Most people are pretty exhausted and overworked by the end of the 40-hour workweek, and you are probably one of them. You barely have a few hours in the evenings to yourself, so most of your interests, hobbies, and small pleasures you had in life are simply gone. You just don’t have time for them, constantly working on the next big project that is supposed to increase your income.
This whole process makes you lose your identity, and stop enjoying your life. Still, you keep working not questioning the long working hours, while the debt rises, so as the profit of corporations.
Why Do We Allow This to Happen?
Inflation
When the value of a dollar increases, what happens is inflation. If the government of the U.S. needs to wage any kind of war, they ask for a loan from the Federal Reserve System. In that case, the Federal Reserve buys bonds from the government in the requested amount. Then, what the government does is print out treasury bonds, while the Federal Reserve System prints money.
They both trade, and the government chooses another bank to deposit the money. This other bank charges fees and interest, and that’s how money is created out of nothing. And this is how the worth of a dollar decreases, causing inflation and increasing the country’s debt.
Debt
As the debt continuously increases, we get the impression that it’ll never be paid off. The higher the debt, the more circulation of money. So, if we can pay our loans entirely, there won’t be a single dollar to circulate. And here’s the interest too, and the need to pay it off. In the end, as the debt rises, so does the cost of living. This is the orchestration that makes most people panic and accepts the long weekly working hours without questions.
However, is the 40 hour-work week actually efficient? According to studies, workers accomplish less than three hours of actual work in an 8-hour working day. Still, wages are declining while corporate profits skyrocket.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics explains that productivity in the last year’s 3rd quarter increased by 2.3%, and the hourly pay by only 1.3%. Corporate profiting has never been so high in the last 85 years. Still, do you ever think why you aren’t working less and paid more?
Consumerism
Generally, consumerism is perceived as a positive thing, and is defined as “the practice or fact of an increasing consumption of goods.” In the past, it really was a positive thing, when the economy was doing better. But, nowadays, the increasing debt and inflation have made consumerism a negative thing for society. Spending more money actually feeds the banks and corporations who profit off the public economic slavery, and this creates a deadly cycle.
Corporations throughout the past hundreds of years have pushed a “buy, buy” mentality. They have used consumerism as a profit-marketing tool to take advantage of people, by delving into their subconscious desires and exploiting them. Their seemingly great deals like “charge it”, or “buy now, pay later” actually mean “spend the money you don’t have!”
Today, Americans don’t doubt about any purchase, having their credit cards and no money in their pockets. And here’s the need for the fastest, newest, biggest, and greatest new products, or the so-called Keeping up with the Joneses mentality. The profit of corporations grows because of this, and the long weekly working hours only solidify it.
Spending most of the day at work, we don’t have much time to do other more enjoyable activities than watching TV, or staring at our smartphone screens. In spite of this, the majority are struggling to make ends meet. We often buy a moment of happiness by purchasing some material item that we have soon grown bored with and move on.
This is also the way that most of us hide our psychological needs, problems, and insecurities. All of these items are actually advertised to us during the few hours we have for ourselves. The end result is always increased profit for the corporations.
Via David Wolfe | David Wolfe | Investopedia | David Wolfe | Get Rich Slowly
