I do find the attitudes of people towards work in this country very odd. People want to be driven to the brink of burn-out - they see that as a means to self-improvement, rather than being an unbalanced way to live your life.
I think that is only a small minority of people. Some people actively choose that lifestyle, want to work ridiculous hours... some are high flying salarymen in banks/law firms etc... others are perhaps entrepreneurs who have an idea they're obsessed with and putting all their waking hours into.
There are plenty of other people out there who will work say a 9-5 and then put hours into some video game every evening.
Whether you burn out or not seems to be more related to stress - sure if you're putting 12 hour days into something you don't particularly enjoy or that is very stressful then that's not a healthy situation.
If you can work 9-5 and then spend another 4-5 hours playing a computer game or watching TV then some other person doing some work they enjoy can just as easily have the same amount of screen time and do a 12, 13, 14 hour day Monday - Friday.
(not that either is particularly balanced but there are plenty of people in jobs they hate who do say 9-5 and are then mindlessly stuck in front of a screen (TV/games etc..) for a few hours each evening regardless)
Funnily enough a lot of the countries with better happiness and better work/life balance also pay more tax than we do. But they're all dirty socialists, eh The only true path is ultra-capitalism, with as small a govt/state as possible.
Various of them aren't too different... I mean it is hardly as though Canadians are excessively taxed, IIRC Switzerland is supposed to be low tax...
Anyway I don't have an issue with paying a bit more tax as I already stated, my objections are to the silliness re: marginal rates like the 60% rate when you lose the personal allowance and the silly attitude re: shoving tax rises just on the top end or the dumb arguments that it's only "X" amount and people should be lucky to earn Y amount therefore we should tax them more...
Some of these countries with a better quality of life tax people earlier along the income scale. I'm not sure many of them have a 60% marginal rate either.