The US had a robust economy and workforce and look where it got us. More people building and buying shit is not the answer. Significantly fewer people is the best shot we have.
Taking over global finance from the U.K. did and that definitely didn’t happen through our economy or workforce, but because we stayed out of WWII allowing Germany to bomb London daily until the U.K. was willing to turn over control of the global finance to us if we assisted them.
What our economy and workforce did once we got that power was single handedly create the single most indebted nation-state in history, $21T national debt $19T personal.
It doesn't mean we should stop reproducing, but on a global scale we need to start actually managing the population size like any other global resource and large-scale high-impact activity.
Unfortunately there's already so many people in developing nations that it seems too late to prevent some serious suffering in the next century. India alone has in the ballpark of 300 million people aspiring just to get electricity, nevermind the consequences of their population pursuing other western luxuries like automobiles, even if they're EVs, or frequent frivolous air travel.
The first world nations have operated under the flawed assumption that they can consume with impunity because they're first, they're the winners. The problem with this notion is the rest of the world is going to repeat it all. The first world nations have but set an example, and capitalism will be sure to sell everything necessary for the rest to recreate it all for themselves.
It's really too bad we didn't run out of fossil fuels before reaching this point and these outcomes wouldn't be possible, it's all going to be pulled out of the ground and burned.