Great write up man and something that springs to mind for me is I bet there is also a correlation between the increase in fast food intake and increase in dietetics, Chronic conditions like Ulcerative Colitis amd Crohns disease and heart disease. Western countries like Australia and Ireland have far higher rates in the past fifty years... Over the same period large swathes of the population have moved away from whole foods and exercise intensive professions to fast food, convenience food and sedentary keyboard professions. Society is a bit screwed in that manner, but each of us when aware of it, can make decisions for ourselves and our families - more exercise for everyone, less convenience and fast food and focus on whole foods with proper nutrition and natural goodness.

sitting on the metaphorical couch, completely out of financial shape and energy, it is very, very hard to come back from it.

Nice anology... It's amazing how many people are financially illiterate and these are intelligent people - doctors, dentists, solicitors who are friends of mine. They are happy to leave their hard earned cash in a bank account paying 0.01% to 1% interest or for some with larger sums the bank is actually charging them. Bad enough that inflation is nibbling away at their nestegg, but now they want to pay even more... crazy... all for this perceived stability that a savings account offers.

On the matter of the hyper scalers dodging their local tax obligations, Ireland sees the exact same thing and we have the European HQ of the largest ten tech companiesbin the world based in Ireland and they are all using creative accounting practices to pay a pittance in tax, while the employees here pay close to 50% in various taxes once earning above €65,000 per year approx.

an entire rebuild is required from the ground up, but the challenge is very few are really interested in taking part in that rebuild and instead

True, but it will never happen, like asking Turkeys to vote for Christmas.