When I read articles like this, it feels like people in the 1st world live in another planet.
Who works 9 hours a day to avoid boredom?
Who works 9 hours a day to avoid boredom?
I'd say that we wouldn't even have that 1st world - 3rd world distinction any more - at least not for long - if most people in the 1st world finally stopped being lazy and actually thought about how to contribute meaningful work.
Work for work's sake is what currently holds us back and absorbs more energy than anything else.
The main objective of any mainstream economic policy is to achieve (near) full employment. Not because it makes sense economically but our twisted work ethic learned and internalized over hundreds of years tells us to.
In other words, the classic "work hard / work smart" contrast.
I think it doesn't seem as odd as you might think. When people talk about the economy, they talk about putting everyone in jobs, not ensuring everyone is productive. It's a subtle distinction, but I think it's an important one. For many people, the metric of a good economy seems to be what fraction of the population work from 9-5, rather than how much people produce.
To be fair, I am stretching the applicability of the original article farther than the author probably intended.