I don't know how I would have access to food, shelter, and healthcare if I decided to stop working and spend the rest of my life doing recreational engineering. Post-scarcity requires automation to the point that the cost of survival becomes a rounding error on the rest of the economy. When it's possible to survive without engaging in trade (or spending the majority of your life gathering food and shelter from raw materials), we'll be in a post-scarcity economy (and I will be first in line to take the offer).
Today, it's quite cheap (relative to average incomes) to provide for basic needs if you define basic needs to food, a few sets of clothing and a heated place live. Problem is, we define that as being in deep poverty now. Now most people living in developed economies include things like 12 years of basic schooling, health care for most ailments, a dozen sets of clothing, reliable home heating, indoor plumbing, various in-home kitchen appliances, indoor plumbing, communications tools, some entertainment, the means to travel many miles every day, etc, etc as "basic needs". 100 years ago, at an absolute level anyway, this was an upper class level of wealth.
In other words, the bar constantly rises as society's overall wealth increases.