Which in turn was fueled by the consumers' desire for cheap stuff, and for their portfolios to earn them a lot of money to be able to retire early and live comfortably while letting a cheaper workforce far away do more and more of the dirty and dangerous jobs.

The "bean counters" are under pressure just like everybody else. They didn't come up with their targets and incentives out of nowhere.

That's a fair point! I am myself wondering how much of this is policy and how much is the "natural way".

That's what happens when wages are relatively stagnant compared to increases in productivity.

To be fair, they were uncoordinated actors in a prisoner’s dilemma competition.

This was the role of government to manage but there weren’t enough non-lawyers at positions of power to understand fixes.

Now with the massive fraud seen in local states, civilians will rightfully trust institutions less and the downward trend will continue.