“BTW, the reason why the majority in Lakewood are no longer learning full-time is that budget cuts forced the yeshivots to give exams and cutoff those who were not up to pa.”
I don’t see how that could be the reason, since BMG pays very little in the first place. The Kollel stipend is not what people are living on. I think most people who leave full-time learning do so either because they are not cut out to learn full-time forever or because once they have a certain number of kids, they can no longer afford to live on the wife’s salary.
“Full-time life-long learning should be only for a small elite.”
I don’t think that’s what the Gedolim and Roshei Yeshiva say. Of course, that also depends how you define “full-time life-long learning”. From one of your previous posts, my impression was that you were including those who work in Klei Kodesh. In that case, it is definitely not true.
If you literally mean full-time life-long learning (and are not including those who work in klei kodesh), it is POSSIBLE that you may be right (I don’t know enough to have an opinion on the matter – that is a question for the Roshei Yeshiva), but in that case, in EY as well, most people don’t learn full-time forever either.
Also, as GAW pointed out, there can be other considerations as well. He mentioned the army issue in EY, but there are other issues to take into account as well.
One important issue is the fact that it used to be possible for someone to work for 3 hours a day and to learn for 9 hours a day (as the Rambam talks about) but today that is rarely an option (especially in the US). Nowadays, if someone works, it often (and I think usually) means that they have very little time to learn. Even if someone feels that he is not cut out for full-time learning, he still has to weigh that against the fact that leaving full-time learning may mean having barely any time to learn.
Additionally, some people get too caught up in this idea that “not everyone is cut out to learn full-time” and assume too quickly that they are not cut out to learn full-time. There are many people who thought they were not the type to learn full-time but they persisted and discovered that they were.
There are people who are meant to learn full-time and people who are not. I don’t know how many or who is meant to do which. (The only ones who can really know that are the people themselves and their Roshei Yeshiva). But, I do know it is very presumptuous to say that it is a problem that people are learning full-time. Boruch Hashem, it’s an amazing thing that so many people are learning, they are holding up the world for us, and we should be very thankful for them for the zchusim they are providing us with. And we should certainly not be judging them negatively and assuming they are not meant to be learning.