“Now we live in a country where few people have children, buy homes (or even cars), and increasingly work for the benefit of the state via taxation”
Yeah, but they got sex and drugs and rock n roll and bread and circuses.
That is about all they get, but they still seem very unhappy; at my job I listen to taxpayers with no genetic future whine about the masses of people with no financial future that are literally inheriting the Earth. Once people reach middle age they realize the bread & circuses weren’t worth it; the Elves who made the greatest parts of Middle Earth in the end depart forever into the sunset, leaving it to lesser beings with a stronger desire to “be fruitful & multiply”.