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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I realized that American hustle + grind culture is inescapable.

American (US) work culture that requires usually way beyond the 40 hour work week, often calling for nights and weekends and limited ACTUAL vacation time - as in you don't take calls, don't bring your work computer etc - for anyone who actually wants to have the trappings of the American middle class lifestyle: A house, a couple of cars, a couple of kids etc. No longer can a conventional 9 to 5 pay for that. 9 to 5 is more 8 to 6 anyways, even for the normal office grunt jobs. Nowadays, if you stay in a normal, non-managerial position, your wages/salary will stagnate, won't keep up with inflation, and you'll struggle to even afford the tiny apartment or shared housing with roommates and budget/Walmart groceries you had in your 20s. If you want to have a single family home and afford children, you have to work longer hours and sacrifice work life balance. That's the reality.

This lack of work life balance creates a very unhealthy society, where people are incentivized to cut corners on their health - not finding time to exercise, eating processed convenience foods, being exhausted while mostly sedentary. We are a very unhappy and unhealthy society.

But if we took the work/life balance approach of the repeatedly happiest, healthiest, best work-life balanced country - Denmark, our entire economy would collapse.

Denmark has a 37 hour work week that pretty much holds true. They have a mandatory year (sometimes two years) of family (maternity and paternity) leave, and five weeks paid vacation. But if we were to be more like Denmark, it would require us to have an overall more modest and quiet life with less consumption. Smaller homes, fewer cars, fewer gadgets, less consumerism overall. People would have to (gasp) ride the train or (horror) the bus! This wouldn't look like Soviet socialism, but would be a drastically less consumptive lifestyle than most of us are used to. And could you imagine what would happen to the economy if we all collectively consumed 20-40% less? An ungodly recession. Job losses every which-way, except the same oligarchs would still secure their profits just passing all their losses onto us.

The American economy as we know it is fueled by consumer debt, hyper consumption, and overwork culture. There's nothing we can do about it.[/quote]

You make a number of odd points.

To get anywhere it has always been the case that you have to work hard.  You mention the conventional 9-5 life as a relic of the past where you could still have a good life.  That has never been true.  Even if you were in a 9-5 job 50- years ago, the people who made it or went ahead were the ones that worked harder.  This is true with blue collar work -- the ones who do the overtime when needed are the ones that management trusts -- even in a union shop.  This is nothing new.

There are jobs where you can opt out of all that but for every action there is a consequence.

Denmark in particular is right now rethinking things like a less than 40 hr work week and other benefits.  You could move there and they could be gone.

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