Labor markets do not function and most labor statistics do not show an accurate picture of the economy’s health…nor lack thereof. As you say Bill the participation rate is probably the most telling and significant stat. Short and long term with orthodox thinking prevailing there is no way participation rate has to go but down. The internal logics of profit making systems, innovation and AI are all efficiency, that is efficiency of cost (primarily labor costs), efficiency of human effort and efficiency of human input at all.

With orthodox financial thinking and private finance’s virtual monopoly powers on credit creation, its utterly narrow restriction on the form that finance can take (loan only) and worst and most false of all, its claim to ownership of the credit it creates out of nothing (the ex nihilo-ness is not the problem) …..we and our progeny are all slowly boiling frogs in an actually non-functional macro-economic system.