baconandeggs]

> That's flat-out untrue. They aren't part of the industrial workforce. Surely they were already doing something back in their village, even if it was low-productivity farm work or manual labor that paid very little.

Housewives obviously do something they don't stay in bed all day, and what they do is very valuable for society. But they do not directly contribute to the GDP and hence they are not part of the workforce, industrial or otherwise.

[triceratops]

Rural "housewives" in the developing world run little businesses or sidelines (cooking, sewing, childcare, midwifery and other medicine, selling produce), and/or work on the farm. They're very much a part of the informal workforce.