Tag Archives: Protestant work ethic

Working less is a radical notion today, but it hasn’t always been. Between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries, work hours declined steadily in the industrialized world. In 1956, then-vice president Richard Nixon said that a four-day workweek was “not too far distant.” But men today report working 100 more hours a year than in 1976. For women, it’s 200-plus hours. All these extra hours have helped more than double the productivity of the American worker in the past half-century — but they have also increased our energy consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions.
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