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To add, work is more than earning a living. It's about creating social boundaries and ownership/control of one's time or whom one associates with. It's also about social status and connections. This can explain why many people continue to work even when no longer financially necessary. Living in America is especially stressful for middle-aged people, also known as the sandwich demographic, so work is an escape for these people. The option always exists to work less, but then you lose those boundaries. Not working means you're suddenly available. If people only chose to work for the sake of earning a living, people would work much less than they do.
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One of my favorite topics. I'm an immigrant looking in from the outside. I have a large group of close friends in France. They serve as the perfect foil. The contrast between both nations is jarring.
Americans are insecure.
With French labor protection & welfare, losing your job is a mild inconvenience. Loans are harder to get, so you're rarely living beyond your means and less likely to default. If you're evicted, social housing is.....acceptable.
Americans have none of these fail safes. Long bouts of unemployment are catastrophic. Injuries, missed payments, divorces, pregnancies can ruin a person. Yet, culturally, Americans live beyond their means and maintain high debt burdens. The new worth number is deceptive, because most of it isn't liquid. A middle-aged person can't access value locked into houses, 401ks, 529s, HSAs or cars. For comparison, my French peers are buying studios worth <200k or just renting, while my American peers are buying ~$1M SFHs.
The lack of solid maternity-leave is a big stressor for women. There's a feeling that you need to make yourself indispensable before you first child. Only then can you take a long maternity-leave and later return where you left off. Otherwise, you're unemployable an maternity becomes financially ruinous.
In your head, you're 1 lay-off away from disaster. Ofc you'll work hard.
America isn't fun.
The alternative to work is fun. While both countries take weekends off, French work-life-balance shines during the weekdays. Americans leave a couple of hours later, and that makes all the difference.
Density, walkability & having things to do means that weekday evenings don't have to suck. In comparison, most American cities are asleep by 8.30pm on weekdays. Without transit, that extra drive is excruciating and the distance between you and your friends means that finding a common location is hard. My French friends haven't splintered nearly as much as my American friends when they purchase SFHs. There is tie-in to American's lack of 3rd places as well.
Small corollary: Americans live further away from their parents. Some of it is urban design, some of it is the size of the country. But, the TGV allows my French friends to do a quick visit to their family within 2-ish hours. I can't explain just how relaxing these train rides are. They're nothing like a grueling 2hr drive. This means that French people can more easily pull off a weekday all-nighter with family than Americans.
Dependent kids = dependent parents
Finally, you have kids. American kids are famously dependent. Parents timings revolve around pickup-hours. After school & daycare end around 6.30 pm. Since parents pick kids up on the way, getting there earlier doesn't make sense.
Yes, I've overlooked that French people take all of July off. But that's irrelevant. The day to day stress felt during the other 11 months is what really matters.
All this being said, it's only half the story. American culture explains the rest. In the US, you are what you make of yourself. Work defines your social worth. People self-sort among cliques with uniform class within them. Ofc, American districting plays an explicit role in this. My French groups are more fluid. In America, the culture teaches you the sanctity of work.
Yes, Americans love their work. They definitely do. But, they're also supposed to.
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I am not American, but the primary thing that keeps me earning more money than I need is the lack of ability to put down and pick up high paying work.
If I took a break for a couple of years, or a 3 day week or something, I would be very pessimistic about being able to come back in at the same level.
That's been my impression of most people who work full time and above.
30 hours a week is enough to get most of the benefits of having a set schedule, without the downsides of not getting to do much else. Higher than full time seems mostly employer driven, probably with some small business owners who don't want to go out of business and people getting started in competitive professions as well. I'm not sure that the medium difference between the US and Europe calls for more explanation.
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