system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How did the culture of "work before life" start in America?

Whenever I read about work culture in many European countries, the culture is you go to work, you work, you come home, and don't do anything work-related until the next work day.  That's *your* time to live *your* life.  Plus they have SO much more vacation and paid-leave days because they realize people have lives outside of work, which matters a lot more to them.

In the US, people will, or are sometimes forced, to work 10-12 hour days.  Some are expected to be able to respond to email and take calls into the evening or night.  On top of it, there is no minimum paid leave because of this work-before-life culture.  

How did work become such a priority?
gpt
(1) Back in the day, your work was your life.  If you didn't work (eg on a farm) you would die.

(2) America was founded largely on a Calvinist doctrine some people call the "Protestant Work Ethic."  This idea holds that work, discipline and frugality are a result of a person's salvation in the Protestant faith.  In this religion, hard work is more important than rituals like attending mass, receiving communion, and other "Catholic" ideas.

(3) Partly due to these influences and partly due to the cut-throat nature of capitalism, America developed an idea of hyper-competitiveness.  We routinely reject social safety nets like welfare programs, with the expectation that if people just "work harder" they will achieve success.

(4) Over the last thirty years or so, workers have been getting screwed over by government and business owners.  Business owners increasingly treat employees as disposable and try to pay the bare minimum in wages and benefits.  In past generations, a 9-to-5 job for an unskilled worker was still enough to make a good living.  This is no longer true, and a LOT of people in America still don't acknowledge that the labor situation is very different from the pre-Reagan era.