The economics professor Davide Cantoni studied this phenomenon and concluded that while Protestantism doesn’t make you wealthier, money doesn’t seem to be the point. “Work becomes the object in itself,” Cantoni concluded. This idea has been confirmed by other researchers. The University of Pennsylvania professor Alexandra Michel says people put in long hours not for “rewards, punishments, or obligation” but because “many feel existentially lost without the driving structure of work in their life—even if that structure is neither proportionally profitable nor healthy in a physical or
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