Earlier quoted context omitted.
Start your own business, work fewer hours, and take the cut in pay. That's what I did, and I have no regrets. It's the best decision I ever made.
In my experience this is pretty bad advice for a lot of people. Starting a business is 1) almost always more time consuming and stress-inducing than working a normal job, 2) tends to end up being 20% the stuff you enjoy doing and 80% the stuff you don't, and 3) has an incredibly high chance of being really bad for you financially. A potentially better solution several of my friends have pursued to good effect is to g…
The point isn't to "start a business", it's to carefully engineer a viable business - which means doing solid research on customer numbers and income/profit estimates, creating a system for acquiring customers, and so on.
Basically an adult plan. Not am impulse or hobby business.
And that includes setting work limits for yourself, so you don't become the cliched 80-hr a week self-employed robot.
2) is certainly true. But it's true for any job. It's very rare for work to be wholly positive, no matter what you do.
The most basic difference is that you have an internal locus of control. This immediately removes a lot of stress, because you're no longer responsible for cleaning up other people's mistakes, or pandering to unrealistic whims.
You're still vulnerable to macro-economics, although that's true of any job. But you can also improvise and pivot your way out of difficulties - which is much harder when you're being managed from above.