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AMERICANS WORK LONG HOURS
American society is remarkable for how hard its citizens work. The number of hours
worked per year in the United States is significantly higher than the number of hours
worked in France or Germany. It also appears modern Americans work harder than
the ancient Greeks, Romans, or Western Europeans of the Middle Ages. According to
Juliet Schor, “The lives of ordinary people in the Middle Ages or Ancient Greece and
Rome may not have been easy, or even pleasant, but they certainly were leisurely” [10,
pp. 6-7]. In the mid-fourth century, the Roman Empire had 175 public festival days. In
medieval England, holidays added up to about four months a year; in Spain, five months;
in France, six months. Schor notes, “There is considerable evidence of what economists
call the backward-bending supply curve of labor—the idea that when wages rise, workers
supply less labor....[Laborers] worked only as many days as were necessary to earn
their customary income” [10, p. 47].
We do not have to look back into history to find significantly shorter workweeks.
Consider contemporary “stone age” societies. The Kapauku of Papua never work two
days in a row. Australian aborigines and men of the Sandwich Islands work only about
4 hours per day. Kung Bushmen work 15 hours a week [10].
PROTESTANT WORK ETHIC
Why are Americans such hard workers? In his famous essay
The Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism
, Max Weber argues that the Protestant Reformation in general, and
Calvinism in particular, stimulated the growth of capitalism in Western Europe. Before
the Reformation, work was seen in a traditional light. Weber describes the traditional
view toward labor in this way:
A man does not “by nature” wish to earn more and more money, but simply to live
as he is accustomed to live and to earn as much as is necessary for that purpose. [14,
p. 60]
According to Weber, the Calvinist theology introduced a radically different concep-
tion of work. He writes:
Waste of time is thus the first and in principle the deadliest of sins....Thereli-
gious valuation of restless, continuous, systematic work in a worldly calling, as the
highest means to asceticism, and at the same time the surest and most evident proof
of rebirth and genuine faith, must have been the most powerful conceivable lever
for the expansion of that attitude toward life which we have here called the spirit of
capitalism. [14, pp. 157, 172]
We can see an example of the “Protestant work ethic” in the early history of New
England. The Puritans banished all holidays, insisting that Sunday be the sole day of
rest. In 1659 the General Court of Massachusetts decreed that citizens who celebrated
Christmas or other holidays by refusing to work or feasting should be fined or whipped.
TIME VERSUS POSSESSIONS
We have exchanged leisure time for material possessions. Compared to medieval Eu-
ropeans or modern Bushmen, we have vastly superior health care systems, educational
