Should one Live to Work, or Work to Live?

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Work is the necessary but pointless crap you have to do to keep a roof over your head and food in your belly. If you are lucky you get to do something you enjoy, but to define one's life by it shows an appaling lack of imagination.

I actually don't understand either philosophical outlook. It's been a problem for me most of my life. I fail to make a distinction between working and living because I do not cease to live while I'm working - the two things are under the same category of experience.

Even ignoring for the moment the lack of social programs in the USA, Americans seem willing to do all that they can to feign devotion to their employers, and don't view two weeks of vacation per year as ungenerous.

People in other countries are nowhere near as crazy.

Well science is a big part of my life and I am currently trying to become a physicist
But if that turns out not to work out I will become a game programmer and games is also one of my big passions(programming also interests me). ^^

Speaking as an American, I tend to favor more vacation time per year, if only for the purposes of taking vacations. Strangely, I might still be working while on vacation, just not for someone other than myself. Likewise, even when working for someone else (technically speaking), I am working for myself. It's merely circumstantial that I do not sign my own paychecks.

Are multi-national corporations not pseudo-governments. Look at the international list of entities with the largest annual budgets, how many of the top 100 are, in fact, corporations. Then ask yourself where your state or country stands on this list. All Walmart needs is a corporate anthem and a flag.

So much nonsense in this thread.

1) Jobs aren't a tangible asset. They don't 'go' places. They don't even exist beyond an agreement to trade your labor for money.

2) Competition doesn't make you less valuable. Your value depends on your skills and your productivity depends on your capital base. The capital base in this country, for example, has been shrinking for decades. The loss of productivity, and thus real wages (or vacation time or however you want to measure your living standard) is due to THAT, not competition. Just because someone in asia got a job doesn't mean one magically disappeared here.

To fully explain the capital structure and how it grows or shrinks would require quoting large portions of a 1000 page tome like "Money, Credit, and Economic Cycles" which would be difficult on this forum, but needless to say capital WILL flow to wherever it can be most productive. The REASON Europe and the USA have systemic problems is not because of some kind of comparative disadvantage with lower income earners, but because of unsound money, the excessive spending that allows, and the political (lack of) will to just hand out what everybody wants by ignoring longer term consequences or directly manipulating prices by public mandate.

3) Trade does raise all boats. Without emerging economies goods would cost more and the predicament of the west would be even more burdensome. Our problem isn't that other countries have their act together; it is that we don't. Envy isn't the solution to anything, but rather the seed of discontent that leads to currency wars which beget trade wars which beget bloody wars.

I thought about the poll and actually ticked "I live to work". The reason being the that the "i'm going to do x boring crap for x hours in order to afford something interesting" sounds great on paper, but i don't think it works in practice. On the other hand, if you love your job, not only are you very likely to be happy 24/7 you'll probably earn lots of money. Maybe that idea is specific to my personality