AI And The New Prosperity: More Leisure AND More Stuff
AI And The New Prosperity: More Leisure AND More Stuff
Publish Date: 2026-04-21 07:30:00
Source Domain: www.forbes.com
Woman using AI in a hammock.
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Artificial intelligence has led us to speculate about the economic possibilities after productivity increases tremendously. We know people are much better off economically than our ancestors were 100 years ago. John Maynard Keynes predicted this—sort of—a century ago in an essay “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren.” He forecast continued growth of output per worker, which would generate higher wages. The higher wages would enable a worker to support a family with only 15 hours of labor a week! Keynes got the productivity forecast right, and the wage right, but the great economist was way off on the workweek. How he got that wrong may help us understand our future with AI.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made headlines a few years ago by noting our average workweek is well above 15 hours. She argued that greedy companies must not be passing the benefits of higher labor productivity on to their workers. In a Forbes article, I went through the math and found that if average people were willing to live at the standard of living of Britain in 1930, they could certainly work 15 hours per week, and even have extra money to spare. But few people today want to live in small dwellings without central heat, without a car and no vacations. They work more so they can have luxuries that were only dreamed of 100 years ago.
AI may lead us to increase our leisure time, Alex Taborrak recently wrote. Productivity has not only shorted the average workweek, it has also delayed the age of starting one’s first job and lowered the age of retirement. People are working a lower percentage of their lifespans. And we are enjoying even more leisure than Taborrak describes.
We have more free time because technology and economic prosperity have reduced the burden of ordinary household chores. Food preparation is a huge example. Our predecessors started a fire, burning coal or wood or peat, and then continued stoking the fire through the day. Then raw…
