Something that occurred to me the other day is that our problem going forward is going to be a job shortage. With productivity gains over the past 25 years, the problem with our economy is no longer an inability to produce stuff. The problem is there's no longer enough work for everyone to make enough money to buy the stuff. Going forward, we're not going to have a stuff shortage. We're going to have a work shortage.
This makes me think two things. First, we need to begin to view the absence of work as a good thing. A life that doesn't require a 40 hour work week is a benefit.
Second, I understand now why Europe has abbreviated work weeks and long vacations. To make our system function, you don't need to ration stuff, you need to ration work. You can't have any one person work too much, because you need to make sure everyone has some work to do.