While I agree hours probably shouldn’t be going up, I think there’s a bit of a ratcheting effect at play.
If you take the classic “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”, you end up with the question of how you define ‘needs’.
As tech gets better, the standard of care goes up in healthcare - treatments that were ‘impractical’ 20 years ago are now expected standard of care. Same goes for safety and for standard of living. Electric lighting, aircon, floor space, your own bedroom not shared with 3 other kids, TV/telephone/internet. It’s now basically standard in first world countries to fully treat sewage and have aircon on buses - that wasn’t the case 50 years ago.
Every time automation displaces some drudge work, we’ll be able to find something new that technically could be done and would be nice to have. 30 years later people will be screaming bloody murder if that former nice-to-have breaks down.
That’s certainly not to say we’re efficiently using the labour we have.















Not just jobs. AI can’t hold copyright. This could have messy legal implications.