Quite surprising that the article does not mention, not even in passing, Russell's In Praise of Idleness [0]. Back in the 1930s Russell observed that a small fraction of the population had managed to sustain the British wartime economy in WWI, while the great majority of the workforce was in the trenches. Of course in peacetime you may want more prosperity, but the idea that this would require _everybody_ (well, at least every able-bodied male, this being the 1930s) to work _full time_ was already absurd back then.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Praise_of_Idleness_and_Othe...