Work

Only Americans Brag About Being Exploited By Employers

How about honest work for honest pay?

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A lot of Americans take pride in working lots of hours. Perhaps it makes them feel special, like their workplace couldn’t possibly manage without them. Others may feel like they’re really tough to be able to handle such a punishing schedule.

You know who loves this? Billionaires and the rest of the 1 percent.

America has a sick work culture.

A retired couple was recently reminiscing about how hard they’d worked back in the day, and they were surprised when my husband, a Dutch citizen, said he almost never worked overtime when he was living in the Netherlands.

He said he could remember only two times when he had to go in on a Saturday to work.

“And you could live on that?” one of them asked, looking surprised. I think she assumed he was going to talk about how hard it was to live on only 40 hours.

Scratch that. His regular workweek wasn’t 40 hours — it was only 38. And yes, he lived on it just fine. He had a house, a vehicle and a motorcycle. Like every Dutch worker, he had plentiful paid time off every year, so he took great vacations. His healthcare then cost him the equivalent of…