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Stress Costs U.S. $300 Billion a Year
jburroug writes "A new study, as reported in the New York Times claims that the stress of the modern always-on work environment is taking a far greater toll on the health of workers than previously believed, to the tune of $300 billion in lost productivity and increased health care costs in the U.S. alone."
Fact. Google it. In 2002 (or was it 2003?), about 30% of all tax return had a gross income of less than $20K. And about 50% of all tax returns had a gross income of less than $35K. That is counting BOTH single and joint filers. Those people are working the longer hours with little vacation just like the rest of America, but it is a little hard to get all those SUVs on that pay. Let's fact it: we Americans do not make as much money as we like to pretend we do.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Just think of the long-term benefits if we all just follow the trend and work ourselves to death.
Fewer people on the highways
Fewer elders collecting retirement
No need to raise taxes on the beleagured wealthy to prop up social security
Cheers!
Wherever You Go, There You Are
for one thing: I'll take the 35 hour work week.
Also, they did NOT have negative GDP in 2003. It's close to zero, but it's not negative. Don't believe me? ask the spooks:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ fr.html
thirdly, their unemployment rate, while high, is not 15%. In 2003 it was 9.6%, again per the spooks.
Parent is a TROLL.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Unfortunately, the US is rated 38th in business efficiency among the 188 nations recognized by the UN. Several countries with features like 35 hour work weeks, twice our number of government recognized holidays, Manditory minima of 2 weeks vacation/year, and so on are doing about as well as us
... more economic stats, instead of the main menu. Nationmaster gets its numbers from multiple sources, including the UN councel on economic development, but also the CIA's world factbook.
(England, Scotland, Ireland, Denmark)
or actually better
(Australia, Holland, Germany, Sweden, and some smaller nations such as Iceland).
We rank 7th in average prices, while France, for all the problems you point out is at least 15th, partially though not completly offsetting that high unemployment. France has a much higher average income tax rate (They're 5th, with an average of 50.5%, while the US is 26th, with an average of 30.5%), and I'd argue that that extra 20% is quite enough to give them their unemployment rate.
Are the French, over all, doing worse than us? Probably yes. Are we doing the best? Probably not.
Where did I get these numbers?
http://www.nationmaster.com/
(On the economic menu, several of these are in the section under
Who is John Cabal?
real unemployment 9.6%
Lookup the Broken window fallacy
Working for necessity's mother.
'Economic Security for a Better World' (ILO -International Labour Organization)
(5.49MB PDF)
password: universe
There are a lot of good reasons not to.