Take This Job And Add It To Your To-do List

Via a plug post by Drum comes this article from Mother Jones, entitled The Great Speedup, on how employers are squeezing the employees they haven't fired to do more work.  It covers two topics I've touched on before: the much greater number of hours Americans spend working, and the lack of worker protections that enables employers to put the screws to employees.  Lots of people forget (and lots of people work to make them forget) that the point of economic activity is allow people to live their lives, which includes the non-economically productive portion.  The point of economic activity is most definitely not to create impressive numbers on corporate reports, even though the business news channels say otherwise.  It really doesn't matter if corporate America is setting record profits if there is chronically high unemployment and under-employment.  That contrast means that something is amiss in how economic activity is structured right now in this country.  Keep in mind that the differences between the US and other countries are due to conscious policy choices, even if few people are aware of when choices are being made for them.