Unemployment is on a long-term upward trend because as technology advances, it becomes economical to replace an increasing number of jobs with machines, starting with the lowest-skilled jobs first. Without eugenics, population decline will not increase the smart fraction in society, so to achieve economic growth, you constantly need fewer people to do more work.<p>That is, the more technology we have, the larger the portion of the population that is &quot;zero marginal product&quot; --- that is, the portion of the population that isn&#x27;t profitable to employ at any wage.<p>Improved education is no help, since most people do not have the intrinsic mental capacity to take full advantage of it. Intelligence is largely genetic and immutable.