Three Goals for a Future of Less Work

Chapter 4 shifts from assessing the challenge of automation to reflecting on what we should be aiming for in a foreseeable future of less work. It argues that we should be looking to ensure a wide distribution of three goods: adequate income, more free time, and decent work (though less of it). It is the last of these—the value of work—that is most contested, but that most animates this book. Work has profound psychic, social, and political benefits even apart from the goods and services it produces and the income it yields. In particular, shared work can draw people together across social divisions that divide them in their non-work lives. We should aim to maintain decent work at the center of most people’s lives and livelihoods even in a future with less of it.