The Price of Wealth
Americans are known for many things, some of them nobler than others. But one thing that has long been associated with the United States is Americans' propensity for relentless hard work and efficient mass production on a larger scale than most other industrialized nations. We Americans work more hours per week than Europeans, and get less vacation time and social services provided by our government. Where the average American worker spends 40 hours a week in the office, with many working even more than that, both France and Italy have a standard 35 hour work week. Americans generally get a standard two weeks of vacation per year, whereas many European workers are given an average of five weeks of vacation each year. In addition, where millions of Americans live without healthcare and face the ever-increasing price of sending their children to college, these things are standard services in many parts of Europe. In America, the heart of the capitalist West, we are working harder and producing more, but getting less.
And what do Americans have to show for their agonizing hard work? Well, overlooking America's current multi-billion dollar deficit, we are the richest nation in the world. Of course, most Americans don't end up getting filthy rich from their hard work, despite the Horatio Alger fantasy of the American Dream that most of us harbor somewhere deep inside us. In truth, it is a very small percentage of Americans who attain great wealth, while most of us fall safely into the middle class, or below. Many Americans, despite working more than one job, still struggle just to make ends meet. For hourly-wage workers, their increased production makes the company owner wealthier, while they are not likely to make any more than minimum wage, no matter how much they manage to produce. In short, a great many Americans work harder to make a very few Americans richer.
Recently, the Washington Monthly reported that the United States leads the world in almost every type of mental illness, with a higher percentage of its population suffering from some form of clinically diagnosed mental disorder than any other country. According to their statistics, 26.4% of the United States' population suffers from some kind of mental disorder. The Ukraine comes in at a relatively distant second with 20.5% of its population suffering. Especially notable is America's 18.2% suffering from anxiety. The next highest in this category is France at only 12%. And these statistics are not so hard to believe; all you have to do is watch television for half an hour. Anti-anxiety medication and anti-depressants are advertised regularly on prime time TV to a country that apparently needs them. These numbers don't tell us whether America's high capacity for mental disorder is related to their overworking, but it is an interesting correlation to consider. Is it possible that we are working ourselves into a state of national depression?
Aldous Huxley, in a series of essays collected in his book Brave New World Revisited, warned us about our tendency to place more importance on making money than on taking care of the individual. He saw it as "efficiency at the cost of humanity," with so many people giving themselves to a lifetime of endless, unfulfilling work, with little to show for it. Why do we need to be the richest country in the world? Why do we need to produce so much more than we ourselves can use? Huxley argued that if we worked enough simply to produce what we needed without worrying about surplus, that we would have plenty of time for those things which are not work, but are simply the things that we enjoy doing. True, we would be less wealthy, have less luxury, but on an individual level we would be taken care of, and just maybe, we might even be happier.
