Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy

Alas, this is about the level of analysis I've come to expect from years of reading The New Republic on issues like this. Neither cultural nor legal conditions surrounding employment in the United States are ideal for workers who have the preferences of the author of this article,[1] but neither are they so horrific that the economy is "hurt" in a big way, especially compared to the economies of other countries.

Other comments posted before mine have already pointed out that overall prosperity in the United States is quite high, and I might add that many of the newly industrialized countries of east Asia (which characteristically have high population densities and limited natural resources, and thus are a model of what policies it takes to be prosperous despite a lack of natural advantages) increase steadily in wealth and general prosperity[2] despite ignoring parts of the author's advice.

For me, the crucial fact to keep in mind in any of these decry-America threads on Hacker News is that people vote with their feet. The United States continues to be a highly desired country to immigrate to,[3] so whatever trade-offs the United States economy offers, there are still a lot of people who think they are better trade-offs than the trade-offs in the familiar home country they were born in.

[1] http://www.newrepublic.com/authors/bryce-covert

[2] http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/17/business/world-rich-list-s...

[3] http://www.gallup.com/poll/161435/100-million-worldwide-drea...

http://www.census.gov/topics/population/foreign-born.html

http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/immigrate/immi...

AFTER EDIT: I note the downvotes indicating disagreement, and I am curious about what you disagree with. Please let me know.

And I am amused by this correction to the submitted article: "Correction: This piece originally stated that workers with smartphones spent 72 hours a week on their off time checking work e-mail. In fact, the 72 hours include working hours, and the workers are just professionals, managers, and executives. We regret the error." We are not talking about a strongly numerate analysis here.

That Cadillac ad is awesome. I'd never seen it before.

It watches like a parody, but at the end you're hit by the reality that yes, this guy is being completely serious. The message really is "sure, I traded away my quality of life, but look at all this stuff!"

That's actually the notion that Cadillac is trying to sell. Amazing that they're doing such a good job of it.

Fortunately, there's no real trick to getting back that quality of life. You just need to take more vacation time. You can negotiate this in to your package, but if you're in as hot a talent market as we are today, you might find more success with simply taking it. "Hey, as a heads up, I'll be taking 3 weeks off at the beginning of June" followed a few months later by "Hey, I'm off to Kalymnos for a couple weeks in October", followed by "I'll probably be out of contact between Xmas and New Years."

Note the lack of "asking" above. The correct attitude to take is that it's them who are acting irrationally by suggesting that you shouldn't take a healthy amount of time off to live your life.

Er, what about oil? I'd have thought the oil industry on its own was more than 3%, and industries affected by gasoline costs are a huge sector.

You actually think people decide whether to take a vacation or not because of what they read in the media and NOT based on the culture of the company they work at?

I thought that ad was more "look at me, I'm a crazy hard working American AND I drive electric. They're not mutually exclusive!"