John we have painted ourselves into a corner imho
Once upon a time the bell curve had a medium width section for poor-ish folk, a monstrous fat rump of working/middle class folks who did OK-ish and whose kids could go on a half-day school trip most years, and a wee sharp peak of millionaires
In the decades since we have bought onto the lie of privatisation+progress and this, coupled with technology (which hasn't delivered the promised Universal Three Day Working Week but has just made the folks who own the tech uber-rich), has upended the bell curve
Now it has a wide,wide,wide base of folks with nothing, a skinny, shrinking, debt-burdened middle class middle bit, and a steeple tall peak of billionaires
IMHO again, only a transformative societal change as extreme as something like a Universal Basic Income and something amounting to a partial nationalisation of essential assets will suffice
That, and getting back to making stuff that lasts and bugger the Chinese
McCarthy wanted to nuke 'em back to the 6th century back in the 50s "while we have the chance" but he was overruled (not because it was "wrong" but because it was "politically unpalatable" lol
Without the Chinese we'd have to pay $8 for our Tee shirst not $2.50. But I'd be OK about that if lots of Kiwis had jobs with fair wages in the T-shirt factory