Shopping centers are not alone in using leisure to sell their products. The vast majority of advertising is directed at us during our favorite leisure pursuits. Try to watch television, listen to radio, read a magazine, watch a rented video, attend a movie or sporting event, or just take a leisurely ride without being interrupted by some commercial message. Businesses sell to us during our leisure and in most cases directly use our interest in leisure to help sell their product. Also of more economic significance than what people spend on leisure is how much of their time they devote to leisure and how they use this time.
Time is our scarcest resource, as it is for all practical purposes relatively fixed in supply.
The quality of our lives depends a great deal on how we use the time we have. Juliet Schor notes that through increases in efficiency, we can reproduce the standard of living American's enjoyed in 1948 in half the time it took fifty years ago. We could have chosen a four-hour day or a six month work year. Instead, we chose to produce more goods, or perhaps we were not given this choice. John Robinson, director of the American's Use of Time Project, reports that half of American workers today say they would give up a day's pay to have an additional day off of work.