There are more goods than just smartphones. Arguably more important ones too.

Rent, food, energy, all the things you need to live are getting more expensive with inflation. The welfare system is lagging behind and the benefits need to be bumped a little every year or so or it gets harder and harder to live on them. Unfortunately we apparently can't always seem to afford to increase the benefits. For instance student benefits in Finland were "cut" by simply not increasing them in accordance with the index.

Very true: http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/

Got it.

It's a pretty flimsy disguise though. If people are simultaneously complaining about bad infrastructure and high taxes, then they are simply saying that they want their earned money themselves more than they want to use it for shared infrastructure projects. People would just rather have the latest iPhone than good highways. :-/

It's a lack of political will to enforce the deal between the state and corporation (edit: and citizens). Governments grant tax cuts to corporations (edit: and citizens), even thought it hurts the very infrastructure and society that enabled corporations to extract the money from the environment.

The current taxation systems nowhere pays for all the externalities. If a company made a dollar in a country, a fair share of it should get back to the state for providing the environment that made it possible. Education, security, infrastructure.

I can imagine a future where the basic standard of living for everyone is like what we give senior citizens today. Everyone is clothed, fed, has a roof over their heads, and has access to medical care.

But if you want more than basic, then you have to perform labour of some sort. Want to take the trip to Mars? Gotta work for it.

Yes, there will be a difference between those who labour and those who don't, but I still think it would be a huge win if noone in society would ever struggle to put food on their table.

There's a struggle between retired pensioners and everyone else in society about how much retired citizens should get, but there's still an understanding on both sides that past labour has some value, but that that value is less than present labour, so there's a balance. I hope the same would be true in a post-labour society.

And, of course, the difference between the labourers and the not-labourers would be an incentive to reach post-scarcity where that difference is wiped out.