Working your life away can yield...nice obituary!

[Iamme]

Some people are workaholics. Yes...they make a lot of money and are good providers for their families.

As a society even...isn't it getting more and more frenetic? We are trying to keep up with the Joneses...and the Japanese. The 30 year work week we heard about (10 years ago or whatever) is like...history. No time for the life of leisure. Because we are being priced out of existance today (look at the price of cars, houses, health insurance,...even runaway government spending, just to name a few), we have to work more and more.

Those people without a truly defined skill often find themselves working 2 or 3 menial jobs to keep their heads afloat.

Now I ask you: How do you view this? Do you see any hope for us in the future to be able to stop and smell the roses? Do you think we ashould get together and try to do something about it? Perhaps you don't see a problem and think it's going along just fine. Anyway, I would like to hear from you.

[QuarkChild]

Originally posted by Iamme
Those people without a truly defined skill often find themselves working 2 or 3 menial jobs to keep their heads afloat.

Now I ask you: How do you view this? Do you see any hope for us in the future to be able to stop and smell the roses? Do you think we ashould get together and try to do something about it?
I read an article somewhere on a trend called "downshifting." Apparently some families have made a conscious decision to cut back their working hours and/or take a lower paying job (with less hours) in order to have more free time, accepting that as a result they can afford fewer consumer goods. There are some people for whom working fewer hours isn't an option if they want to make enough money to support their family. On the other hand, there are people like my parents, who work pretty long hours but have a lot of income to show for it. People like them could make a choice to work less if they wanted. Apparently my parents think that having a nice house and a lot of nice stuff is more important than having a 30-hour work week.

Right now I work half-time and go to class half-time, so my income is pretty small but at least I have a lot of control over what hours I work, and I don't have to get up before 11am most days. That's more important to me than being able to buy stuff.

So to answer your question--"Should we do anything about it?" It's a personal choice (for most people, I mean, not the people who have to work 3 jobs to stay afloat.) People have the freedom to choose what lifestyle suits them, and I think that's how it should be.

[!Xx+-Rational-+xX!]

How much you work means nothing. It's a scientific fact that people who spend lots of time ranting online about stuff they don't believe in have much better lives and will get a great obituary.