>People in the past worked longer hours,with less vacations, didn't have longer education or retirement etc. So they've worked less. The per capita aggregate d

>People in the past worked longer hours,with less vacations, didn't have longer education or retirement etc. So they've worked less. The per capita aggregate demand for labour has massively increased since 200 years ago. If you divide the amount of wages paid out in the aggregate by the number of people, you see it has increased something on the order of 20X. People work less because they have less need to work, as a result of much higher levels of wages/wealth. If they so chose, there would be plenty of work they could do, and that there is much higher levels of demand (as measured by constant dollars paid out) for it than there was in the past. >Further more , what we do know from history is that technology does cause transition periods with heavy unemployment and other forms of suffering. Technology has not historically caused transition periods with heavy unemployment.