John Maynard Keynes predicted in 1930 that increased standard of living and leisure will replace drudgery of work, thanks to technology. For all we know, instead of a logical conclusion, this might have been a feel-good statement.
Working hours have increased across all fields. Only people in those fields that already had lots of working hours can claim to have no increases, like medical care and police workers.
Technology has enabled us to take work home from office as well. This includes work stress and politics, but work is also literally reaching our homes. As a certain Toor saheb used to say, "when your company starts to issue work laptops, start looking for a new company."
So far as standard of living is concerned, we have so much more stress than before. Even school going children are burdened with so much work and activities, it looks more like a war scale crash course rather than education for the sake of enlightenment. Sometimes I tell my friends with children that the homework is meant for the them and not the children!
Some people say that better standard of living includes eradication of many diseases like polio, chicken pox and the like. The speed with which the world defeated bird flu, swine flu and the recent zika virus was amazing. But while we have eradicated most infectious diseases, we are becoming more and more susceptible to degenerative diseases like cancer and tumors. I am not sure whether it is better diagnosis or some other factor, but reported cases of various diseases of the mind are also going up.
While my thoughts could be more optimistic, the facts above cannot be denied completely.
