One thing not mentioned (and Rich, why so relentlessly obnoxious to your interview subject??) is that Americans have much less vacation time (and often not even any sick time) than people in places like Europe, and that the U.S. doesn't even have a fucking paid maternity leave law.

Shorter: libs are lazy

I find that people will always, in the end, do what they want. People who enjoy working for 50 hours a week will find a way, and people who would prefer working 20 hours a week will find a way.

Anyone who works an office job knows that in a eight hour workday you typically dick around for at least an hour, either goofing off online or chatting with co workers. The work will always fit into the time allowed for it, that is kind of just how people operate, which is why many NEED deadlines to stay on task.

@1: Asking someone to explain their points and offering counter arguments is not being obnoxious.

It is called an interview. No one learns anything if the interviewer is an obsequious, agreement machine. If anything, those were some soft ass questions, chosen specifically for the interviewee to shoot down with ease.

Let's face it: the system is rigged to induce human beings to expend inordinate amounts of time and effort performing "work"; trading our labor in exchange for recompense that mostly goes to servicing debt: student loans, mortgages, car payments, and credit card bills, which in large part is one of the main engines that drive our economic machine.

More than 150 years ago Henry David Thoreau determined he could provide for all his material needs: food, clothing & shelter; by working a mere six weeks out of the year, thus leaving the remaining 46 weeks free for study, observation, contemplation, and creative endeavor. Granted, he lived at the very beginning of what eventually became the modern Industrial Age, but in principal his reasoning is still valid. People work as hard as they do, not because hard work is desirable in-and-of itself, but because they have to in order to pay for all the debt they've accumulated, or to fulfill the consumerist desires our Capitalist Culture has instilled in us from birth. The Puritan work ethic of "hard work is its own reward" has been perverted into a social doctrine that declares anyone unwilling to give less than 110% of their effort, regardless of whether they truly believe the effort has any value or provides any personal satisfaction, as "lazy", a "slacker", or all the other pejoratives we've come up with to describe those who would rather do something - anything - besides give up one-third or more of their life to toil under someone else's yoke.

If a significant number of people suddenly stopped working 40 hour weeks, 50 (or more) weeks a year, and consciously resorted to the kind of "voluntary simplicity" for which Thoreau advocated, our economic scaffolding would collapse pretty quickly, and of course those in the economic/class elite know this full-well; in fact, their own position is predicated on convincing the rest of us that we MUST work, and work really hard, really long, for many, many years, in order to continue the economic Ponzi Scheme that keeps them on top and us far below.

But, in order to free ourselves from the tyranny of work we'd have to be willing to live without the shiny toys our Consumerist Culture has indoctrinated us into believing we must have: the computers, cars, cell phones, jet ski's, ATV's, RV's, McMansions, etc., etc., which admittedly would be difficult for most of us to give up - but it could be done, and would probably be better for both us and for the planet in the long run. But, it's just as unlikely to happen, because most of us enjoy those material comforts, and frankly, our society isn't really designed to allow individuals as large a degree of leeway in terms of true Thoreauean self-sufficiency as was available in his day. It's just not so easy these days to run off into the woods, build a cabin by an idyllic little pond, plant some vegetables, and contemplate the beauty and simplicity of living with nature, rather than fighting constantly to subdue it.

Still, it does sound rather nice - maybe someday...

That highly-touted, "head-down git-er-dun work ethic" fantastically enriches our plutocrats while squandering the workers' precious seconds on Earth. It also does not make the workers rich at all. In fact it barely keeps them alive.

Creating a society where the workers feel they should be GRATEFUL & INDEBTED to employers for enslaving their lives is a master stroke of wealthy elitist psycho-social engineering. Religions like Christianity are intentionally twisted into this notion to further guarantee worker supplication: "God hates you on earth, so work hard on earth and god MIGHT be nice to you when you are dead." Oh, but God isn't signing checks. And for some reason he likes work best when you needlessly suffer. Some deity, that one.

Truth is that in our country there is plenty of wealth to go around; Americans simply allow themselves to mire in the current "work-to-death" system because "It is the way it has been." Any societal changes that might spread the wealth means TOTAL COLLAPSE, say the rich. Yes, because it means the less riches for the super-rich. No human requires, say, a billion dollars, and there is no meaningful justification for that kind of personal accumulation. Only GREED. We are an economy written by and for the wealthy and we can easily re-write it when we realize that what IS ain't what HAS TO BE. The monies of the rich could easily be spread out, Americans would lead fuller lives and the rich would even still be here. The exponential value of leading a fuller life, in economic terms, is incalculable.

@4: Thoreau's Walden Pond "experiment" was basically a sham. He depended on his nearby mother for many things, including laundering his clothing, and feeding him. He often went into town to take advantage of what was there, and consume products derived from the labor of others.

The fact of the matter is, living off the land, especially when attempting to do so alone, is WAY harder than the jobs most of us work, and more time consuming.

This is tired hippie bull crap that if 99.9% of the people who spout it actually tried, they would come running back to their desk jobs in less than a week.

@6:

Sure, it's hard work engaging in an entirely self-sufficient lifestyle, but it's also work that one does solely for ones self, not at the behest of nor in servitude of others. That's why it's such a popular trope with far-right survivalist types - because, it's the ultimate form of good, old fashioned, 'Murkin bootstrapping independence. Still, even a small, incremental movement towards self-sufficiency, if adopted by a large enough group of people, would scare the bejeezus out of the uber-wealthy, if only because it would represent a tiny insurgency against the stranglehold they now have on our lives and productivity.

Because, the wage-slavery system we have today is also a sham; one perpetrated by those at the top who dangle the carrot of "work hard, keep your nose to the grindstone, and maybe someday you too will enjoy the golden toilets and endless champagne fountains we here in the 1% take for granted." You have a better chance of buying a winning PowerBall ticket or being the first person to walk on Mars than you do of ever making it into that exclusive aerie, but people keep buying into it, because, as the (most likely apocryphal) saying from Steinbeck goes: " Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."