Notes

Joe Pinsker asks Silvia Belleza "As I read the paper, I couldn’t help but wonder what the endgame of this dynamic is in the U.S. Does striving to be busier, or at least striving to come off as busier, actually make people happier in any meaningful way?" Belleza Responds to this by conceding that she believes neither the US or Italy "actually gets the formula right in terms of happiness while also having an economy that's functional and working well." Her mention of the economy ties back to an earlier point about the difference between a developed economy the likes of which we have in the US and Italy, and an undeveloped economy where work is more physically demanding, and constant busyness is not feasible. Bellezza also mentions that when participants in her experiment were told "that a hypothetical person is very busy, they immediately think about a white-collar type of job." People who associate busyness with high status apparently find it hard to imagine that a blue collar worker, often seen as lower status, could be constantly busy. Bellezza also comments about the European standard of closing shops on weekends, essentially forcing people to partake in liesure activities instead of performing errands or work, which she suggests may be adapted in America, to avoid the negative "endgame" she predicts will result from a workaholic society that slowly becomes dysfunctional.