No Jospeh, you didn’t address the main point that cantoresq and I made. In the old days, only a select few sat and learned. You can’t compare that to today, where a huge percentage sit and learn all day. The money to support them has to come from somewhere.
I once asked my Rosh Yeshiva why so many people are encouraged to sit in kollel all day, when that was never the norm before. he told me that after WW2, we had lost so many gedolim, and Frum Judaism was in bad shape. Many people were leaving yiddishkeit because of their experiences. He said that we needed to rebuild, and needed to produce gedolim to do that. He said that’s why the kollel lifestyle was encouraged like never before.
I think that now, we have the gedolim we need. The Baal Teshuva movement is stronger than it’s ever been. It’s time to go back to the way things were.