It would be a good conversation. I don't hear it starting. In fact, there was discussion of these issues in the 1960's and 1970's. By now, with the various crises on our heals, no one wants to consider the problems in this fashion.
Real happiness seems to come from something like the Buddhist ideas of mindfulness and acceptance, and that's true whether you're a poverty-sworn monk, a janitor, a CEO, or a pot-smoking layabout.
The idea of "rewarding work" vs. "empty hedonism" is an arbitrary Western construct with little basis in reality.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/690806 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill
That's not to say that working, alone, producing happiness is a correct idea, but it might make sense that accomplishment does. And these levels of accomplishment - cleaning the floor well for a janitor, for instance - can differ. Most people desire to "make a difference," another way of saying the same thing. If you're talking about deathbed wishes when looking back on a life, the more positive impact your life visited on others, the better.
Well, this is only one scenario of the things that can happen.
That's a big assumption there. More likely, companies will experience higher profit margins rather than pass along the entirety of the cost savings.