There's no such thing as post-scarcity. Scarcity is imposed by physics, not a lack of technology.
What changes is our expectations, beyond basic survival. Most people living below the federal poverty line have one or more televisions with active cable, a smartphone, and air conditioning; nearly all of them, in the high 99.x percents, have refrigerators, which implies that nearly all of them are housed as well, and effectively none go without food and sufficient warmth to sleep by circumstance.
In the sense of survival, the United States is effectively post-scarcity. What you're talking about is more "post-ambition".
Scarce is the opposite of proximate, not the opposite of plentiful.
Yes, we're nowhere close to "post-scarcity" in the Star Trek or Iain Banks sense. But proximity is also a function of technology, and in a hypothetical world where human labor is mostly obsolete (STEM included), it approaches zero.
It's fair (and I think correct) to not expect the world to go so far in that direction any time soon enough to be relevant, but many do. Scratch a UBI supporter and you'll often find a big believer in AI.
What changes is our expectations, beyond basic survival. Most people living below the federal poverty line have one or more televisions with active cable, a smartphone, and air conditioning; nearly all of them, in the high 99.x percents, have refrigerators, which implies that nearly all of them are housed as well, and effectively none go without food and sufficient warmth to sleep by circumstance.
In the sense of survival, the United States is effectively post-scarcity. What you're talking about is more "post-ambition".
Scarce is the opposite of proximate, not the opposite of plentiful.