Jonathan Malesic in The Hedgehog Review:
Two years ago, I gave an academic talk via Zoom on the need to limit work in order to combat the culture of burnout in the United States. Following my presentation, a senior scholar had more of a comment than a question for me. He said that “we” needed to acknowledge our privileged status among workers. When academics criticize the American work ethic, he added, we ought to recognize that most workers “can’t afford to burn out.” Burnout, I took him to be saying, was a luxury, and to complain about it was like flaunting your wealth before someone desperately poor.
Standing in my living room in a sport coat and sandals, I argued in response that in my call for shorter hours and living wages, there was no competition between what was good for “us” and what was good for the custodians who cleaned university classrooms. Everyone is harmed by burnout culture, I maintained, and if everyone has equal dignity and therefore an equal right to a decent living, then everyone deserves better working conditions, regardless of the work they do.
More here.