David Autor

Work is much, much better than it was 100 years ago for almost everybody.

It's less precarious.

It's less dangerous.

People work fewer hours, and they have higher standards of living.

And many people think, oh, we're all still working so hard, even though we have all this technology.

Doesn't that prove that Keynes was wrong?

But in fact, the average American works under 2,000 hours a year.

They worked over 3,000 hours a year 100 years ago.

We entered labor force later in life.

We retire when we have decades of healthy years ahead of us.

We have not squandered all this productivity growth by just turning ourselves into work slaves.

That's a public misconception.

If we had a world where we were much more productive, we could have more leisure.

We could have better health care.

We'd still hopefully have to work.

We'd still be needed.

But with the same amount of work, we could have more leisure jobs.

Better health, probably the most important, and enjoyment of our time.

So that would be a great future.

It's not out of reach.