...and needed skills will change. If you expect to prosper because what you’re good at *used* to be in demand, you can expect to be left behind.
We can dream of labor jobs with great benefits and a pension, but that’s a smaller and smaller piece of the pie these days. And it’s not because cigar-chomping executives are sucking off all the money and getting rich at the working stiffs expense, it’s because of competition from all over the globe—something we weren’t up against as much a generation ago. Best to get ahead of the competition and take charge of your future, rather than expect somebody to provide one for you just because you won the ovarian lottery and were born in the most prosperous time and country in the history of mankind. BTW, if you’ve got what it takes to be a cigar-chomping exec, more power to you. We’ve got room for hundreds of thousands of you in our 300 million-plus population.
As to taxes...our elected officials have saddled us with this cluster stuff of regulations, which are more about making constituents happy and less about funding the necessary functions of government. Best to take your deductions to the extent they are available and minimize the amount your pour into the bottomless pit. Don’t cheat—pay what you owe, and nothing more.