[compostor42]

The enormous amount of immigrants (both legal and illegal) to the US is definitely a huge factor.

They say the current population won't do the unpleasant jobs that immigrants do because the pay is too low. It seems no one has stopped to consider that those jobs pay so low because there is a seemingly endless supply of cheap immigrant workers to do them. It drives wages down and provides little incentive for automation.

The ancient Greeks invented the steam engine but never really used it because they had no shortage of slave labor. There was no incentive to further develop that technology.