What happens to economics in a futuristic world?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Post-Scarcity
(a very, very good thing)

Either that, or we continue down the path of neoliberal policies that artificially maintain scarcity through promoting "competition" in every aspect of human life, and end up in a dystopian horror with a 40-50% structural unemployment rate where the unemployed are seen as lazy moochers who just need to pull themselves by their bootstraps.

[Antonio the Sixth]

So all the dystopian fears is really on the distribution of income, not its level.

Well, duh. I thought that point was obvious.

You seem to think that should somehow reassure us. I don't see how a society where 99.9% are dirt-poor and 0.1% are filthy rich is any better than a society where everyone is dirt-poor. In fact, I'd actually say the latter is preferable ceteris paribus.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Besides, since economics doesn't really strike at what people worry about with income inequality, I'm really implying economics will matter less and politics will matter more. Doesn't that at least reassure you?

It definitely would if politics itself hadn't adopted a frame of analysis that assesses the validity of public policy based exclusively on economic criteria. I think we've already been over this.