working too hard?

Article in the Ecologist: http://www.theecologist.org/archive_detail.asp?content_id=1196

I think working too hard also happens because we start to feel that we need a lot more money than we actually do. If all my friends earnt a lot, I might want to catch up and have the same life style. But they don't, really, earn that much. A lot of what I spend is unnecessary. If we were less wasteful and only bought what we needed perhaps we could all work less.

Is there some rule of economics that makes this impossible?