I'd like to know the average hourly amount earned from HN. I know personally HN has helped me greatly in the projects I do at work.

Yes this is an interesting question too, but one that is much harder to answer. I love HN, but it sure gets a lot of activity during work hours :)

We seem to think that time spent learning is lost labor, rather than that time spent laboring is lost time for learning, although we know that both learning and laboring are required for productivity, and that learning is capex.

40 wpm x total words x (hmm need to look up productivity stats) - but we could do it :-)