It's been that way for hundreds of thousands, even millions of years.
>>let’s put it this way ~ chillun are exempt, the elderly are exempt, everybody else works. It’s been that way for hundreds of thousands, even millions of years.
Works at what? There are no jobs. 100 people apply for a job at McDonalds these days. We have automated industry to the point where we just have too many people to need their labor for 40 hours a week. And when you lose industrial paychecks, people can’t afford so many service workers. That causes a supply and demand crisis where labor becomes so devalued that it isn’t worth doing.
And before you start talking about how we did it 100,000 years ago, keep in mind that children were very expendable in those days (look at how easy it was for Pharoah to kill all the first-born) and the elderly were not cared for 20 years after they stopped working.