If you work hard enough an angel will descend from heaven and bless you with the gift of happiness with ice cream and extra cherries on top. This is the lie that every American is told, and the lie that almost all Americans, regardless of race, culture or religion, believe. It is difficult to believe that there was once a time in America where people fought to work less, but there was. Brutal deaths while working on coal mines, railroads and industrial factories brought about great change in America, eventually giving birth to the forty hour work week, a required eight hours of sleep and paid vacation time, among various other benefits. After the industrial revolution came to an end and America was the most technologically advanced nation in the world, there was even talk of shortening the work week even more. After years of toiling in unsanitary conditions for slave like wages, the age of leisure had finally arrived in America, or so we thought. Enter the 1980s, an era that everyone you speak with today seems to love for reasons I cannot quite understand. Many publications, including the LA Times, have argued that the 1980s was a time of growth in personal freedom, but that is simply untrue. Hours of work fell faster between 1946 and 1979 than at any time during or after the 1980s. Reaganomics led to the cutting of taxes, the deregulation of markets and the eventual return to industrial revolution type working hours that would come into play during the 1990s and early 2000s. Prior to Reaganomics the United States was on its way to a thirty hour work week and potentially less. Today the average American works forty-seven hours a week, and is damn proud of it too. Americans will brag to complete strangers about how hard they work, as if this is some sort of accomplishment, as if our ancestors worked hard so that we could work harder. That does not sound right, and you know it. Parents generally want their children's lives to be easier than theirs, not more difficult. So why is this considered an accomplishment? Why do people brag about working themselves to death? Americans essentially work six days a week. But keep in mind that forty-seven hours is the average, which means that some work even more than that. "11 percent of those surveyed worked 41-49 hours, 21 percent put in 50-59 hours every week, and a whole 18 percent work 60 or more hours." (Blue Water Credit, July 2021) That's right, eighteen percent of Americans work more than seven days a week! How is that progress? How does that increase one's amount of personal time? On what planet are people on that they are able to completely deny math while keeping a straight face? Where are the fact checkers when dimwits at the LA Times sing the praises of hard work ethic, arguing that working more, which is nothing more than devoting your time to your boss, makes you somehow have more time to yourself? Perhaps the fact checkers are too busy working at their entertainment side hustle to check the facts. There is something dubious about the term "side hustle". It seems to give one the feeling that they are going against the grain or being unique, but all it means is that you have a second, third or fourth job, which means that you have less time to yourself, less freedom, not more. In the last twenty years, the American economy has grown an astounding sixty percent off the backs of hardworking people who seem to care much more about their shopping spree than they do about living past sixty. Productivity has surged, but income has stayed still. While monopolies like Amazon bragged about their higher wage of twenty bucks an hour, anyone with a calculator and basic math skills knows that, had the median income kept pace with the economy since 1970, it would now be $92,000 a year. But you are nowhere near that America, not even close. In 2020 the median American income was $69,521, a two point nine percent decrease from 2019, and that included stimulus payments.