LOCAL SYSTEMS

"The issue the comes up with job training is that fact that we have too many people trained for practically every job, now."

Nothing can work on a top down national scale like this. The planners are too removed from the location's economic system (if it even has a system, there being such universal dependence on a central one.). And the work that everyone needs to do is repair (forever) the things that serve them. That and creating housing out of trash and discard, relatively free of cost. The macro system cannot work indefinitely. The fact that it's all we have (due to the traditional surfeit of energy) suggest some kind of transitional coping strategy to use what's here in a different way. Like you say, turning failed malls into housing, etc. All this kind of conversion require skill, but I doubt that these skills can be tailor made or learned from outside a relatively localized community. And of course local communities need to find a way (locally-enough) to get food. What I think a central organizing system would need to do is to see that the local ones work well enough to not cause too much trouble beyond their borders.