“Imagine if we worked less. Imagine if we walked around our communities, talked to our neighbors, spent time in nature, played. Imagine if we could read, write, fall in love, without that nagging feeling of ‘needing to do something’; imagine if your life was your own.”
Building up and investment and living of it, is basicly retirment and it is done all over the place. Government run retirment schemes are pretty common around the world and basicly work with the promise of everybody getting some of it, once they reach a certain age. Hence there is a fairness factor in it as well.
Other then that the 40h per week is a somewhat recent change as well and it could be lowered to say a 24h per week. Obviously you need to be able to renegotiate contracts for that and earn enough, to be able to live from less work.