Its an interesting sentiment... but ultimately it just rings a bit hollow yeah? As if nearly anyone would work 40 hours a week if they didnt have to. You think if 100 people were given enough money to cover their housing/food/leisure/travel they would go to a factory job 40 hours a week? Or even a job they enjoyed or had fun at? Or would they spend their time with loved ones, doing things they enjoy, filling their lives with interesting experiences they can enjoy in the moment and reflect back on?
I enjoy my job quite a bit, It even has value to me in that it contributes to society in a fulfilling way, but 100% I am looking forward to not being obligated to do it
For me, I look to the past to see what life could have been like were I born 100 - 200 -500 - 1,000 years ago and try to find the positives that being born now has.
And the reality is that even as soon as 100 years ago life was much, much harder and worse in almost every metric. Brutal jobs, brutal hours, with safety of no concern, even if you were a child. Housing? You were lucky if you could heat your home in some way in the winter, and air conditioning didnt even exist yet. Physical labor jobs were a large amount of the work, so many people simple worked themselves into uselessness and then suffered the rest of their lives.
It doesnt get much better going back further than that really. Plague anyone?
Today we enjoy a massive, massive amount of comfort in our lives. Have amazing, tasty, and safe food at our fingertips almost without issue. Can travel the entire globe effortlessly when even a cross country trek could have been a multi-month brutal affair with a death sentence for half the travel party. Modern medicine eliminates so many of the issues of the past.
In reality very few people "just" work for 40 years and then retire useless husks and then die. I suspect you spend some time with friends and loved ones, perhaps even travel and engage in leisure time kings and queens of 200 years ago couldnt dream of during those 40 years.