[joesmo]

There are a ton of incentives to not work the 55-hour week as an employee even when it's paid 1.5 or 2x. Health and having time to do other things are probably near the top of the list, but there are many others like morale, avoiding fatigue/burnout etc. Having a cap on hours worked and forcing employers to pay for extra hours, even if it's at the same rate as regular hours, works incredibly well in practice. Not having such a cap and not paying for extra hours doesn't. Inevitably, at the very least, the work will suffer greatly, probably to the point where the extra hours become meaningless compared to what the workers could achieve if they were not overworked.

[harryh]

Empirically employees who get paid 1.5x or 2x for overtime seem to want to get as much overtime as possible regardless of the fact that it cuts into other activities in their lives. That's at least been my perspective. I'm not sure if there are any large scale studies done on this topic.

You might be correct that the best way to balance the competing incentives is to require overtime pay but not at a higher rate.

[Retric]

In large part that relates to the low pay of anyone that still qualifies for Overtime in the US. But also because it's calculated on a week by week basis. Work 60 hours in one week with double over time and you get to take 1 full week off. Change that to a monthly or yearly basis and people are less inclined to work overtime.