Somewhere in the distance, I hear a whip cracking...

The 40 hour work week is a myth:

"Americans work more hours by far than any other workers in the [industrialized] world," said Benjamin Balak, who teaches economic history at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla. "If you want to be a high-income wage earner, you have to work like a dog. If you want leisure in today's economy, you'll be stuck in a low-income job. It's income or leisure."

You know, it's a damn shame. Union members fought hard, and some died at the hands of the bosses in colluision with the government, for a 40 hour work week. They fought for our right to have some time to enjoy life; to live a life and not an existece where you are defined by a job that you spend half your day at. But the ever greedy CEOs whose appetite for the almighty dollar will never be quenched no matter what negative effect they have on the human condition, not even after we eventually have the first trillionaire, will force us to toil for them until we dropdead from exhaustion. It's sick. I'm not psychologist, but it's my personal opinion that somebody who is willing to cut the jobs of thousands of people, thus forcing other people to work longer hours to make up for all the lost work, just so they can line their already overstuffed pockets.. This kind of person is sick in the head, and they need some psychological help.

Even if you have a 40 hour work week, an 8 hour day, you are still robbed of your time. You usually have to drive an hour to and from your job, you have an hour lunch which increases the time of your shift to 9 hours, there's all the time in the morning you have to take to get ready for work.. Suddenly you're looking at 11-12 hours a day devoted to your job.

So, what's next? I was only a wee tyke back in the late 80's and early 90's, but I remember stories in the evening news about how "lazy" American workers were when compared with their Japanese counterparts, and how we needed to be more like the overworked Japanese. Well, it happened. When do we get the sleeping tubes installed next to our (ever decreasing in size) cubical?