Rich People Work Longer Hours Than Poor People Do
In 1899, economist Thorstein Veblen wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class, where he referred to the rich, ruling class as lazy people who do leisurely work if at all.
Fast forward a hundred years or so, and the opposite is now true: rich people work longer hours than poor people do!
Here’s an op-ed piece by economist Dalton Conley for The New York Times:
Perhaps for the first time since we’ve kept track of such things, higher-income folks work more hours than lower-wage earners do. Since 1980, the number of men in the bottom fifth of the income ladder who work long hours (over 49 hours per week) has dropped by half, according to a study by the economists Peter Kuhn and Fernando Lozano. But among the top fifth of earners, long weeks have increased by 80 percent.
This is a stunning moment in economic history: At one time we worked hard so that someday we (or our children) wouldn’t have to. Today, the more we earn, the more we work, since the opportunity cost of not working is all the greater (and since the higher we go, the more relatively deprived we feel).
In other words, when we get a raise, instead of using that hard-won money to buy “the good life,” we feel even more pressure to work since the shadow costs of not working are all the greater.
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