re: Why does our society focus on buying things instead of increasing free time?

We’re genetically disposed to compete and form hierarchies of competence to increase the position in the tribe and chances of breeding.

Nobody ever became chief or bred the most women by sitting in their arse.

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Our leaders talk endless about making it easier for us to buy houses and cars, yet they never talk about a 32 hour work week or similar.

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If you're dumb enough to stump for Bernie Sanders, at least have the balls to name him as the source of your "revelation".

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Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act
Senate HELP Chairman Bernie Sanders

The world has undergone enormous changes since the 40-hour workweek was set by the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1940. American workers are now over 400 percent more productive than
they were back then and continued technological advances are likely to increase the gap between worker productivity and worker gains. While weekly wages for the average American worker are
actually lower than they were 50 years ago after adjusting for inflation, CEOs are now making nearly 400 times more than what their employees earn. It’s time that working families—not just
CEOs and wealthy shareholders—are able to benefit from increased productivity so that they can enjoy more leisure time, family time, education and cultural opportunities, and less stress.

Moving to a 32-hour workweek with no loss of pay is not a radical idea. In fact, movement in that direction is already taking place in other developed countries. France, the seventh-largest economy in the world, has a 35-hour workweek and is considering reducing it to 32 hours. The workweek in Norway and Denmark is about 37 hours a week. In the United States, a recent study found that 35 million workers in the United States—or 28 percent of the total workforce—could have a four-day workweek within a decade due to AI-led productivity gains.

A recent four-day week pilot program of 3,000 workers at over 60 companies in the United Kingdom showed that happy workers were more productive—over 70 percent of workers reported greater satisfaction with their time and feeling less burnt out, while participating businesses saw a 35 percent average increase in revenue. In a separate pilot program of 41 companies in the United States and Canada, workers reported similarly positive results, while none of the participating companies expressed a desire to return to a five-day workweek. These studies have also found reduced workweeks result in lower child care costs and reduced carbon emissions.

The Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act is an important step toward ensuring workers share in increasing productivity and economic growth driven by technological advancements.

The Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act would:
• Reduce the standard workweek from 40 to 32 hours over four years by lowering the maximum hours threshold for overtime compensation for non-exempt employees.
• Require overtime pay at time and a half for workdays longer than eight hours, and overtime pay at double a worker’s regular pay for workdays longer than 12 hours.
• Protect workers’ pay and benefits to ensure that a reduction in the workweek does not cause a loss in pay.

The Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act is endorsed by: AFL-CIO, UAW, SEIU, AFA-CWA, UFCW, International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), 4 Day Week Global, WorkFour, and the National Employment Law Project (NELP).

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Every other country mentioned in that diatribe has economies FAR behind that of the US and one of the main reasons is that we put in the work time. He specifically mentions France and its having "the seventh-largest economy in the world" while working only 35 hours a week and considering 32. Whoop-de-fricking-doo. Our economy is the largest in the world (#2 is not even close), it's 10x the size of France's economy and we do it with only 5 hours more per week.

But here's the real gem:

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• Protect workers’ pay and benefits to ensure that a reduction in the workweek does not cause a loss in pay.

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In other words: "businesses, you can go frick yourselves because I'm going to mandate you pay people for 5 days of work even though they work only 4 days." Just like you can't tax your way to prosperity, you can't lazy your way to it either.