The problem is that, everyone responds by saying "people don't HAVE to work now", but whenever you talk about people not being able to earn incomes, there isn't much thought put into how they will live. All of the effort is going into things that will eliminate earning opportunities for people, and little or none going into how to support the people who can no longer find work.

I'm not going to argue that we should hold back innovation to preserve jobs, or that we should have people working 40+ hours per week as our goal. The simple fact is, however, that attitudes and government policies are really far away from supporting a 'post-work' society, and are actually getting further and further away.

People who control capital in western societies - and are the primary beneficiaries of automation and other techniques that are causing many jobs to disappear - already feel like they pay too many taxes, and are generally good at finding ways to make sure they pay less. Even a level of basic income that would provide a poverty-level standard of living for people feels politically impossible right now.

I don't fully disagree with you, but I find a lot of these "post-work" responses to be really hand-wavy.