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It's a creeping expansion of social benefits...society will adapt around it
I think this will never happen (in the US). The modern political environment in the US won't allow it.If it appears that there will be an expansion of social benefits, the wealthy class will work to sabotage it (a la ACA; not that there weren't benefits, but net-net the shareholders and executives of insurance companies won). There's nothing stopping them. What's more likely to happen, IMO, is that as the cost of existing increases, the birth rates will continue to decline. Rather than address this population crisis, the wealthy class will continue to advance automation. LLMs, AI, robots, autonomous driving, etc. With their left hand, they'll import cheap labor. With their right, they'll pit the rest of us against this cheap labor to distract from reality. The corporations want this cheap, imported labor -- they just don't want to pay the taxes to support social services for anyone. The wealth gap will continue to widen without a voting base willing to increase taxation. And to suppress this, the wealthy will use a narrative that is driven by the media consolidated and owned by these mega-rich. There are increasingly few politicians on either side that feel like they are genuine about solving this issue. The flood of money in politics feels like it's broken the system. |
The end game is something like the planet Solaria from Asimov.