The Nobel Prize– winning economist Gary S. Becker wrote in 1965: “If anything, time is used more carefully today than a century ago. When people are paid more, they work longer hours because work is so much more profitable than leisure.” Now the average American works 140 hours more per year than the average British citizen and 300 hours more than the average worker in France. We are trading leisure time for money, and because wages haven’t grown much, the trade isn’t a good one.
