Overworked American Questions
Questions to Guide Your Reading
Selections from: Juliet Schor, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (New York: Basic Books, 1993)
1. Over the last twenty years, has the amount of time Americans spend at their jobs increased or decreased? By how much?
2. Was the increase in work expected or unexpected? Why or why not?
3. It is widely known that American workers put in more hours of work per year than do their Western European counterparts. How much more? Does it strike you as odd that American workers should be putting in so much more work – and getting so much less time off – per year than workers in other parts of the world, especially since we are renowned for being the most productive and richest country in the world?
4. To produce the standard of living enjoyed by your great-grandparents in 1948, how many months of work per year would you need to work?
5. Why has leisure been such a conspicuous casualty of America’s prosperity? What answer does author Juliet Schor suggest?
6. According to Prof. Schor, what sorts of social problems has our increased workload contributed to?
7. According to Prof. Schor, “We live in what may be the most consumer‑oriented society in history.†How many more hours per year do Americans spend shopping than their counterparts in Western European countries?
8. According to Prof. Schor, what has been an important element that has resulted from, and made possible, America’s shopping frenzy? (We’ll have more to say on the financial drawbacks of our current situation in due time. The statistics may startle you.)
9. Has the increasing consumption of the last forty years made Americans generally happier, or less happy?
10. Has the increasing consumption of the last forty years made Americans generally more satisfied than in the past when they spent less? (A related question: Have you ever been to a poor country in Latin America or Asia? Were the people distinctly less happy and less satisfied than we are in the U.S.? Or not? Explain.)
11. The general director of General Motors' Research Labs, Charles Kettering, stated that the mission of business is what? (What phrase did he use?)
12. In the early days, what was the attitude of trade unionists (and Catholic labor priests such as Monsignor Ryan) to consumerism?
13. What did Monsignor Ryan think the working men and women of America would do with the free time afforded them by their employers? Is that what contemporary Americans actually do with their free time? If not, is that a criticism of Ryan’s statement, or of what contemporary Americans do with their free time?
14. Compare Monsignor Ryan’s attitude toward work and leisure with the attitude exhibited by Josef Pieper in Leisure, the Basis of Culture.
15. According to Prof. Schor, “The debates of the 1920s clearly laid out the options available to the nation. On the one hand, the path advocated by labor and social reformers: take productivity growth in the form of increases in free time, rather than the expansion of output; limit private consumption, discourage luxuries, and emphasize public goods such as education and culture. On the other hand, the plan of business: maintain current working hours and aim for maximal economic growth. This implied the encouragement of "discretionary" consumption, the expansion of new industries, and a culture of unlimited desires. Production would come to ‘fill a void that it has itself created.†Which of the two options did the nation adopt?
16. According to Prof. Schor, what is the problem with the system of “keeping up with the Joneses� What (to put the same question in another form) is the problem if everyone’s income goes up by 10% – both yours and your next-door neighbor’s?
17. According to Prof. Schor, “It's not easy to get off the income treadmill and into a new, more leisured life style. Mrs. Smith won't do it on her own ....†Why not? Explain why “Mrs. Smith†and “Mrs. Jones†are stuck in a classic “Prisoner’s Dilemma.†[If you don’t know what a “Prisoner’s Dilemma†is, look it up.]
18. According to Prof. Schor: “A second vicious cycle arises from the fact that the satisfactions gained from consumption are often short‑lived.†Please explain what she means.
19. When asked, do Americans generally affirm consumerism, or do they generally reject “materialist values�
20. What tends to happen in America when workers are granted a pay increase?
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