The harried leisure class

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1. cafardSep 2016
   In From Dawn to Decadence, Jacques Barzun mentions in passing the book The Harried Leisure Class, published in 1970. One can probably find it in many college libraries. I remember it as an interesting and cogent book.

   I am probably the age of Ms. Buck's parents, and I don't immediately see a great difference between how we and our neighbors of the same age spend our leisure and how our children do. OK, we aren't running marathons or riding bicycles across Iowa. But most of the persons I know of that age are not working insane hours; and in my generation I knew the occasional 20-something putting in very long weeks at the law firm.

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2. cyberrockSep 2026
   >In the 1970 book The Harried Leisure Class, the Swedish economist Staffan Burenstam Linder wrote that as a society gets richer, leisure time takes on the frantic quality of work. As rich people feel like their downtime is scarce—as each non-working hour practically shouts, “excuse me! you could be making money, right now!” —the experience of leisure time speeds up.

   I think this definitely applies to my friends and I. They could be working on their next DJ session at the club next month or their next TCG tournament deck/strategy, and I could be working on projects that go nowhere. So many hobbies are now just another form of work.

   But I think driving and traffic is definitely another problem, especially in the US. No one wants to spend Thursday evening or Saturday 8am in traffic,

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3. cafardOct 2013
   The book The Harried Leisure Class (http://www.amazon.com/Harried-Leisure-Staffan-Burenstam-Lind...) suggests an interesting explanation for this.
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