"The trouble is, we can’t get there from here, not without wholesale changes. Machines will reduce labor, yes, great: but equally, across all of society? You must be joking. If technology cuts the demand for labor by 25%, then laborers will earn 25% less, or 25% of them will become unemployed, while all the benefits go to those who own and/or built/wrote that technology. That’s capitalism."
The fact is jobs will eventually be obsolete, which means everything will be free. Unfortunately only a minority of people believe this will actually happen. The disbelief occurs because everything being free goes completely against everything we have ever known. Scarcity is a deeply engrained aspect of life contrary to this technological epoch we are entering.
Traditionally survival depended on seizing wealth from your fellow humans. This means despite jobs in the year 2013 disappearing the political and business leaders of the world cling irrationally to their immense wealth; old habits are hard to break.
So, circa 2045 everything will be free thus nobody will need to work, but due to current ignorance of the future there could be immense turmoil during the transition. Capitalism is dying, or it is dead, but like a headless chicken the system doesn't realise it has no hope of being sustained.
The ideal pathway into utopia (everything free, no jobs) is the implementation of a Basic Income no later than 2015, which would facilitate a smooth transition to Post-Scarcity (everything being free), but the unawareness of world leaders means it's unlikely Basic Income will be implemented until 2025 at the earliest, perhaps 2035 would be more realistic considering general political stupidity.
Between now and bleated Basic Income I wouldn't be surprised if a world war occurred. The global financial crisis has been concealed but not eradicated, I suspect the problems will resurge perhaps sometime around 2015-2018, and maybe then people in power will start thinking seriously about Basic Income but by then it might be too late to avoid disaster.