bling bling

Time can be construed to exist subjectively by culture, geographical location, and even on a case by case basis. In this chapter the authors spoke in great detail about what time means to different people in the world. By any given perspective, time and money can take on entirely different meanings, and the same goes for basically any other form of currency one can imagine. I have a friend who spent the majority of high school measuring the work hours he had put in and the money he would acquire or dream of acquiring by how many Zebra Cakes could be purchased with said amount. As ridiculous (and I fully agree that it is ridiculous) as it seemed, it was sometimes astounding how quickly he could translate any amount of money and or Zebra Cakes into one another. He had his own system of measurement memorized and ready to share at any time. To him, time was measured in money and then furthermore measured in what he could do with that money.
In this society, to most of the populous at least, time is most frequently measured in money. Like my buddy with the Zebra Cakes, people are constantly dividing their time into how much money can be made and how much money can be spent, and therein what items of luxury or necessity would be available to them. Therefore time can be indirectly translated to whatever material items that people in our society undoubtedly will use to define their self-worth, status, and even identity. This helps us to see the exact gravity of the phrase "time is money", being money is everything (to some).
All of this can be used to help understand the questions posed here. The reason why there is so much emphasis on workers rights, organized labor, and so on, can possibly stem from the fact that the amount of money one receives for a set number of hours of labor put in is proportional to everything desired in the American dream: comfort, security, luxury, self identity, and basically anything else one can attribute to the measurement of self and cultural worth.