Little actual work is required to provide for most human needs such as shelter, clothing, warmth, food, and water, and even new necessities, such as mobile phones and transportation. Technological advances allow progressively fewer workers to produce essential goods and services necessary for society to function. To distribute goods and services and maintain social cohesion, all other people must be employed in increasingly superfluous work to consume surplus abundance. Surplus time and idle hands represent a fundamental threat to society. The mechanism of control, subconsciously implemented throughout history, is to occupy people with meaningless work. As the total workforce required to sustain society approaches zero, progressively more people are employed to consume and dispose of wealth rather than to produce it. Resource scarcity, environmental degradation, and poverty are artificially created as side effects of the effort to keep people busy pretending to work.

Due to population growth and technological development, unnecessary work now consumes our resource base at an unsustainable rate and threatens all life on earth. The solution? Quit your job. Green Prosperity is a guide to personally disengage from the cycle of destruction, outlining concrete steps to take control of your life and live your own dreams. Author Thomas J. Elpel demonstrates how to join the ranks of the successfully unemployed, free to live off surplus abundance or re-engage and make a positive contribution. Green Prosperity outlines the path to achieve prosperity individually, as well as the road we must take to achieve sustainable prosperity for all.