Most companies don't do anything, most investors make money without putting in any labor, and money just... poof, appears. But not for us. Nothing really seems to make sense anymore.
Things that were trivial before, like having a receptionist to answer your phone, now seems economically impossible. And yet, our GDP continues to rise. We run companies with a tenth of the people we did before - everything is computerized, automated. But the wages are lower.
- an ever increasing standard of living
- stonks go up to prevent a pensioner revolt and to inflate egos of billionaires
We are kind of equivocating about "the grind" though. There is the grind of a student keeping their heads in books and activities while friends play video games or party or whatever. This grind has a light at the end of the tunnel in the form of obvious graduation dates and similar rites of passage.
Then there is the grind of working at McDonalds or Walmart because that is the only opportunity left to you, and that is a grind that might easily go on forever unless you win the hunger games and get into a management track rat race.
(This is sort of an aside. Yes, bring all the hardworking immigrants here, please. And maybe let them have those road trips, too.)