Pillars of any economy

It never matters the size or the type of the economy.  The forces that hold it up are the same.  They fall into the following categories:

Education
Infrastructure
Production
Efficiency
Trust

These are the forces that move one from dependency or starvation to having what you need to having what you want to opulence.

On the other side are the destructive forces.  They all comprise burden of one form or another.

Commitments and promises
Debt
Crime
Security issues
Overhead

If you look at what has been happening here in the US with the idea of creating the first five items and cutting out the last five, you have to ask what we in the US have been thinking.