"Work" for lower income families is often made up of their first job, plus a second job, plus family care, plus home chores and more . A Yuppie making $200K or $300K or $400K has one job that may amount to 50 or 60 hours a week or so, but farms out the rest.

I certainly do that.

I am a professional who, by choice, lives in a rural area. Based on what I know about the families around me, I wonder if the data referenced in this report takes account of second and third jobs and the other work that many middle and lower tier families must undertake to make ends meet.

In sum, I know lots of lawyers and doctors. I don't know many of those who work harder than the working class families around me.

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most of the time.

Six years ago, I was making less than $40K per year and could only afford to take a week a year to go fishing. Now, my business is thriving and already this year I've spent a week in Sedona and two weeks in Maui. I'm taking 5 days next week to Whidbey Island, and all of Thanksgiving week in Baja.

On the flip side, I will be working the mornings of Xmas and New Year's day, but it's a worthwhile tradeoff, IMHO.

For most, there's no sense that, "If I put in another couple hours a day, I'll net another $20k this year."

Actually it might. I was talking to a guy who was working on a deal that sounds very much like that and that was his reasoning. "I work a few hours more a week and look at that payoff. Done and Done." Granted it isn't as cut and dry as a guy on an hourly wage with time-and-half for over time, and double time for holiday pay, etc., but it seems that logic is similar if a bit more fuzzy around the edges.

Other than the fact that those at the upper end my have an upward sloping labor supply curve everywhere in regards to the "imputed" wage rate, I don't see all that much to get excited about. It is like getting excited about a Giffen good*...unless your an economist its not all that interesting.

*Clear sign I'm an econ-geek...a geekonomist I guess.

In Saudi Arabia, for instance, not only did you have an eight-hour time difference--your office is notionally closing just as Washington is notionally opening--but the difference in local weekends--Sat-Sun. in DC; Thurs-Fri. in the KSA--meant you were basically on-call 24/7. No amount of extra work was going to get you overtime. At most, you might hope to outwork competitors around the world in the same grade and thus earn a promotion.

Then there's that annoying clash of cultural hours. Saudis tend to work and play at night. No one, other than perhaps doctors, would be at his office until late morning or early afternoon. That meant that an embassy employee was going to be working late if he had to deal face-to-face with Saudis. In fact, I had more dinners at midnight or later than I had at 7:00pm. But the embassy, as an instrumentality of the USG, had office hours of 8:30-5:00, less the wrath of Congress descend.

Other countries in the region had similar problems if not quite so bad. Much of the Levant and Egypt have a Fri-Sat weekend, something which most of the Arab Gulf States have now adopted.

Salaries that might have seemed high could also look rather paltry (under minimum wage, actually) if you calculated them on a 24/7 basis.

Most irksome, though, was the fact that headquarters, manned by other Foreign Service Officers, couldn't keep the time and weekend differences straight. They'd been on the receiving end themselves, but went amnesiac when they were on the giving end.

Oh, and once again, "rich" is once again used to define income instead of assets. I guess I'll get tired of beating that dead horse when it no longer has to be beaten.

That's true at a theoretical level but most upper income folks aren't being paid on an hourly basis. For most, there's no sense that, "If I put in another couple hours a day, I'll net another $20k this year." Mostly, they're either thinking "I need to put in ten hours a day or I won't be competitive for that big promotion" or, even more simply, "The job's not going to do itself."

So, yes, in the abstract they're trading leisure for income. But they're not doing it in the same way that, say, an electrician's apprentice who decides to do some jobs under the table on the weekend is.

chsw - I guess that I'm going to be suckered after this election.

It’s not just that we’re chained to the job with our email and ubiquitous BlackBerries. Were it not for those conveniences, most of us would be forced to spend more time in the office rather than having the flexibility to work from home on occasion. Even when we’re not consciously working, we’re fretting over the next day’s presentations, looking ahead to various problems, and otherwise engaged in work.

This is not the same as,

In other words, when we get a raise, instead of using that hard-won money to buy “the good life,” we feel even more pressure to work since the shadow costs of not working are all the greater.

The first one says, "Executives work lots of hours." The second says, "As the pay goes up for individuals they work more because leisure time becomes relatively more expensive."

In economics of labor/leisure trade offs there is this idea that at some level of income/hourly pay that the labor supply curve becomes backward bending. Basically there are two effects to an increase in the wage:

The Substitution Effect: This will tend to increase the number of hours worked as people substitute earnings for leisure.

Income Effect: This will decrease the number of hours worked as people using the additional income to purchase more leisure.

What this is saying is that for those in the top income brackets the substitution effect dominates. At the margin, the rich prefer to trade leisure for additional income hence consumption.