rant directed at the US government, intelligentsia, and business leaders:

If you didn't want a labor shortage in 2021, then you needed to act throughout 1970-2003 when fertility rates were abysmal. This is locked in. There is no policy solution that will have an immediate effect. If you implement policies now that might have a positive effect on the fertility rate, you'll still have to wait 18 years for when that batch of workers enters the labor force. If you sleep on impending future problems for decades until they come unto full fruition, you have no one to blame but yourself. For the next half century at minimum, the US labor force will steadily and then suddenly and rapidly decline. This is baked in. You reap what you sow, and little was sown in the preceding decades.