life is pretty amazing. fwiw i just spend a week on a beach in Florida eating fresh shrimp drinking nice beer and swimming in a pool. the first day i got there, i watched a dolphin swim only 50 feet in front of me. the final day i watched the sunset from a dock and fish were jumping in the twilight. "what is there to look forward to?"? that is your question? lol um
"wage slave" is a drastic overstatement. it does a giant disservice to actual slavery. people who were whipped and beaten for trying to leave, who were denied the ability to educate themselves, who were tortured and murdered. even before slavery there was feudalism and villainage, where you lived on someone else's land and were forbidden from eating most types of food and if you were caught trying to work for someone else they would lock you up in the public stocks for several days (minimum sentence). also there are actual slaves right now, forced labor in 3rd world countries used to make Nike shoes, ethnic prisoners producing fashionable electrionic devices, etc. you could be one of those people. thankfully i'm in the USA and freedom and all that "nonsense" really means something.
comparing those actual slavery conditions to being a "wage slave" these days which involves going somewhere for less than 1/4th of your time and usually doing the same things you would be doing otherwise: transporting consumer goods from one location to another, doing computer based work, driving to/from locations, goofing off, listening to music, browsing the internet, etc. a full 40 hour workweek is still only 40/168, which is less than a fourth your time, to afford to meet all your physical needs as a modern adult human (food, shelter, wifi).
WORK of the past was actually work, physical manual labor, backbreaking WORK, with very little class mobility, and very little reward. nobody is breaking their backs blogging about Spider-Man or selling lattes. yes if you work retail, you have to endure some special stresses, but you could also argue that the (slighter higher) physical demands of the service industry only makes those types of jobs healthier than sitting in front of a screen for 8 hours. then you consider that perhaps the demands of a work lifestyle forces a sedentary society to get at least SOME exercise, possibly adding years to your life and improving mental/physical QOL.
we have it SOOOOO good today. people have no idea. this is because most people are ignorant of history. try reading about life just 100 years ago, when you were sent to work in a factory shortly after your 12th birthday. we didn't even have a "weekend".
i dispute this calculation of "leisure time". first of all sleeping, travelling, eating, and basic maintenance are not quite "WORK". you can listen to whatever music you want while doing all of those things. you can clean your house naked while drinking beer if you want. you can sleep however little or much you want. you can eat whatever you want. as for 45 minutes to "prepare for work" which doesn't include the 45 minutes cooking, cleaning, eating, i don't know. outside of taking a shower (15 minutes) and putting on clothes (5 minutes) that seems a bit inflated. also you can watch youtube videos while you get dressed, converting that back into leisure time.
these things also do not rob you of leisure. is it not pleasurable to eat something you love? do you not PLAY in your DREAMS when you sleep? does sleep really "take away" from leisure time? what if you have a three day weekend, does that mean you stay away all weekend long to max it out? what if you ENJOY sleeping? hell, what if you ENJOY working? uh oh.
at any rate, if the basic necessities of life for an adult (not a child who is literally physically dependent on their parents) are too difficult to be met, that is some SERIOUS entitlement going on lol.
