What is the main cause of unemployment in the US?

[NoOneMan]

37. It takes energy & resources to provide for the elderly, among other things

That is a promise. An obligation. A debt that requires energy to fulfill now and in the future. When I say debt, Im not referring to the fiscalization of surplus (which has morphed into anything but). Im talking about tangible allocations of current and future energy that isn't being going to be used for substantial economic growth.

"Given where we are at today, and the resources available to us today, what is our best course for the future"

To abandon 'civilization' as a whole, adopt pantheism and convert immediately to a decentralized hunter-gatherer society.

But besides that, we are all pretty much screwed. Our glacier-fueled aquifers are near empty. Cheap oil is a thing of the past (we already scooped up the easy stuff made over millions of years of solar collection, burned in just a blink of the cosmic eye). The oceans are becoming acidic and our streams may be shot for producing salmon in 25 years. And we all know about the atmosphere. Its been a good ride, right? Not really.

The sooner we realize the unfeasability of not just growing, but even maintaining this over-leveraged civilizition, the sooner we can plan ahead and get about our lives. Of course, no empty suit is going to tell anyone the truth. Because of that, this is going to be one long miserable grinding halt we will witness over the next hundred years, while people still ask neo-classical economic questions about why systems fail to provide jobs for everyone.