These are proper pipe dreams in society like US, attacking on basic freedoms and rights (ie to work yourself to death and be stupid enough to be proud about it)

These are proper pipe dreams in society like US, attacking on basic freedoms and rights (ie to work yourself to death and be stupid enough to be proud about it). US, nor any other capitalist economy is not run by hippies who are going to do such social experiments. I'd say people on top who actually hold the power are quite happy about the state of things, and complaints of average Joe are not something they bother with. At the end, the core of American dream is that your success is a function of how hard you try, so if you see yourself failing your are just slacking (not that I agree its healthy for individuals nor for a society I would like to live in, but that's another topic). Btw FWIH Japan is mostly screwed up due to long term demographic curve, something knocking on the doors of ie Europe too, with their borderline racist approach to foreigners, even very similar Koreans. If you work 5am-10pm and have to excuse yourself to your boss for each leaving only after 12 hours of rather ineffective bureaucratic work, very few want to add raising kids on top of that.