new industries have not arisen that provide mass employment the way the old ones did

it's the coming age of leisure, innit?

there's a field a mile from my house, where the farmer grows barley, oats or wheat. one day on my way home i saw the thresher at work, so stopped to chew the fat with the old boys. they told me that field, when they were children, took 10 days to two weeks to harvest for ten people, working even by moonlight to get in the sheaves before the first storms of late summer.

now the thresher does the whole thing in 45 minutes!

yet how many social planners are thinking about what to do with all those workers' energy?

ditto the industries outsourced to cheap labour countries...

i don't see any longterm solution barring a 'citizen's wage', an acceptance that relaxation and leisure do wonders for quality of life, and that work can be many things other than your 'job', especially if said job does not exist...

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty