A lot of people don't understand why we still work so hard, and a reason wasn't suggested. Let's try breaking it down: The author made an interesting point abo

A lot of people don't understand why we still work so hard, and a reason wasn't suggested. Let's try breaking it down: The author made an interesting point about choosing between the following: - work 11 hours for 1950-level productivity - work 23 hours for 1975-level productivity - work 29 hours for 1990-level productivity But the following option isn't discussed: - work 40 hours for 2014 (or current) level productivity The first 3 options representing increased productivity over the past means that we can "cash out" at any time, i.e. pick a defined level of wellness, and work at that pace. This means we can stop trying to push the boundary and enjoy the fruits of our labor. Now, viewed this way, is it any surprise that we still work 40+ hours? We don't collectively agree that we should cash out. If we cash out, we won't be curing diseases; going to Mars; making the next Snapchat. Don't get me wrong, resources are definitely (in an idealized sense) misallocated; I don't think so many people should be engaging in digital marketing and social media business pursuits. But it is what it is, and we'll keep going. Regarding working >40 hours/week, this is simply because as technology creates scale of productivity, the middle class finds it harder and harder to keep up with increasing costs of living and commodities. People think America got something wrong after that golden period of the 50s - 70s. Yeah, after that we decreased taxes on the wealthy (Mitt Romney paid 13% in 2011 or something), but the capacity for people to do useful stuff has just gone down due to technology and automation; unions disappeared; globalization happened. tl;dr - productivity will continually increase, but we'll never get out of the rat race.