> the economy as is produces enough surplus that one third of working aged males are able to live (and seemingly comfortably) without working People lived with

> the economy as is produces enough surplus that one third of working aged males are able to live (and seemingly comfortably) without working People lived without working for someone else before there was an America. So why have wealth at all? Living off others is leveraging wealth inequality, not thriving despite it. The number of people not working for someone else, that I know, is about 10. It is not comfortable by modern standards unless your bar for "seemingly comfortable" is have a constructed roof vs living in the wilderness. Most people without jobs, that I know, are scavengers to some degree or rely on welfare. I have heard the scavengers called "wookies" (which is a perversion of Star Wars tropes, a misnomer for Jawas) in California. They look at what saleable items they can collect to a central location for evaluation. They repair/repurpose and sell/use or it ends up at the dump or leave it strewn about. If you've worked at a strip mall, you might notice dumped items appear in the back parking. Look for people who empty out homes after repossession or after probate deals with a solitary death, and you'll find them. Constantly in a survival mode. A non-trivial part of my wife's family are habitual welfare consumers. One branch of the family is having another baby which will allow them to get a bigger apartment by state child welfare rules disallowing certain age boys/girls living in the same room. They habitually smoke tobacco and weed, playing Xbox (gifted by another branch) and house another "family" member. He is the grandpa dodging child support and is purely a wookie.