[eru]

> Decreasing number of workers means buildings are built slower and more expensively (resulting higher housing costs).

In the markets were housing costs are out of control, it's mostly down to legal and political bans on construction, not so much cost of construction itself.

It's perfectly possible for people who want to spend less of their life working to do that. It's true that if you want to work the same number of total weeks, but fewer hours per week that constraints what jobs you can take; but it's straightforward to retire early on a modest nest egg: you don't even need to tell your employer that this is what you are planning to do.

In principle modern conveniences like Uber make it more possible for more people in more industries to decide how many hours they want to work. But there are substantial political barriers to widening these models.

> Health care is already insanely expensive.

It's fairly cheap where I live, even though wages are some of the highest in the world here in Singapore.