In recent months I've seen a lot about the end of work, how automatization is reducing the need for jobs.  We already have fewer jobs than people and that problem is only going to get worse.  Of course people and governments have begun experimenting with what's next.  We had a really interesting three part series in First Forum at church on this topic.

Here is a provocative essay saying that the goal of full employment is wrong, as such a thing is not even possible anymore.  The essay invites us to consider the meaning of life once work has ceased, a radical change in our Western picture of the good life, dating back to Plato.

So this Great Recession of ours – don’t kid yourself, it ain’t over – is a moral crisis as well as an economic catastrophe. You might even say it’s a spiritual impasse, because it makes us ask what social scaffolding other than work will permit the construction of character – or whether character itself is something we must aspire to. But that is why it’s also an intellectual opportunity: it forces us to imagine a world in which the job no longer builds our character, determines our incomes or dominates our daily lives.