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US CEO Says French Workers Have Three-Hour Work Day
First time accepted submitter M3.14 writes "In a letter addressed to French Industrial Renewal Minister, Maurice Taylor, chief executive of Titan, writes (French article with English letter) that it would be stupid to buy any factory in France since workers don't really work full time. He'd rather buy cheap factories in India and China instead and import tires back to France. He writes, 'They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three. I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that's the French way!'"
Thanks to the erosion of unions, as well as a proliferation of anti-worker laws Americans don't have to worry about personal time or their health. In fact, we can't really worry about either.
It's pathetically easy to get American's to forsake their vacations, their personal time, their families in order to pad a sleazy company's bottom line.
Well... they can get another job you say... Well the union busting plantation owners made sure that the vast majority of America's jobs abuse their employees, so you can only choose among bad options.
There are exceptions to every rule, but Americans have been voting against our own interest for at least the last 30.
Don't pat yourself on the back for opening your country up to near slave labor practices.
Just to give a litttle perspective to all of you Objectivists out there, Maurice is a naughty boy http://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/lr19107.htm, and I'd take anything he says with either a pound of salt or 50k slipped into your brief case.
But hey, free markets right?
So we have demonstrably false stereotypes of the French being played up by a conservative who prefers labor practices which exploit workers. As a fellow American, may I just say not everyone here would mock a country for having respect for the well being and rights of its citizens, even those who have a job.
Productivity has risen so much since 1950 that we should be able to work 4 hour days.
With automation and robotics, we have a time rapidly approaching when there won't be enough work to go around if we insist on full time. There isn't enough work to go around now with some people working 60 hours a week.
Listen- capital thinks they create jobs. But Henry Ford knew... it is people with money to BUY things that creates jobs. If you don't hire anyone in France at 1st world wages, pretty soon you won't be able to sell your expensive tires there. You'll have to sell them at the prices you sell them in China.
For comparison- movies that cost $20 in the US cost $2.50 in China. A visit to the doctor for $50 in the US runs $3 in China. Heart surgery that costs $100k in the US runs about $16k in China.
So if you don't hire french workers, pretty soon you'll have to sell your $20 tires with $2 profit for $3 dollars with $.30 cents profit.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
If its true, I have only been to a remote colony in the Caribbean, but what pissed me off was the statement afterwords of "pay less than one Euro per hour wage and ship all the tires France needs" (speaking of china and india)
well fuck the hell out of you too, I just bought new tires, and they were not Michelin, I felt they were average tires for premium price ... but buddy I will never ever even acknowledge your brands even exist any more, and if anyone asks I will be sure to share your feelings.
I'm down with an hour for breaks and an hour for lunch, but i don't understand the "talk" for 3 hours. What exactly do they "talk" about for 3 hours?
Be seeing you...
I want to move there today! (And the wine there is better, too).
Funny that the summary doesn't include his initial statement to the French industry official that approached him: "How stupid do you think we are?"
In a word: Very.
CNN observes that Taylor is not only a relic of the 80s' leveraged buyout "corporate raiders" era, he's a hypocrite as well for wanting to make tires in China:
"The U.S. government is not much better than the French. Titan had to pay millions to Washington lawyers to sue the Chinese tire companies because of their subsidizing. Titan won. The government collects the duties. We don't get the duties, the government does," said Taylor.
All of this is beside the point however. US workers have less vacation/break time than anyone else on the planet, in a time where it is increasingly recognized that giving more breaks to workers results in more productivity. The real stupidity comes from failing to notice how well the rest of the world can keep pace with the much-vaunted "American productivity" while maintaining a vastly better quality of life.
Fraternité, Liberté, Société
Foreign concepts to the modern 'American Mind.' :)
Oh Yes.
Come down to India and China, where we have no goddamn lives any more. We work more than 12 hours a day on menial tasks at odd times. Forget work-life balance, because we really have no lives. And we work because that's how poor we are, with little choice in life and no government looking out for us. Train us. Use us. Abuse us. Talk to us in racial undertones. Marvel at our ability to take crap for little money.
Get away with your profits.
Welcome to the bright world of outsourcing.
I'm sure he thinks that US workers are also lazy. He probably thinks we talk for three and work for five.
Everyone votes as if they are the fabulously wealthy fat cat, that they dream about being. The reality is that they are a slave, and by accepting the "winner takes all" mindset, they are merely further enriching the tiny population of existing winners. Much better to accept that the typical American is a wage slave, and that the country should be run for the benefit of the wave slave majority (gasp, socialism!)
its not a politician its a CEO moron, he just sold out thousands of jobs across the world for slave labor and a fat bonus
As opposed to the Chief Executive who talks maybe 6 hours a day and eats lunch for 2 hours.
I'm a newly appointed director working under a CEO and as far as I can they generally only give an ever increasing distribution of work.
Meanwhile they try to ever decrease thier workload.
What exactly is the difference between buying a factory in France and/or one in US?
Seems to me it's still stupid to buy a factory in US. Reductio ad absurdum, assume it wouldn't be stupid, then why the choice to buy a factory in India instead of US?
Wouldn't this make CEO's "high moral ground" position leaning towards hypocritical? (as in: "I'm going to buy a factory in India anyway, you know it makes business sense. But I'll use the opportunity to bash a bit these Frenchmen")
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Yes, but there are twice as many of us to feed!!!!! All the productivity gain is for naught if the population keeps going up.
Talk about how much they get done.
If I had a bunch of workers that worked for an hour, but got the same amount of work done as another bunch of workers would in ten hours (assume that the groups are the exact same size), I would happily pay that first bunch a full day's pay of $X rather than pay the second bunch a full day's pay of $X. Sure, they're working fewer hours ... but they're getting more done, so I'd be getting better value for money.
You get what you measure; if you're measuring the hours worked, you might not be getting the productivity for those hours that you hope for.
Compare programmers. You'll get better results if they work their 40 hours a week and relax out of hours than if you drive them to work 60 or 80 hours in crunch mode for months on end.
Productivity has risen so much since 1950 that we should be able to work 4 hour days.
We used those productivity gains to increase our GDP rather than shorten our workday. While an increased GDP inflates the bank balances of the rich more than it does the middle-or-lower classes, there are benefits in having a strong economy for us too; most people I know are living "better" (bigger house, more expensive car, more travel, more disposable income) than their parents were at the same age - and frequently with lower debt.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
France law sets full time workers at 35 hours per weeks. This is much more than 3 hours of work. One could argue that 35 hours is not the highest working time in the world, but french worker GDP per working hour is quite high, which make France still relevant.
The Grizz rant is just a point against globalization. It demonstrates very well that it can be used to lower worker conditions as much as wanted.
The main problem is that most unions are about nepotism and self-perpetuation nowadays.
They don't really provide all that much protection to workers anymore.
And they don't provide all that much help in collective bargaining with owners anymore.
They have their nice, rigid little idea of the way things "ought to be" with a bunch of leeches falling between the cracks while other, honest, hardworking members get shafted. Why?
The three tier structure in most unions.
The union leaders, "Old Boys' Club" (who are in good with the former), and "Those other peons" (who aren't in good with the former). Each tier being an order or two of magnitude larger than the one preceding it.
So you get guys whose job it is to stuff their thumbs up their asses all day and do nothing, getting paid huge sums compared to the union average.
Then you get the guys who know them who get the "supervisor" positions. Again, full time, much higher wages than the average.
Then you get pretty much everyone else. The poor schlub who's just there to do his job as best he can. Who doesn't happen to fit in to the social group. The guys who're constantly off work because "there's no work". Or they're being replaced by someone with more clout.
Fuck unions.
At one point, they were a good and useful thing in this country.
Nowadays, they're just an extra hand out looking for more money who provide no service.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Yeah, but for the time being, they still have a market to sell goods produced by labor paid at third world rates for first world prices. Sure, it'll dry up eventually, and then they're back to the same profit margins that they'd have if they both made and sold it there - but they'll make a hefty profit until then. And what of it if the new market is China? It doesn't really matter if it's made for $2 and sold for $3, or made for $20 and sold for $30 - especially when the purchasing power of that $2 is that much higher (which it will be once the wages are depressed lower in first world countries due to outsourcing).
Anyway, much as I don't trust the notion that free market solves all problems, this isn't a failure of the free market. The problem here is that while companies are free to shop for labor where it's cheaper, even across country lines, workers can't shop for higher-paid jobs across the same. So the workforce is artificially segregated into compartments, enabling price discrimination between them. Of course this situation will be abused in a capitalist economy, so long as it's legal and it makes money! The only two workarounds are to either let the labor flow freely as well (i.e. open immigration), or impose tariffs on foreign goods to counterbalance the cost of living differences. Both approaches come with strings attached, but the former is straight out nonviable for many reasons (the amount of migration that'll have to happen to even the market is far beyond what first world countries can manage to handle), while the latter would actually work. Ironically, it's being argued against on "free market" basis, even though all it'd do is make the market more free (or at least more balanced!).
The French still managed to gift the US a statue of liberty if all they do all day is drink wine and speculate about the impending Communist world revolution.
In any given work week I only do 15 minutes of real work
...And it didn't really work, apparantly. France is only two placed behind the US in GDP per hour worked.
Boss had a trip to meet with an industry leader in Montreal. He was amazed how little people worked up there.
US Productivity has been rising since the beginning.
Since 1970 it's more than doubled.
Productivity in the US is so high that if it were equally distributed, everyone could get $38,000 worth of stuff - every man, woman, and child in the country - and then do it again next year. And the year after that.
Our productivity is so high we're beginning to run out productive job slots. To take an example, the number of people needed in agriculture is vanishingly small compared to the number needed a hundred years ago. Machines now do most of the work.
We read about this all the time: Google's self-driving car will put professional drivers out of work, Watson will put many doctors out of work... the list goes on.
Our culture requires people to work in order to be valid members. We look down upon people receiving welfare, government aid, social security, and so on. The talk around Washington is that people on medicare are moochers! Let's get rid of it and make them pay their own way!
We've doubled productivity, yet we haven't reduced the time we're required to work - in our "race to the bottom" people are working longer hours for ever lowering wages. Sometimes people have to work 3 jobs just to get by.
The solution is to reduce the weekly workload of all employees. If we went to a 30-hour work week with overlapping days, we could eliminate unemployment and pay everyone a living wage. As productivity rises, we could cut the working hours even more.
If we were more like the French, people would have more leisure time to enjoy the fruits of a highly productive society.
Don't knock the French - they've got this "working for a living" thing figured out.
I would have too. Anyone who thinks it's a good idea to charge ten times the cash and do a quarter of the work deserves to starve. Unions can protect you from a lot of bad things but your own greed, laziness, and stupidity are not among them.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
As a guy who worked for a company with its headquarters in France, I'm siding with the CEO on this.
the united states may be the next communist country to go down the drain
oh hang on silly me america is a "democracy" and has a "capitalist" economy
i started off having read the definitions of quoted words in a non-american dictionary
I keep hearing this "not enough work" nonsense. Look around. Don't you see many things that need to be done but aren't? There's plenty of work. I see enough for me to do in three lifetimes. The problem isn't a lack of work. The problem is that the very people who keep touting the power of the market have created a market where most work will never be done. It is their job to find ways to create a profit from work, and they're not doing it.
"They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three."
Sounds like most of the goddamned 'management' in the US. Except the french work MORE, it seems.
Also, 'doing more' isn't always good.
If you government were to pay people to dig ditches all day to eliminate unemployment, it would lead to soil erosion, dust pollution, on the job injuries, digs into fiber optic cables, etc. etc.
Sometimes, it's best to do nothing.
I don't know. Pretty much everything in life is negotiable. While I would personally rather work a little harder than that I can appreciate that there are people who push back. Is it laziness and greed or is it just bargaining for the best possible position you can get? After all, isn't that what business is all about?
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Productivity has risen so much since 1950 that we should be able to work 4 hour days.
With automation and robotics, we have a time rapidly approaching when there won't be enough work to go around if we insist on full time. There isn't enough work to go around now with some people working 60 hours a week.
Listen- capital thinks they create jobs. But Henry Ford knew... it is people with money to BUY things that creates jobs. If you don't hire anyone in France at 1st world wages, pretty soon you won't be able to sell your expensive tires there. You'll have to sell them at the prices you sell them in China.
For comparison- movies that cost $20 in the US cost $2.50 in China. A visit to the doctor for $50 in the US runs $3 in China. Heart surgery that costs $100k in the US runs about $16k in China.
So if you don't hire french workers, pretty soon you'll have to sell your $20 tires with $2 profit for $3 dollars with $.30 cents profit.
China prices are a bit off but your point is well made: Movies $5 minimum, Doctor Visit: $0.70 (tests are more), surgery sounds about right for a really top-notch hospital. Food is the big difference, it's a fraction of the price compared to the US.
the CEO forgot one thing :
workers work only 3 hours a day because they don't have work
No investment in this factory since 10 years !
don't forgot : Michelin manufactures tyres in France (and abroad) and wins a lot of money.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/january_february_2012/features/the_myth_of_american_productiv034576.php
i'm an IT guy
in our company, we are 2 people to support 130 users, so the ratio is 1 for 65 users
in the USA sister company, the ratio is 1 for 40 users
we are less, we do more
no productivity in France ?
There are good products that come from France, whether it is food, clothing, houseware, colognes, and the like. France is usually associated with luxury products. What is important is the net result. What are they making? What is the quality of the product? If it takes them three hours to make/build a top quality item, so be it. As a consumer, I care about the end result. Products made where labour is exploited tends to be shoddy. There has to be care and pride infused into a product. Watchmakers do not spend many hours a day working, but they produce amazing results. There is such a thing as 'work hard', but also 'work smart'. I feel awful for workers in Mexico who break their back for a lousy 60 dollars per week, and their living expenses are not that different from the USA. I prefer products not made by slaves. If I was setting up a factory, I want to make sure my products are made with care, love, and pride.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
And, if my understanding is correct, that's all they need to work because their productivity is just that high.
Maybe they don't treat their employees like expendable shit and have less anxiety about career stability.
I've been in jobs where the actual work could be phoned in. You could get caught up by say 10:30AM. The rest of the day you bullshitted with co-workers, had lunch, took a walk, did whatever.
In a lot of U.S. business it's nothing but busy work and seat time.
I would happily live in a moderately sized cupboard and forgo all international travel if it meant I could work for just two days a week.
Even if open immigration was permitted everywhere, there would still be practical issues maintaining segregation of working populations. Language and cultural barriers.
The problem here is that while companies are free to shop for labor where it's cheaper, even across country lines, workers can't shop for higher-paid jobs across the same. So the workforce is artificially segregated into compartments, enabling price discrimination between them.
Don't forget the effort that goes into blocking the resulting products from crossing international borders! Even customers cannot always shop cross-country
Things like DVD region encoding or textbook licensing come to mind.
Well, it's true.
sadly some people try and bargain for more than their worth and get cut off from those who pay the bills. Is this the fault of the employee for asking for more than their worth? or the employer for being greedy???
I think the issue is when you feel that you deserve to work a couple hours a day (or week) and get paid more than other people who work for 10s of hours a week (or day) and be paid the same amount. I am sure I will be down moded for this one but sadly the truth hurts. If I own a business, I am going to maximize my profits, and if that means opening a plant in china, or XX instead of YY, well thats not my fault, thats the market. If you dont like the rules, or the way things are running in your country, change the rules to make it more competitive, if that dont work change the rules to keep workers, or products from ZZ from entering your country.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
As a EU citizen (Belgian) I do agree with his views. Other countries in Europe (incl Belgium) have the same problem although not as profound as in France.
like the article already states:
"Bernard Accoyer, an opposition politician, said that while Mr Taylor's assessment amounted to a "mocking caricature", it was "not completely unfounded"
Yeah..and they get more done than any of your 3rd world slaves do in 10 hours. Of course 3 hours is way more than any CEO I've ever know actually works.
Work on improving 3D printers in your spare time instead of doing the repetitive work that the boss wants you to do, and make that cheap outsourced labor irrelevant.
What a trite comment.
If all one needs is to put in that last brick, then why don't you do it?
Perhaps putting in that last brick has a lot of value, and that you're trying to excuse a taker's mentality by claiming that nobody is responsible for their success, that it is society's success.
So what does that get you?
You aren't owed anything just because you take up space and breath. The world doesn't work like that.
Spend less time posting on slashdot and more time taking remedial economics classes.
It's only capitalist for the top 1%. For the rest of us, it's communism, or feudalism, and only the 1% for whom it's capitalist can describe which of the other two it is for the rest of us.
'"They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three. I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that's the French way!'"
According to the French news, because of financial issues the factory is producing only 10% of what it did 1 year ago, and the production lines run for less than 3 hours per day - no wonder the workers are only working 3 hours!
after the dollar tanks it may turn into a combination of feudalism and anarchism
The movies have gone up fast. I read multiple articles saying they were $2.50 per dvd as recently as spring 2011.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Also (at least in the U.S.) I'm not free to buy many products in other countries and bring them back. It's like I pay a 1000% tax because I live in america.
Not everything is marked up this much. TV type items seem to only be 100%.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Peter Gibbons: "I get in around 9:30 and usually zone out for an hour in front of my computer, but it looks like I'm working. I then zone out for another hour after lunch too. In fact, in a given day, I'd say I do fifteen minutes, of real, actual work."
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
besides, producing tires consists of laying layers of rubber on a form, and send the form into a mold that takes multiple hours to cure. once all molds are filled. there's not much you can do, besides waiting for the curing process to finish...
...as compared to US Government workers, they're getting TRIPLE the productivity!
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
The problem here is that while companies are free to shop for labor where it's cheaper, even across country lines, workers can't shop for higher-paid jobs across the same
This is truly a serious problem. As a result we have people risking their lives in dangerous immigration attempts across borders.
impose tariffs on foreign goods to counterbalance the cost of living differences.
This however, has never worked very well in practice (I can't think of any case where it's worked well, maybe you know of one).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This is somewhat true. I lived on half of what I made and bought a $80k house (now $155k with inflation) and was able to retire at 51. The last three years were brutal tho. 70-80 hour weeks or be fired.
If all we did was say you can't exempt employees who do not directly supervise at least three other employees, we'd probably drop 1% off of unemployment right there.
Fortunately... 12 million net extra boomers ( 24 million total) were born 1945-1953 and they are going to retire 2013 to 2020.
And actually a lot already retired in 2010 and 2011. Between 2001 and 2009 social security went up by 5 million people from about 28mil to 33 mil. In 2010 and 2011 social security went up by 5 million people from 33 mil to 38 mil.
It looks like half of people stop working by 60. Only 15% of men and under 10% of women keep working past 65 currently.. maybe they would keep working until 67 but companies are massively discriminating on age and abusing h1b's. In any case, most of that 10% and 15% working are in positio8s with low physical stress and high education requirements.
Year Births Retirement Deaths Immigration Using SS Y2Y Change SS VS Births
1935 2,155,105 2000 2,403,000 900,000 28,498,945 724,268 1,430,837
1936 2,144,790 2001 2,416,000 1,000,000 28,836,774 337,829 1,806,961
1937 2,203,300 2002 2,443,000 1,000,000 29,190,137 353,363 1,849,937
1938 2,266,900 2003 2,448,000 600,000 29,531,611 341,474 1,925,426
1939 2,265,598 2004 2,397,615 800,000 29,952,465 420,854 1,844,744
1940 2,229,100 2005 2,448,017 900,000 30,460,836 508,371 1,720,729
1941 2,328,000 2006 2,426,264 1,000,000 30,976,143 515,307 1,812,693
1942 2,577,300 2007 2,423,712 1,100,000 31,527,728 551,585 2,025,715
1943 2,664,300 Retire ~66
1944 2,500,500 2008 2,471,984 Pending 32,273,651 745,923 1,754,577
1945 2,421,200 2009 2,437,163 Pending 33,514,013 1,240,362 1,180,838
1946 2,900,900 2010 2,468,435 Pending 36,067,000 2,552,987 347,913
1947 3,229,500 2011 2,468,435 Pending 38,486,000 2,419,000 810,500
1948 3,021,700 2012 Pending Pending Pending Pending
Notably.. France had an even BIGGER baby boom than the U.S. which lasted until 1975.
And notably China also has a massive "worker age" crunch coming up.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Idiot believes shit about another country. Hold the presses!
And they can still afford to be a first world country? And you're saying this is a BAD thing?
A robotic dumbfuck brainwashed that "productivity" is exclusive of consumption.
it's dumbfucks like him that caused the previous Great Depression,
by constantly harping on "more stuff" while driving down wages so
nobody could actually afford anything.
This however, has never worked very well in practice (I can't think of any case where it's worked well, maybe you know of one).
I can't think of any case where it was tried in circumstances that are similar to what is going on today. And I'm not saying that it's not without its downsides - only that those downsides are better than the status quo.
If the workers don't make enough to buy his tires it matters not how much labor they perform. Eventually manufacturers will learn the hard fact that people can't buy what they can't afford.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
If you read the letter to the end (yes I know...), after the tirade against the French workers, the main subject is subsidizing and unfair competition from the Chinese.
The guy complains against the US government too, and says he'll end up producing only from China and India.
So the French may not be working enough, but the Americans can break their backs all they want, the tires are still coming from China.
This is the important aspect, and it is one which is common to western workers, and more interesting than French- or US-bashing.
I've worked all over the world. I won't go so far as to say this company is emblematic of all French companies but nor do I doubt the CEO's claims (even though I think he's a douchebag).
The fact is people have different expectations about work and I do find these expectations are influenced regionally. In China, for example, it's expected for sales folk to return their calls within 24 hrs. They will pick up in meetings (not considered rude) and I can usually get a hold of them Mon-Sat. In France, I've found employees consider time off exactly that. Can't reach them off-hours, can't reach them when they are on leave, and they are going to take the leave they're allotted.
Even within countries, there are huge differences. SF Bay Area engineering culture is way different from the East Coast. I don't know any of my coworkers that had fully utilized their all of their 3 weeks PTO during the year. Nothing is ever said but people that do that won't advance.
The problem is it's a global economy and a lot of these practices make companies less competitive. I think it's inevitable that they catch up to them. At the same time, you can't keep pushing workers forever.
It just seems to me the problem isn't so much unions but the fact that they are limited in scope. A company may or may not have global options for production/sourcing/labor. Their competition, however, is most probably global. Unions are national at best. That's why the agreements made are so skewed now. Ideally, you'd reach a good agreement by balancing a global market with a global labor source/supply chain. We can't do that, however. And it sucks.
So if the workers do like their bosses do it's wrong? Less work and big pay is what management is all about.
only that those downsides are better than the status quo.
No, it could be really bad, and most likely would plunge us into a recession immediately after going into effect.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Unions are quite known for protecting those too. That is until its own overabundance of them kills off its host.
Headline: CEO says French workers have a 3 hour day.
Article: CEO says that French workers have a 7 hour day but loaf a lot.
In this case it's not just Slashdot that's to blame for the misleading headline, but come on. What he actually said may be insulting to the French, but is not inherently ridiculous. What the headline claims he said is ridiculous. Sensationalism.
It already is feudalism. The difference is that we call our "lords" a CEO.
Otherwise, it all applies pretty well.
I would have too. Anyone who thinks it's a good idea to charge ten times the cash and do a quarter of the work deserves to starve. Unions can protect you from a lot of bad things but your own greed, laziness, and stupidity are not among them.
Careful what you wish for: someone somewhere can do your job cheaper too.
if you work a solid 8 hours a day and get your minimum wage you're still not going to beat chinese workers. so no, i don't think if i work 2 hours a week i deserve to get paid more than starving chinese people, but i still bargain for the best deal i can get.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
...And it didn't really work, apparantly. France is only two placed behind the US in GDP per hour worked.
actually if you would take into account that they only work 3 hours per 7 marked down.. then france is in top of the list!
which gets us to the fact that a lot of jobs are actually mostly downtime, waiting for input to act on.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
...And it didn't really work, apparantly. France is only two placed behind the US in GDP per hour worked.
And the really funny part is that the USA ranks behind those "librul" pot smoking socialist hippies in the Netherlands.
Well the EU Working Time Directive isn't negotiable. At EU level that is a maximum of 48 hours per week, but in France they have set the maximum work week at 35 hours.
They told me that's the French way!
Did they also shrug and say "boff"?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I'd like to know where in the USA you found a visit to the doctor for $50.
If you think the US is a communist country your dictionary is clearly bad and you should feel bad.
I also use a "non-american dictionary", specifically the Oxford English Dictionary, and according to the "real" definitions of democracy, republic, and capitalism, the US is most certainly a democratic-republic with a capitalist economy.
Well, yeah. But, they only work 3 hours a day. Thats cheating.
The USA is no more communist than the USSR was.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Indeed. Damn those people who think we should be trying to make our lives easier rather than a handful of obscenely rich individuals even wealthier !
Texas.
You can also get a chiro adjustment for $29 and Dentist cleaning + Xrays for $69.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
And with a weird story. It sounds very much like what an American CEO thinks French union worker would talk like if you accused them of working a three hour day. "wee wee, eet eez ze Frrrrranch way" [twirls thin moustache, drinks some wine and eats some cheese]
And in the table right below the one you referred to, France is four places above the USA.
> "and if that means opening a plant in china, or XX instead of YY, well thats not my fault, thats the market"
Yeeeeah, and severe work conditions and exploitation of human and natural resources in China and other developing countries has nothing to do with it. That's just the market.
Said like a true CEO!
It actually makes a lot of sense. A lot of people in the Netherlands work part-time, often 3 or 4 days a week. Working less hours generally means that the hours you do work are more productive. So a workforce that works less hours per person will usually have a higher per-hour productivity.
The french minister sent an answer to Maurice Taylor (who is known to be a troll btw). I couldn't find an english translation but it's a well written answer. (sorry, only pdf's and jpg available at this time)
answer page 1
answer page 2
About the 3h/day of talking, the factory was in a transition period where they temporarily switched their production line from tires for car to tires for truck, and the production line for car tires wasn't fully operational anymore. Taylor would have sent the workers home without payment, but the french union refused. That's their difference.
Of course french workers are not allowed to chat for 3h/day, anyone with a sane mind and who have worked in real life understands this.
most people I know are living "better" (bigger house, more expensive car, more travel, more disposable income) than their parents were at the same age - and frequently with lower debt.
How many of these people are in the same socio-economic class as their parents ?
I struggle to believe someone who is, say, a secretary today is better off than someone in the same secretarial job would have been 30-50 years ago.
OTOH, if your parents were secretaries and/or labourers and you're a degree-qualified professional, then you'd bloody well want to be better off than they were.
"I think the issue is when you feel that you deserve to work a couple hours a day (or week) and get paid more than other people who work for 10s of hours a week (or day) and be paid the same amount."
I suppose that depends on what you do in those hours. It is quite likely you pay your attorney and your doctor as much or more for working a few hours as you pay your grunts for working a full time week.
There is truth in this though. An hour of one man's life is not worth more than another. You can make up lost dollars but not lost hours. The doctor and the lawyer just invested dollars and hours up front. There is no reason their total lifetime earnings should exceed that of the grunt plus the cost of their education unless they are working more hours overall and then the increase should be relative to the number of extra hours.
An important thing for an employer to remember is that the worth of an employee isn't defined by the going market rate for labor. The worth of an employee is the total gross profit of the organization divided by the total number of employees. You then average education hours and hours worked and adjust up or down at the individual level based on their relative education hours and hours worked. There is a rampant fallacy that overseeing 30 employees makes you more valuable than those employees. If it takes you 40 hours to oversee a staff of 40 you aren't more valuable than an employee under you working 40 hours. A related fallacy is that the stress of white collar work is somehow worse than that of physical labor. This is nothing but an attempt to shed guilt from accepting disproportionate pay and a lack of desire to perform physical labor. Another myth is that people are somehow magically more valuable because they are close to the source of revenue. It isn't uncommon to see 5-20% of revenue pissed away at the sales staff. In reality long term sales performance is dictated not by fast talking sales staff and their relationships with clients but by the output of the low paid grunts actually making the goods and performing the services. The "relationship" is based on the sales staff "shooting the client straight" which amounts to having sold them quality goods and services over time. Not only are sales staff not worth 5-20% they don't actually work anywhere near the number of hours they would report.
A similar fallacy is that living your job somehow amounts to actually working more hours. You might work at random times, you might be thinking about work during off hours, but typically staff that "live their job" are deluding themselves with regard to their significance in the overall machine. Usually this is seen in executives and for the most part everyone past middle management is either doing what middle management has told them needs done or getting in the way. They have far more ability to screw things up than to fix it. They'll spend 60hrs a week in useless meetings to produce a couple hours worth of output. Working at a higher level doesn't make the problems more difficult or require more time than working at the bottom. To make it worse these individuals often would count countless hours socializing with their peers as work because their peers are similar executives. Shareholders are only worth something at the point of investment, after investment they aren't worth anything at all!
All of this staff is needed but their contribution is not really more than that of the grunts. If your organization has grunts that are professionals the grunts are probably each worth more than any manager or executive in your organization. The market dictates what you pay staff but that has very little relation to what they are actually worth. Investors aren't worth anything at all!
Everywhere? Right now? You think there aren't tariffs and duties? Eh? Or are you arguing they don't work? I'm all in favor of tariffs and duties to keep everything from floating to china.
By quite a margin too
Oh, three hours work, sounds great! And free healthcare and retirement, OMG! What am I doing still here?
Now go away or i shall taunt you a second time!
Cities in California are going bankrupt. City services disappearing. City Attorney tells residents "lock your doors and load your guns".
So services are disappearing, while local governments are increasingly shaking down residents for money.
Anything that pulls in money gets resources, anything that actually serves citizens gets cut. Inspectors will show up to fine you. Police will run no knock raids, confiscate "drug money", and take anything that isn't nailed down as civil forfeiture. Good luck ever getting it back.
The functions of government are being collapsed to collecting money to pay government employees to take more money.
Feudalism? Sounds close.
No, that's the standard working week, many jobs are 35 hours but overtime still exists (some jobs are still 39 hours) as well as jobs where you basically don't count your hours (working as a cook in a restaurant, some executives, some researcher scientists, entrepreneurs, some people exploited on the labor black market etc.)
Suggesting 35 hours is the legal maximum is uninformed bullshit.
They are tired.
A nice idea would be to try this out in the US, perhaps at first for a single state or a few states to see how we get on. If it's a success, then other states can join in too. We work to live, not the other way around after all - the goal should be to increase free time.
As I said in an earlier post months ago, tests on such fractions of the US can create a kind of evolution where we can see what works and what doesn't. The fitness function would be the average happiness of the nation, and/or the smallest number of deaths, or some other metric. Similar tests can be done for say, car wing mirrors which 'curve' round (to remove the blind spot), or for different ppms for fluoride/chlorine/ozone in water.
Only by trying out different things at the same time, can we evolve towards what's best in the end. (Lead almost certainly caused increased violence, and the best evidence came about because we could see the effects on different states at the same time).
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
My ACM coach used to say "the computer is always waiting for input" regarding sharing the terminal at contests. I guess it's like that.
...'The American worker is the most productive in the world!"
Of course, if they really meant that they'd leave the jobs here... and they don't.
But what does that mean? "Most productive?" That's measured from the standpoint of the company. Not from the standpoint of the worker.
For the worker, "most productive" means your work effort gains you more than for others. For the company "most productive" means that your work effort gains THEM more than others.
"Most productive" measured from the company standpoint means you do more work for less pay.
"Most productive" means "most overworked, most underpaid."
(which I actually doubt, seeing as China still uses slave labor and political prisoner labor.)
This space available.
I'd welcome an era where the CEO goes the way of the dinosaurs.
If they want feudalism; then we shall give it to them in a style similar to past eras in history. I would love to see how a few CEOs deal with rebellions and suddenly having their million plus (insert currency that isn't the yen) salaries go down the shitter due to being worthless.
Oh, the humanity! Three whole hours? That lives remarkable little time for slacking and reading slashdot.
By quite a margin too
Check out the margain for Norway, they don't smoke much as much pot as the Dutch but they are "socialist", "librul" and Aquavit drinkers. There must be something in the Aquavit over there or perhaps the Norwegians have found a way to stay on the the Ballmer Peak for extended periods of time?
Looks like this CEO just admitted to the world he's poorly informed, prone to making important decisions on shockingly little research, and somewhat ignorant to boot.
This is his problem, not ours.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
Last year, my team lead got the other five of us together and told us that he didn't want to see us in the office before 7am or after 6pm. One of his pieces of supporting evidence was a study that found that "knowledge workers" can only really run our brains at full speed for about three hours in a given day, after which productivity drops precipitously. Of course, we routinely put in 14-hour shifts when we're on-site... so I guess we're not thinking very hard for 11 of those 14 hours, or something.
(This team lead is the best "boss" I've ever had. Doesn't want me to work excessive hours, doesn't want to even see me in the office if I have comp time, didn't want to give me VPN access because then I'd check my mail from home without getting paid to read it...)
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
After communism fell in 1989-90, Hungary was released from being a soviet-bloc satellite state. The japanese centered Suzuki car company quickly came here and had a green-field factory built in the western part of the country. The first batch of hungarian workers they hired were sent over to Japan for 5 weeks to learn what mass-production car manufacturing is about. (Hungary was not allowed to produce any personal use cars during the communist era, only buses, as mandated by the russian-ruled COMECON organization. No kidding!)
The hungarians were amazed at how hard the japanese line workers toiled for 9 hours day after day and begged the interpreter to explain what they saw. She said the japanese adults generally dedicate 3 hours of daily work for the preservation of traditional Shinto faith and morals, another 3 hours for the sake of the revered Emperor and 3 hours for the well-being of their own families.
The hungarians considered this and replied: "We had no monarch since 1918, religion is a private matter in our country, so let some 3 hours of hard work suffice for us!"
Amazingly, the Suzuki company decided to stay in Hungary even after hearing this and they still countinue to build cars in the above mentioned Esztergom factory. Which suggest there is no hopeless race, tribe or nation on the face of Earth, when it comes to work ethics (excepting probably the gipsy/roma).
It's easy to have higher levels of efficiency when your country's compact and next to plenty of export markets. The USA is huge, sprawled and relatively isolated.
I work in an open plan office
I'm lucky if I get 45 minutes productive work done each day
<Life of Brian>Sometimes I hang awake at night dreaming of being allowed to work 3 hours a day.</Life of Brian>
Talk to an Australian, they'll set you right about that preconception.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article38581.html
Per capita GDP ranks the US at 8 and France at 23 (World Bank figures).
Sounds big but in actual monetary terms that's (International Dollars) US 48,112 vs. France 35,246. That is the US is producing 1.36x wealth per capita.
Now that's obviously 'more'. But if the French are only working 3 hours a day and the Americans are working 9 hours a day the latter are not being very productive while doing it.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
Some of the employees in that factory are indeed working effectively 3 hours. But they're on the job for the full eight hours of their shift.
Why is that? Goodyear, the current owner of the fab, has lowered the amount of tires that they have to produce per day.
And why is that? Because they want to close that factory. They've been trying for 6 years now, but the union has shown the management's shenanigans time and time again.
When I saw that letter, the first word that came to mind was: bullshit. How can a guy like this be the CEO of a corporation?
Unfair? The world isn't fair.
They leave? Their banks and homes and income remain. Since they aren't here, take it. Unfair? The world isn't fair.
Having worked in all of Portugal, The Netherlands and the UK, I can tell you that the Dutch secret juice is:
- Plan before you start, rather than shoot-from-the-hip decision-making
- No overwork. None, at all. Working 8h/day and not a minute more is vastly more productive in overall simply because people are not tired and so make far fewer mistakes (and in white collar professions mistakes are far more costly to fix that whatever extra "work" you gain from regular overtime).
Interestingly, when I moved to the UK I went to work as a freelancer in one of the most competivive environments with the craziest amounts of overtime (investment banking) and refused to do regular overtime. The end result: I overproduced all of my colleagues (and regularly delivered the needed solutions on time, a rare feat in that industry) and so always got my contracts renewed.
I don't know which French companies only work three hour days. If that is true, it is obviously not acceptable.
So, what they need is a system like in at least some US companies where productivity is measured in hours spent work. So people sit at work for 12+ hours per day while doing maybe 3-4 hours of actual work. But this makes the US productivity figures look good for people like Alan Greenspan who likes to measure productivity in hours spent at work (from his book, not my opinion)! Unbelievable.
So what? The french are the most productive people in the world while working less hours, and morons call them lazy.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-grizz-mauls-lazy-french-workers-over-threehour-day-8503804.html - stupid traditional business thinking more hours = more productivity
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2009-08-20/markets/30087051_1_capita-france-s-gdp-work - some facts and figures
My parents were teachers (University educated). I have somewhere in the vicinity of 10 friends who are teachers, and all of them have a higher effective income than my parents did when I was growing up. I've got about the same education as my Dad, but in a different field (web development), and I'm earning now what he did when he retired.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
A 35 hour work week is fine, as long as you work during this time.
With an hour for lunch that is 6 hours of work a day 5 days a week.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I'm an European, and I have worked in France. It was an office job, so that's not the same but I can share my experience.
Yes, we talked a lot of stuff not related to the job. Yes, in the morning we were taking break between 30 minutes and 1 hour for a coffee. Yes we were taking one hour lunch break (or going to the beach for one hour instead of lunching.)
But... now I'm working in Luxembourg, I have twice my French salary, and I'm working less than in France.
Working Time Directive is unenforceable and easily waivered.
america is a "democracy" and has a "capitalist" economy
That sounds socialist an un-American.
Actually management tends to work a lot. Even if they are not at work they are working.
Now I am not saying that CEO current rates are fair, they are too high right now. But it is fare for the management to get paid more, as they do work verry hard, even if you don't see it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The USA is no more democratic than the USSR was communist.
Fixed.
Worked in that country myself, for some years ( aircraft constructor, currently world's largest ). The guy is right, and spot-on. Trying to get French people to actually be productive is one helluvajob. I was dealing with Thales, once, for avionics parts. Quite often, when I came in at the Thales plant, there would be drum beatings and red flags. When I asked what that was, I got the answer "We are on strike. That is a constitutional right of us, and we use it as we love it". Let such work forces, indeed, go to hell.
The only newspaper in the UK with a right wing bridge column. Noted for its trenchant attitude to the EU, the ECHR and its science-savvy journalists. (The latter is meant as sarcasm by the way).
Most support i get from US company is impolite, angry, terse, and have exactly the same type of behavior you describe. That is not because the stereotype about american is true, it is because some american are stupid and impolite, like some french are stupid and impolite. When you say the "prejudice" is sometimes true,you only confirm an inherent bias by not recognizing that the full breadth of character and behavior exists in all country. In fact as human we tend to do a lot of selection bias : we tend to not remember all the polite encounter and positive stuff which went without an hiccup, and remember very very well the very few negative one because they are so jarring compared to the rest.
Don't confuse selection bias with prejudice being real.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Not naming the company make it look like a made up story. unverifiable. And since we are speaking of prejudice, prejudice of american against french being all high, it does not sound too far to imagine some american would get a kick to exaggerate a story, or put it into a light in their favor whereas the truth is more nuanced etc...
No we're not. We're talking about an American CEO saying that French workers are lazy and surly, which makes the comparison with workers in the US very much on topic.
And this is a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black, because exploitation of workers in the US is endemic and no other first-world country puts up with such conditions for their workers.
The French are actually much closer to where the civilized world should be than the US. After decades of high tech industrial revolution, 8 hour days should be down to 4 hours at the very least, instead of the crazy work hours and reduced holidays that Americans think are acceptable.
So I guess if somebody would agree to do your work for 40 times less cash (assuming you never chat with coworkers and are a bumbling workaholic), you should starve too?
Overwork-conditioned moron...
What about this story qualifies it to be on Slashdot? At least wait three days s/t cowboy can re-post it.
america is un-american
GDP US: M$ 14,991,300
Inhabitants US: 315,544,000
Gini: 47.7
HDI: 0.910
GDP France: M$ 2,775,518
Inhabitants France: 65,350,000
Gini: 28.9
HDI: 0.884
US GDP per person: $ 47509.38
France GDP per person: $ 42471.58
If the assumption is correct, that the French work only half the time, they are still similar effective than their US pendants. The French are super efficient people. And on top of it they have a much higher rate of equality (see Gini values). So if I have to choose, I would rather life in France then in the US (when I look at these figures). However, I do not think that a French human being is almost twice as efficient than an US citizen.
So the point the US dork made is wrong. The only thing he does not like are unions. Well if you do not like organized people, stay where you are. Don't come to Europe. We all have unions (even the British). Maybe he could go to Asia, they do not have worker unions in China.
...it is the American way as well.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
try opening your eyes instead of stupifying yourself listening to cnn, fox, nbc etc
china is more capitalist than america
america is increasingly socialist but the public has been brainwashed into thinking that government control is capitalism and free markets aren't (they are the new enemy). is there any wonder why a lot of americans (occupy wall street as example) hate capitalism? the don't; they hate how corporations are allowed to bribe goverment officials to get huge bailouts, but thats not capitalism! thats the antithesis of capitalism; its more socialist than capitalist if government officials didn't have the power to sell and the government just got out of the way and let the free market work (let big banks that make stupid risky investments pay for them instead of bailing them out) you would have capitalism, and capitalism does work. socialism involving big government has been shown to not work very well (for average citizens anyway).
Many apparently-OK countries in Europe have been coasting on economic momentum of the past centuries. In recent years, they've also attained some economic growth from the integration of the European economy. France has also benefited from doing several things right, most notably their nuclear power sector, relatively low corporate tax rates, and of course their massive tourism revenue and highly-profitable exports of "fashionable" products. But this can only take them so far.
Their per-capita GDP numbers may appear to be almost as high as the United States, but you must understand how to analyze those numbers. GDP includes government spending, which is of questionable value. It is easier to have a high "per capita" anything when you've had a baby boom followed by very low fertility rates recently, so you have lots of workers at the peak of their earning potential, but relatively few children and stay-at-home moms. "Per hour worked" figures are artificially inflated by artificially reduced work hours. Etc.
--libman
Sounds more like he got tired of paying for 8 hours and getting 3.
Overhead costs of maintaining a factory load of Bohemian lifestyles adds far too cost to the product to reasonably expect the consumer to make up and stay competitive. Unions; raising the costs of goods and services unnecessarily. Wanna cure inflation? Delete Unions from the planet and don't give me some fairy tale crap about working conditions and ethics. This is 2013, Ford isn't running the show.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
That is the key question, though - is it "better" to have more stuff, or to have the time to enjoy it?
For the worker, I think the French system is superior. For the CEO, though - people such as Titan - the US system is far, far better.
I agree, I live in an industrial city where Boeing used to build jets. The unions struck and demanded and struck and demanded until it was cost effective to move all the jobs out of state. Now all the little UAW sissies are crying and trying to hold whatever aircraft jobs they can from the other companies( who are also downsizing and moving away for the same reasons). Yeah, it must be nice to be paid $30 hr (fantastic wages for the cost of living around here) to do a job that commonly pays half that for non union, for as long as it lasts anyway. I guess they don't mind the transient lifestyle of moving city to city. People just don't get it, especially when they're drawing pay like they do, until it's too late, then most still don't get it.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs applies very strongly here.
It's clear that this american CEO's worldview is pretty low down in Maslow's pyramid, since he values working for a living above all else.
That's probably true. Due to the enormous social welfare system in the Netherlands, most unproductive people are living on state benefits. That means the GDP/hour is driven by productive employees, but they're not making that much money after tax.
It's really sad to see how much of an hive for socialists /. has become.
I'm sorry but I don't buy your ideology. Socialism leads inevitably to state default and state default typically leads to a more authoritarian state. I'm not at all either into that "social democrat" thing: all it means is, to cut Godwin's law short, that just like the national-socialists right before nazi Germany took power they plan to use democracy to put in place a non-democratic government (a socialist government, with no way back out of socialism).
There was a recent "The Economist" article about Sweden: back in 1993 Sweden was a 70% of state public debt and the public spendings represented 67% of the GDP (!!!). The country was going into a wall. Thankfully some politicians and economists saw the line and reduced public spending back to saner level (less than 50% of the GDP) and meanwhile managed to lower the state public debt to 30% of the GDP.
This shows that there's a limit to socialism: the nanny state has its limits. You MUST have a private sector and you MUST be nice to the private sector if you don't want it to badly crash when there's any crisis. Take Estonia for example: they were suffocating the private sector with crazy high taxes... What happened in 2008-2009? Did all the state workers lose their jobs? No. Did all the socialists politicians lose their jobs? No... For these socialists the soup is always good and fat. What did happen is that the private sector did crash badly. Result? -25% of the GDP. Ouch.
That's socialism for you and that's precisely what is happening in France right now. People are living with a gigantic sense of entitlement and the public spendings represent 57% of the GDP and that number is growing fast. Why? Because the private sector *is* dying.
And it's going to get ugly.
Yet the amazing thing with socialists is that they always managed to whine and to point others: everything is the fault of finance. Everything it the fault of capitalism. Don't you dare point to them that when a country like France starts talking about nationalism (happening right now), we're dangerously close to the national-socialist ideology that the nazis used to reach power. No, the socialists are going to tell you that national-socialism was a right-wing ideology. That's when you point out to them that the nazis did apply height of the ten important points Marx put in place. Including a mostly planned economy.
Socialism does not work efficiently. It gives the illusion of working while it's accumulating crazy high state debt and then the default comes (just like Greece just defaulted and is going to default again and just like France is eventually going to default).
Indignant CEO in "CEO wailing assertions that he/she is entitled to others' hard work" shocker.
- 1 hour of helping the american you suckered in to visiting the asshole of China (it's never shanghai or beijing, it's always some shithole like guangdong or shenzhen) get laid by a prostitute
And if you do get laid by a hooker in Shenzhen or Suzhou and the authorities catch you, be prepared to get 'Indecent behavior' stamped on your passport and getting arrested before being set free for a ransom
What the Norwegians found was oil in their backyard.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
If you want to live like you did in the 1950's you wouldn't have to work that hard.
1 car per family, 1000 sqft house with 1 car garage, 1 19inch TV, no cable, no cell phone, etc.
The fact is people value luxury and are willing to work for it.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
It is clearly implying that we need well-regulated militias with their own weapons not standing armies. There is plenty of evidence that the FFs were against standing armies. There is plenty of evidence that our standing armies have just been a tool for imperialism. Considering we could nuke the living shit out of the whole fucking planet with 1/10th of our nuclear arsenal, I fail to see the requirement for any other military drain on our economy. (and yeah, FUCK the defense industry - they are leaches that have poisoned our system to the point of treason)
The bottom line is that we do not need to "project power" anywhere in the world but to defend our borders - and it is quite clear that invading the US would be fucking stupid, so I don't see much risk in leaving that up to militias.
Protecting "our economic interests" is more complicated due to the lack of a true "free market" approach: fore example: if your business relies on foreign powers allowing you to extract the oil from their borders and they decide to nationalize their oil and kick you out - then your venture fucking failed and there is no reason why we the people should have to bail you out.
Since we got nukes, there has not been a legitimate threat of invasion. All we have now is "terrorism" that is really just a response to US terrorism.
It's called a part-time job, and a cupboard is all you will be able to afford.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
The French live longer, healthier, and lower stress lives than Americans. Americans are so caught up in squeezing blood from a stone, moving at unrealistic paces, and absolutely abusing each other that no one benefits. Even the wealthy in America live a poorer quality of life than their brethren in other countries around the world. So this CEO can feel free to simply go to China or India or wherever.
The slacking begins in middle. In Germany, the people at least try to work hardish. The countries below? Good luck finding the workers during the workday ;)
The biggest chance to see them on the workspot is when they're on a (real) break.
and yet, somehow the in that 3 hours, the French are more productive than this CEO and his ilk.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Classic "Like a boss" meme
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
And of course the $3 doctor gives the same level of service, has the same training, and maintains the same level of medical cleanliness as the $50 US doctor. I can assure you this is not the case. I have a friend who was unfortunately in the mix of "Chinese Doctors" when he was nearly killed by what we'd consider malpractice. To be a doctor there you can go open a shop and claim to be a doctor. Training? Pshaw. Cleanliness? Why bother, that takes more time. Your rose tinted glasses have a few blind spots on them.
tora
Is the hour-long lunch necessarily part of their work day? I take one hour off for lunch every day, but I still have to put in the 7.5 hours of actual work that are required of me every day.
I look forward to the day your Chinese overlords decide you lazy Americans are not working hard enough!
The lunch hour is not included in the work time, even in France.
McCartney fans pay bus tickets. [...] Lennon fans too, with discretion.
WTF? SLAVES WERE PAID IN BEING KEPT (fed, clothed, shelter) - which is what you're left with & BILLED FOR including taxes + utilities with shit jobs that leave you hand-to-mouth with no disposable or saveable income beyond those staple essentials. You? You're just playing a game with words is all you're doing attempting the typical trick the wealthy use in perception alteration by controlling the presses and the meaning of words. Nothing more. It's all done to keep you down, even when you know the game is rigged that way and 'depressions' are engineered to do so. When the middle class starts making money, without which you get no law to combat the wealthy in courts where law = money (and you get leaned on just like in a poker game with checks and bluffing where he who has the higher stack WILL win) is what "justice" really is. A big money game rigged for big money. Gotta stomp those potential and educated middle classers, so they can't get equality in courts of law. It's that simple. How to do it? Take away their income by offshoring jobs, putting your bought and paid for cronies into politics via connections and using the revolving door to change the rules to stomp out the ones that figure out ways around these games, fast. The 1%'ers don't want to give up their golden goose rigged monopoly game, and its down from the IMF on downwards, even to nations.
Hah. This guy's never spent much time away from his friends in their corner offices. That's not too far from what your average office worker in the U.S. has on their agenda each work day. Except that that time spent talking is spent in useless meetings listening to jerks like this CEO drone on about buzzword this and buzzword that. And, hell, guy... If we're not supposed to get an hour for lunch, then why do almost all companies start their work day at 8:00AM and finish at 5:00PM? That's supposed to include an hour for lunch. I guess what you really want is a nine hour work day disguised as an eight hour work day.
Every time I hear about the supposed horrible work conditions in France (from the point of view of idiots like this CEO) I start thinking it might not be the worst idea to brush up on my high school French and pull up the stakes. Are they running everything off of 50Hz power in France? I need to start looking for adapters or new power supplies for the computers.
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I read your crap Alex on freetalklive, you don't know shit about the Scandinavian countries. I laughed while reading your pathetic attempts at "explaining" my region, haha. It's obvious you have never been here.
This comes from another comment on another page. It seems that the real story went something like this:
Noone buys Tracktor tires, and the plant becomes unprofitable.
Management wants to shut down the plant.
Union prevents this.
Workers have to work short hours due to low demand.
Management still wants to get rid of the plant, trying to sell it to a US company.
US manager says its unprofitable and people only work short hours.
Union leaks this to the media, distracting from the fact, that they keep the plant unprofitable.
And I hope the Renewal Minister replied: ``Thank you for your `interesting' position. And we're glad our factories are not such an attractive buyout target. That way our citizens don't have to work for the likes of you.''
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In the US drug dealers don't fill out time cards. Seems like you might have pointed out a flaw in the system since I used to know a lot of drug dealers who made a lot of money working very little when they weren't dead or in jail.
is an idiot. Most factories that aren't run with slave labor are 90-99% machines. Look up how applesauce gets made, or sleeping bags, sometime. Hell, even with slaves Foxconn is switching to robots. We're running out work to do. My buddy drives truck for a living. 10, 15 years from now that job won't exist. Again, robots.
So, when there's not enough work to go around, what do we do? Do we let 98% starve (lazy bastards), 1% work as slaves and then 1% live like God-Kings? Do you know an alternative? I'm anxious to hear a solution that doesn't boil down to socialism.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
My previous job was working in a US office of a company owned by France Telecom. I had quite a bit of experience working with French colleagues both in the US and in France itself and I can tell you that our French workers were smart and conscientious. There are downsides to the French. They don't make friends easily with non-French people, they can't be fired, and there's a general aura of "We're better than everybody who's not French". If that guy buys a French factory, he'll never be able to get rid of anyone. But they weren't lazy. That's for sure. The French are better than Americans in general in not getting completely and utterly obsessed with work and some Americans resent that.
I don't know about France, but here in Germany (also an EU country) break time does NOT count towards work time.
So if I say I work 8 hours/day, I'm at work for 8 hours + break times (45 to 60 min., usually).
Eat the rich!
"There is no reason their total lifetime earnings should exceed that of the grunt plus the cost of their education unless they are working more hours overall and then the increase should be relative to the number of extra hours."
Pure and utter bull.
People have different abilities, different aptitudes, different attitudes, different personalities, etc etc and so forth.
A doctor will always have a greater worth to society and economy than a burger flipper. Always. You cannot argue otherwise.
It's also much harder to become doctor, there are far fewer people able to do it, and who want to do it.
So why in hell should the burger flipper be entitled to as much lifetime earnings as the doctor?
Don't you realize that if an economy were managed in such a way you effectively create huge disincentive for people to become doctors? Some still will, but many will look at Easy Path A compared to Hard Path B, see they achieve the same result, and thus choose A.
If someone is content to be a burger flipper their whole life, have at it. I've known a few people who were fine with it (though eventually two of them decided to open their own place and now have a successful local chain, and just sold their first franchise a few hundred miles away).
As a humanist, the inclination is to say that people have the same worth. And they do on a human scale.
But when it comes to how they choose to spend their time in trade for money, they absolutely do have different worths.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Actually management tends to work a lot. Even if they are not at work they are working. Now I am not saying that CEO current rates are fair, they are too high right now. But it is fare for the management to get paid more, as they do work verry hard, even if you don't see it.
ROTFLMAO. Management does not work. They push paper and hold meetings.
Not true in all cases.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Labor is a world-wide competition now.
If TFA is correct, and I've only spent 2 days in France this year, then there is a real problem. France has some fantastic people and hard workers, of this I have no doubt. I've worked with more than a few like that over the years. If the workers are only producing 3 hrs of work daily, they need to be fired.
People around the world are all stupid. America does not have a lock on this. Everywhere has their share of idiots.
I've worked in labor union shops and non-union locations. Average workers in both were looking to be cared for by someone. It didn't seem to matter if that was the company management or the union leadership. I found the unions to be less willing to support corporate transformations than non-union locations. That means that being competitive and responsive to outside competition just doesn't work as well in a union shop. I constantly heard from union people "that is not in my job description."
Unions seem to be a leach on productivity to me. Once someone joins a union, they seem to loose sight that they are in control of their lives and drop into a "gotta make the donuts" mentality. If non-thinking robots is what a company wanted, they'd build a robotic assembly line.
My sister is in a union. Because she doesn't have much seniority - only 24 yrs - she is stuck with the worst choices for her 2 weeks of annual vacation. She works most holidays, but gets the week AFTER thanksgiving off. She used to be very smart and creative in her thoughts. That changed after she joined the union. The company where she works is just barely hanging on. Hardly any profits. I wouldn't want to be in that business.
I, on the other hand, work as a consultant and have not had less than 2 months off per year the last 10 yrs. I don't need the money, the work helps my mental wellness only. I do it because it is fun, not because I must. I spent almost a month overseas last year "for fun." I am in charge of my work to a great extent. I can work from almost anywhere in the world, provided there is a phone and broadband internet. Being on conference calls from Turkey or Hong Kong or Prague rocks. I am not the smartest person in the world by any measurment. All that I have are
* skills that are appreciated,
* well paid, and
* the balls to demand control over my work hours.
If you are working at a job that doesn't provide the freedom that you like - don't blame someone else. It is 100% your faults for most of the developed world. If you are reading this - you qualify. Pull your head out of your ass, think of a way to make a living that doesn't require you to be in a certain place all the time, then build a plan to make that happen. I did. It took about 6 yrs of extremely hard work and growing my skills, but once I was there, the world became my playground. My life is far from perfect, but at least in this area, provided I keep my clients reasonably happy, I am successful and well-paid.
False dichotomy.
Break is over, get back to work.
It's the free market that raises you out of dirt-floor poverty, with all its lumps, not 10,000 years of "government".
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
So they have taken a national statistic and implied it directly applies to a particular facility and its local group of workers. Classic fail in logical debate.
Workers in the USA are highly efficient too according to national statistics. It must be my imagination that I've ever waited in line for new license plates.
Maybe that's the French way...but we don't shoot our kids in schools...
Yes, and capitalism kept our shelves bursting with food and boom boxes and cars and, now, iPhones and Androids, while not-capitalism (communism, dictatorships, failed states) kept the shelves filled with air.
People have to be free and secure to create big enterprises withoit fear of having it taken, be it street thug, warlord, mafia, or kickback, a massive problem almost everywhere.
I've seen US union reps and politicians go to China in recent years, coming back declaring communism and central planning work! As if China opening up free markets, creating vast wealth and a giant middle class where 40 years of communism couldn't wasn't the biggest scientific repudiation of that odious system you could imagine.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
not exactly a model we want to follow. People complain about being wage slaves, but don't stop to consider how much better off they are than wage slaves in other countries where socialism has been adopted. Sure, everyone has healthcare, but when you go to the doctor they treat you as though you're one of the unwashed masses and most people get substandard care. Sure everyone can eat, but they can't do much more than that. In a communist (or socialist) society you will still have the elite and there will be even less chance to become one of them unless you are part of the family, or do something abolutely extraordinary for them. At least with capitalism if you work hard, educate yourself, and don't live foolishly you can be a very well to do wage slave.
Ultimately I think about a 3-hour work week is what the world is going to need. The alternative is going to be massive unemployment. What work do we really need to get done? Mainly farming and manufacturing. In that order. Both of these require far less labor than they did in the past due to technology. This trend is only going to accelerate. So far the sollution has been to just consume more. All that is really getting us is fat, in debt and filling our landfills.
We are going to have to shift people away from farming and manufacturing into other industries (as has been happening). But those industries don't have a use for all those workers either, not at a 40-hour work week and certainly not at the 80+ hours many factory workers have been acustomed to.
Is working less so bad? What has mankind been striving for in developing all this technology anyway? I hope it's not all just for more throw-away cell phones!
Unfortunately now that we have globalization this is a change that must occur everywhere at once to be successful. I don't see how this can happen when we still have developing nations where people are willing to work all the hours their bodies can push out just to get by and developed nations with a work ethic that was developed more to win a world war than anything applicable to today.
If this CEO is smart, he'll curtail any future travel to France. The guy's an absolute dick and one hopes he has no intentions on entering the diplomatic corps.
In his letter he clearly has the attitude that ``I'm a CEO -- a master of the universe -- so I can say whatever the hell I want to say!'' If there's any justice in the world, he'd be pulled off to the side after arriving for his next trip to France for a little body cavity search (and no lubrication!).
I'm from Illinois and I'd rather have our crooked politicians than CEOs like this living in the state. At least we can vote asshat politicians out of office.
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News at 11.
I agree that society is very interconnected (and we've ALWAYS been interdependent). That's what capitalism is all about, at the core of it. A farmer can't make money growing food if everyone else grows all of their own food, for example. The rest of us who didn't farm were interdependent on the farmers. Pretty much a universal truth, no matter what profession a person is in.
I simply take issue with your statement that all of this means "no one's hard earned money is entirely their own". IMO, money that's earned is a symbol of one's labor. (If you win a million dollars in a lottery? Well then, that's clearly money that isn't signifying your own labor accurately -- but that's one of the few exceptions society purposely constructed. Essentially, it uses money as a game/entertainment, just like casino gambling.)
On the whole though, you're compensated financially in return for labor performed. I know when I work, I'm giving up a certain number of hours of my time to do it, vs. doing anything else I might rather be doing instead. And the money I earn in return for that? Yes, I truly believe that is my own, too.
It's dangerous to follow that logic that simply because we're interdependent people, we're not fully entitled to the fruits of our individual labors.
Well, I certainly don't think anybody is obligated to feed me.
I would have too. Anyone who thinks it's a good idea to charge ten times the cash and do a quarter of the work deserves to starve. Unions can protect you from a lot of bad things but your own greed, laziness, and stupidity are not among them.
Nobody deserves to starve. And the only truly greedy people I know of, are all extremely rich, too. No chance they will starve.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I respect a politician who speaks the truth. I don't understand why this is news.
You believe you just read news about a politician speaking the truth and you're wondering why it's news? I have to ask, "What planet you are from?" I'm pretty sure I've never heard of such a thing except when truth is preceded by the word half.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well I guess the comment subject was in itself the punchline but the slash bot requires text.
Thus turning a elegantly sartorial comment into a "well you had to be there" moment.
Thanks a lot.
Sure, because it's not like the Gilded age ever happened or anything.
sadly some people try and bargain for more than their worth and get cut off from those who pay the bills. Is this the fault of the employee for asking for more than their worth? or the employer for being greedy??? I think the issue is when you feel that you deserve to work a couple hours a day (or week) and get paid more than other people who work for 10s of hours a week (or day) and be paid the same amount. I am sure I will be down moded for this one but sadly the truth hurts. If I own a business, I am going to maximize my profits, and if that means opening a plant in china, or XX instead of YY, well thats not my fault, thats the market. If you dont like the rules, or the way things are running in your country, change the rules to make it more competitive, if that dont work change the rules to keep workers, or products from ZZ from entering your country.
I doubt these guys think they deserve to be paid more than others who work harder. They probably think EVERYONE should be paid more and are just not able to help the other guys. These guys unionizing and demanding more money for less work is their end of the deal. On the other end is you demanding more work for less money. In theory you'll meet in the middle or thereabouts. It's a pendulum that has strong forces pulling it either way, or at least that's how I see it.
I read the CEO letter with some amusement, because some of the same thoughts have crossed my mind in the past. It's a pity that he diluted some good points by sounding rude and arrogant.
I've worked with French entrepreneurs (when I worked in Silicon Valley venture capital) and with French offices (when I've worked for global/international companies). I've directly managed people in France. Like most countries, there is an underlying culture, but it's not homogeneous. So, yes, I've witnessed French workers with a sense of entitlement and a desire to get as much money as possible in return for as little work as possible. This is not unique to France, but the local labor laws are such that they can be gamed to achieve that effect more than in many places. Between mandatory 35-hour work weeks, seemingly endless public holidays, "stress leave" (which can be due to genuine stress, or because you don't like your job/boss/whatever), 25+ days of paid vacation and labor laws that make it very hard to manage performance, it's a tough place to get real productivity. The last point is the toughest IMHO.
Before you get all bent out of shape that "management" means exploiting workers, it doesn't (have to) mean that. It means being able to reward hard work, diligence, self-improvement and great results with training, promotions, coaching and, yes, money. It also means being able to correct laziness, sloppiness and lack of effort with training and hands-on help, and to be able, ultimately, to fire people who don't want to put in the effort. You know who appreciates management firing poor workers the most? The other workers around them. A labor law climate that makes it hard to manage is really poisonous. Do you think that companies most of us admire, like Apple or Google, tolerate poor performance?
What's interesting is that many French workers I know complain about this, and the clock-watching attitude, and dislike it.
You know what? Many of them leave the country, because they can't stand it. Some drive across the border to the French part of Switzerland, which has fairly strict labor laws, but a different work ethic. The tech entrepreneurs come to Silicon Valley; the Valley is full of them, starting companies, raising money and creating value. In the US for the US. Not for France.
Clearly, in the long run, this brain drain isn't good for France. But the underlying culture of entitlement prevents serious reform.
All this says to me is that the French government needs to impose import tariffs on this type of sleazy company owner to prevent erosion of the French standard of living.
Bullshit.
We are also bound to the 48 hours limit.
But hours between 35 and 48 must be either overpaid or given back as vacation. And that 35 hours limit legally applies only to companies with more than 20 employees.
Most other EU countries also have a similar limit, but above 35.
And most managing jobs have employment contracts that make the pay not related to the hours worked, so the 35 hours limit doesn't apply. In that case, most get about 2 weeks of additionnal vacation (in addition to the legal 5 weeks).
try opening your eyes instead of stupifying yourself listening to cnn, fox, nbc etc
china is more capitalist than america
america is increasingly socialist but the public has been brainwashed into thinking that government control is capitalism and free markets aren't (they are the new enemy). is there any wonder why a lot of americans (occupy wall street as example) hate capitalism? the don't; they hate how corporations are allowed to bribe goverment officials to get huge bailouts, but thats not capitalism! thats the antithesis of capitalism; its more socialist than capitalist if government officials didn't have the power to sell and the government just got out of the way and let the free market work (let big banks that make stupid risky investments pay for them instead of bailing them out) you would have capitalism, and capitalism does work. socialism involving big government has been shown to not work very well (for average citizens anyway).
If America were socialist, the government would own those corporations. The fact that they are privately owned is a major factor in Capitalism. Capitalism is about individuals owning factories and mines, and having a default right to do anything with those factories and mines that isn't explicitly outlawed.
Consider a bunch of feudal lords, sitting around being well off with serfs to serve and men at arms to protect. Life's pretty good, except you can't go on vacation, and you can't move to a nicer part of the world when you get bored. If you do, some other lord(s) will come along and seize your estate while you're not paying attention.
So, you make an arrangement with the other feudal lords that recognizes each others right to be lords of their domain, you centralize the men at arms and put them in the service of protecting this arrangement, and you disenfranchise the serfs further by setting them "free", absolving yourselves of the responsibility to provide for the serfs while leaving them without the resources they need to be independently productive.
That's a fairly good description of Capitalism. The "freedom" of Capitalism is about freeing the Lords to enjoy life, not about freeing everyone.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Well, I agree with the gist of the argument, but fighting figures somebody pulled out of his backside with figures you pulled out of your own backside is futile.
The bottom line is that French workers are about on par with US workers in terms of the value they produce per hour worked. Depending on how you calculate that, claims could be made for the workers of either country, but either way American and French workers are pretty comparable (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_hour_worked).
Remember, when an American CEO talks, his definition of "truth" is whatever puts the most money in his (and not necessarily even the shareholders') pocket.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
No, it could be really bad, and most likely would plunge us into a recession immediately after going into effect.
[citation needed]
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The fact is people value luxury and are willing to enslave others for it.
There, fixed that for you.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So why in hell should the burger flipper be entitled to as much lifetime earnings as the doctor?
Ideology. The grandparent poster has come down with a nasty case of Marxism, and is displaying the classic symptom of believing that everyone is equally capable of everything, and hence the only difference between a minimum-wage fast food cook and a top surgeon is education. Similarly, we would all be Olympic athletes if we only had the right training.
One might think that Marxism could be treated with a robust dose of Common Sense, but unfortunately, advanced versions of the illness are highly resistant to that, and there is (as yet) no known cure. The good news is that Marxism is rarely fatal these days, and the worst symptoms can be kept under control if the patient can learn to keep his self-righteousness under wraps.
There is no reason their total lifetime earnings should exceed that of the grunt plus the cost of their education unless they are working more hours overall and then the increase should be relative to the number of extra hours.
An economy cannot work that way, sadly. If so, everyone would do the easiest job with the lowest investment required. Scarcity necessarily carves out different compensation levels for different work. If you are a burger flipper, the population of people who can do your job and would be willing to do so given no financial incentive to do something else just as well as you is nearly anyone. Meanwhile, you have jobs that demand you spend huge amounts of time away from home, which generally means no one would do it unless it were more profitable. You have highly skilled jobs that require a large upfront investment which is senseless to do if the net outcome is no better than flipping burgers. You have highly dangerous jobs that no one in their right mind would even conceive of doing (e.g. mining). You have disgusting jobs like sewer worker that no one would take unless they had to. Sure, some relatively small population might undertake a career of highly skilled out of pure love for the craft, but not that many and certainly you won't find people lining up to volunteer for sewer worker duty unless circumstances make that a more valuable or available job than another.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Anyone who has seen the Actual working conditions at the Big 3 automotive manufacturers knows what it's like there. Employees coming to work late, drinking on the job and sleeping it off in some remote location, or taking three or four hours lunches to play euchre on the clock. Using five workers to do the work of two, and much more slowly, as they need 'stretch the job out' or they'll have nuthin' ta do fer the rest o' th' day...
At least the French don't deny it.
True, however, that the rest of the basic labour force has been reduced to little more than slave labour conditions for minimum wage that no 'self respecting' American would do, resulting in foreign workers coming into the country en masse to conditions that are far superior to what they were experiencing 'back home'.
Maybe it's time kids were taught the meaning of decent work for decent pay, and showed an interest in working at the many Manual Jobs out there that the immigrant workers are taking over. They are leaving themselves out in the cold for jobs that are over staffed, over trained (or poorly trained for), since they all want a sweet, tech based job that pays excessively well, for little effort, and are unwilling to get their hands dirty doing anything that takes real physical effort.
MCSE? There's at least a dozen each three months churned out at the community college. Ever wonder why, in any given college town there are computer shops popping up like pimple on teenagers, then blowing away after a few months?
Nobody seems willing to work at the local warehouse system but migrants. Nobody wants to subject themselves to those 'slave labour conditions' here.
Just ask them what is was like back home for a real Wake Up Call on expectations from the working class!
It certainly goes both ways. Employers pay peanuts, they get unskilled monkeys, then bitch about the quality of the work...
Of course you will.
As everyone should. It just looks as if the French people are bargaining themselves out of a job.
My kid can tell a neighbor that he wont mow their lawn for anything less than $300.00 and that they have to hire someone else to clean up the cuttings after he is done. I doubt though that the person with the money will agree to that.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Our nuclear weapons program, as a start. Then the entirety of USSOCOM. Our aircraft carriers. Most of our submarines. All currently-planned weapons development programs. I would definitely cancel the JSF program. Any soldiers who would be put out of a job by this could take over jobs currently under contract, such as base security, cleaning services, food prep, etc.
Fully half of military officers graded O6 or higher could be let go. Every single civilian defense agency under the DoD should have its entire contract staff fired immediately and be reorganized to make do with civilian personnel. Any roles that cannot be filled with the civilian workforce should be examined and eliminated, if possible.
I could go on. There is literally too much waste to even account for, which is why DoD hasn't even attempted an internal audit in a long time.
Really?
So the CEO of which company can come in and fuck your new bride?
Which one can lock you in prison?
How many of these CEO "Lords" can force you to take up arms and die for them?
I understand that you are filled with hate but at least try to make arguments that do not make you seem such a stupid tool.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
That's an ADVANCED society.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
...And it didn't really work, apparantly. France is only two placed behind the US in GDP per hour worked.
"per hour worked"...
The whole point you say didnt work, was that the extra hours we dont need to work due to extra productivity, is worked anyways creating extra TOTAL GDP. If the french decide to quit when the productivity level is equal to 1950 levels, then they are losing 3-5 hours of extra productivity, which affects the TOTAL GDP. Whereas, LordLucless' point was that "We used those productivity gains to increase our GDP rather than shorten our workday."
BTW, good job referencing wikipedia as if it were a reliable source.
These guys are running an international corruption syndicate and then have the audacity to ridicule other people's work ethics ? The world is fucked I tell you.
The Commission's complaint alleges that, from 1999 to 2001, Titan paid more than $3.5 million to its agent in Benin, Africa, who was known at the time by Titan to be the President of Benin's business advisor. Titan failed to conduct any meaningful due diligence into the background of its agent either before his retention or thereafter and also failed to ensure that the services alleged to be performed by the agent, and described in his invoices, were in fact provided to Titan. The complaint alleges, in 2001, at the direction of at least one former senior Titan officer based in the United States, Titan funneled approximately $2 million, via its agent in Benin, towards the election campaign of Benin's then-incumbent President. The complaint also alleges that some of these funds were used to reimburse Titan's agent for the purchase to T-shirts adorned with the President's picture and instructions to vote for him in the upcoming election. According to the complaint, Titan made these payments to assist the company in its development of a telecommunications project in Benin and to obtain the Benin government's consent to an increase in the percentage of Titan's project management fees for that project. The complaint alleges that a former senior Titan officer directed that these payments be falsely invoiced by the agent as consulting services and that actual payment of the money be broken into smaller increments and spread out over time. The complaint does not allege that the then-incumbent President knew of the payments.
[...]
According to the complaint, Titan falsified documents that enabled its agents to under-report local commission payments in Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. In addition, the complaint alleges that Titan falsified documents presented to the United States government by under-reporting payments on equipment exported to Sri Lanka, France and Japan. The complaint also alleges that Titan (i) paid a World Bank Group analyst in cash to assist Titan in its project in Benin, and (ii) paid a Benin government official approximately $14,000 in travel expenses from 1999 to 2001.
Yeah, it must be nice to be paid $30 hr (fantastic wages for the cost of living around here) to do a job that commonly pays half that for non union, for as long as it lasts anyway. I guess they don't mind the transient lifestyle of moving city to city.
If a company is moving due to unions, it tends to only happen once. The move is usually to a state like mine which does all but actually cut the balls off of unions. They move to a state that has banned unions or made it so they have no real power. No more $30. No more strikes because the union leaders want a bigger kick back. Just work.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Management does not work. They push paper and hold meetings.
As a manager, I beg to differ. I have four people that I manage, and I write more code than the four of them put together. Yes, I have to go to meetings, which cuts into my time, but I still have deadlines to meet, and so I have to work more hours to get my coding done. Some of my team works overtime almost every day, but some of them pretty much wrap up and go home when the clock strikes 5. However, I am responsible to get projects done, so I stay late to make sure the stuff gets done. Sometimes, there are little annoyances that come up during the day, like reloading some files, looking at some issue, etc. I give these to MY boss so that I can continue working. So I also know that MY boss works for a living.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I think the issue is when you feel that you deserve to work a couple hours a day (or week) and get paid more than other people who work for 10s of hours a week (or day) and be paid the same amount.
I own a business. I'm in the business of selling my labor. Therefore, I'm going to maximize MY profits. That means getting paid as much as I can for as little work as possible. If business owners shouldn't be stigmatized for being greedy assholes, then workers shouldn't be stigmatized for being lazy assholes.
This double standard has to go.
Don't you realize that if an economy were managed in such a way you effectively create huge disincentive for people to become doctors? Some still will, but many will look at Easy Path A compared to Hard Path B, see they achieve the same result, and thus choose A.
Although I agree mostly, I have to say that I feel we'd all be better served if the doctors in our society we more likely to be people interested in healing rather than people who are interested in fancy cars and social prestige.
For example?
Before you throw around the term "slave" you should really understand the meaning.
I am a Frenchman and I would really like to set the record straight on this story. Unfortunately I am currently not at work and will respond further when I get back.
And the only truly greedy people I know of, are all extremely rich, too.
Odd, the only truly greedy people I know of is everybody. But I should point out that per capita, lower income people originate more lawsuits than upper income people.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
The nature of freedom is that you and I trade value for value. Obviously everyone depends on others, but they exchange value for it and consequently pay for what they receive. If I am not getting value from the local supermarket, I go to the farmer's market. If I don't get value from the auto-repair shop, I learn and do it myself.
> If I own a business, I am going to maximize my profits, and if that means opening a plant in china, or XX instead of YY, well thats not my fault, thats the market. If you dont like the rules, or the way things are running in your country, change the rules to make it more competitive, if that dont work change the rules to keep workers, or products from ZZ from entering your country.
That is greed. You don't NEED to maximize profits, you need enough revenue to pay all bills, invest to grow, and have some incentive. This idea that you NEED TO MAXIMIZE PROFITS, so much more that it's worth being inhumane, is pathetic to say the least.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
You forget the whole "relative to their economy" part.
If you paid a Western worker and, say an Indian/Chinese worker exactly the same amount in monetary value for exactly the same work and hours, the Western worker (say, for a low end job) would have a life with a bit of a struggle to get by. The Indian/Chinese worker would have renumeration within their economy similarly to a very well paid job.
Large corporations make the saving by leveraging money in a strong economic region, and source labour in a weak economic region; the worker gets a fair deal for their work, and the corporation gets cheap workers. If you live in a strong economic regions, you will never be able to match prices for basic hourly rate with a weak economic area, because you'd starve. It's not what your time is worth in hard money, it's what your time is worth compared to the costs of living in your local/regional economy.
China itself has the kind of arrangement that the French do. Massive employment figures, though quite a lot of people don't have much of a "real job" to do. The government makes something up for them to do, and they go and do it and get paid a salary. Most of their time is spent talking, with work being done as they need to take the slack up from others. It's a form of welfare in a way, but they do an honest day's work (if not a particularly taxing one) to earn it. The French system is somewhat the same. They place the living of life above the metrics of more money; the cost of living there is relatively quite high, but they have an extremely enviable work/life balance. They're neither stupid, or lazy, but as a nation do what works for them.
The trick is, if someone says 'Non, non, non Monsiueu !' it will be done by tomorrow morning.
If they say 'Oui, oui, oui !" give up.
American CEO's like to make slaves of their workers. Treat them like dirt, give them horrible health care if any at all, discourage any vacation time and then fire them for fun. This has to be the worst place on earth to work and American managers and corporate officers are more like predators than humans. I hope this CEO loses his job and everything he has stolen from the broken backs of his slaves.
He's probably talking about Annual visit under an insurance plan.
"They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three. I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that's the French way!"
Seems like the French union reps agree.
This very thing led to factory workers and store clerks being more valued in the Soviet Union than engineers. You were treated better and paid better despite being more of a drone. People still became engineers. They just did so DESPITE of the economic incentives in place.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
That's a nice bit of wishful thinking. Unfortunately, Doctors have to PAY their own way. They have to pay for their own schooling and they also have to pay their own liability insurance. This means that they have to be able to make a good coin regardless of how "self-less" they are. The economic realities of the situation simply won't allow them to do otherwise.
On the other hand, a Doctor is worth 10x of a good engineer and easily should be able to make 10x the money.
I have no problem respecting their talents and the level of effort required to get into their position.
I realize that I am in the minority in that respect. Ignorance breeds contempt and most people don't realize how ignorant they are.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I think the "only truly greedy" remark is along the lines of how some people say that Blacks can't be bigots.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
My California city is nowhere close to bankrupt. I don't own a gun and haven't felt the need.
Last I checked, the city services were all present. I've never felt shaken down by the local authorities, and my taxes are pretty reasonable.
I feel like the cops (for the most part) are aiming for public safety and not harrassment. Inspectors have never shown up to fine me. When I had a business, the fire inspector complimented me on having everything in place. I've never been no-knock raided nor known anyone personally who has been, although I have seen it on TV. I have heard that it has happened to innocent people, which needs to be corrected.
I don't know anyone who had "drug money" seized where it wasn't actually drug money.
The city did try civil forfeiture to redesign downtown, but the residents found out about it and ousted the mayor instead.
Sounds like you know a lot of unsavory characters and are making excuses for them getting caught performing illegal actions.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
I disagree. There is always someone who will do your job for less than you are currently making. The difference is, they probably won't perform at the same level, or be as productive. The problem comes in when short-signed bean-counting management assholes decide that "cheap" is better than "good" because it looks better on the quarterly balance sheet. "See, we reduced salaries by 15% while retaining the same staffing level! Yay us!" The fact that the product they produce is now utter shit won't show up on the sheet until after the C-levels bail with their golden parachutes.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
No, they're not. However, if you do work on someone's behalf under agreed-to conditions, they are obligated to compensate you. It's the 'agreed-to' part that we're discussing here.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
[citation needed]
It's really not, there are plenty of studies on the subject, feel free to remain ignorant and lazy.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You are confusing the French for Germans.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
And it is interesting that they don't fully understand the choice of lifestyle they made. So governments in Europe are moving to put in austerity measures, which is deepening their recession instead of helping. At least France did, until Hollande stopped going full bore austerity.
And they have a nice lifestyle, no healthcare bankruptcies, and they make decent stuff. They even decided not use LiON batteries in the A380, so it's not like they became completely vegetative because they don't have constant downward wage pressure to make them work hard like in a union-busting US state.
That's not the fault of the people who make the license plates. The problem there is understaffing by the DMV, and a lack of incentive for high productivity on the part of the DMV management. If the average worker knew that his/her hard work, creativity, dedication, and loyalty would be rewarded at a higher level than someone who shows up and basically occupies a chair for 8 hours, then you'd see a lot of that kind of shit disappear. Once you see someone (or you yourself) work themselves into a stupor and get nothing more than the privilege of keeping their jobs, when they could work just hard enough to not get fired.. well, then hard work is for chumps.
Productivity of the American worker has steadily increased over the last 40 years, while wages have been stagnant. What incentive is there to work hard beyond your own sense of pride? Pride which can't pay your mortgage or feed your family?
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
I always love reading Slashdot opinions on business topics. They're hilarious--people with more opinions than experience lamenting that some evil one-percenter is just screwing the poor hard working folks to get that extra nickle on their bonus. How, if they were in charge of a business, they would give lavish pay and benefits, be a champion of the little man and show those fat cats up.
But they aren't in charge of a business and never have been. The closest most people here get to owning a business is claiming the room they keep their computer in as a home office on their taxes. They have never had to hire or fire people working for them, not as some department manager firing one of his staff, but as an executive of a company having to make an existential business decision to fire an employee or jeopardize a department, layoff an entire department or risk shutting down an entire building, or close an entire plant or risk losing the company.
Having to make decisions based not on fanciful ideals they once had a really good gut feeling about, but actual deadlines, cash flow statements, unpaid client bills, rent and mortgage changes, supplier price fluctuations, insurance costs, tax liabilities, regulation compliance and fickle state and federal legislatures who love to pass feel-good laws, changes one's ideas of business. The chief executive of Titan made a decision based on over two-decades of executive business experience. He was an engineer before that, so he can't be too stupid. I wager he knows his industry better than anyone on Slashdot and his company better than everyone on Slashdot combined. And yet, as always, Mountain Dew slurping, mouse jocky experts come out of the woodwork to criticize him because he's a successful businessman making successful business decisions.
Yes, you may never have run so much as a lemonade stand, but I'm sure you can run circles around a guy with 23 years of experience running a $1.2 billion company.
It's really not, there are plenty of studies on the subject, feel free to remain ignorant and lazy.
It's not the kind of thing that's trivial to find, or at least, it's as trivial to find counterexamples. If you have a compelling citation, I'm interested. Otherwise I have to file it with all the other shit that economists say would be bad for the economy, that other economists say would be good for the economy.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Its fucking easy since we have more than 40% of the world's defense spending.
Start by lining up the generals:
Fired, Fired, Fired, Keep
The remaining generals I would order to cut 3/4 of their budget; and they get to figure out which parts. They're paid to know what they need to fight a war both today and tomorrow.
This very thing led to factory workers and store clerks being more valued in the Soviet Union than engineers. You were treated better and paid better despite being more of a drone. People still became engineers. They just did so DESPITE of the economic incentives in place.
Uh huh. It had nothing at all to do with the benefits of being a higher member of the party or working in areas that were viewed as being more important by the party. If you think that there was ever a time when a factory worker or a store clerk was considered more valuable than engineers then you're either deluding yourself or falling prey to propaganda.
You may like the factory worker or store clerk but the undeniable fact is that it is several times easier to replace one of them than it is to replace the engineer. That is practically the very definition of what makes one more valuable when combined with the contribution they can make. To deny that is to deny basic logic.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
if you work a solid 8 hours a day and get your minimum wage you're still not going to beat chinese workers. so no, i don't think if i work 2 hours a week i deserve to get paid more than starving chinese people, but i still bargain for the best deal i can get.
That may not be true. It all depends on relative productivity and transport costs, even for quasi commodity product, and tyres are one such product: whilst the likes of Michelin and Pirelli are out in front in the production technology, the end product per se has been around since the late 1800. What I find galling is that the lesson of "dune" is lost on the French: if anything, Michelin has been the real factor in rendering that plant unable to go on, not the Chinese. They eat off the same plate.
Having said that, I must say that French economic policy has wavered between "Baffling" and "hopeless" this past 20 years, so I cannot blame Mr. Montebourg for continuing a noble tradition of expedience over realism. After all, here in Europe we have TWO seats of European government because the French Governments, since the beginning and continuing now, are constitutionally unable to say "Oui" to countless proposal of scrapping Strasbourg.
One of the key issues here is this, and it is not a French problem, it is general: if you are working for a company that is able to make money competing on goods in international markets, and you are reasonably sure you earn your bread, you are rather safe. Otherwise not, you are in a sense a "welfare recipient", i.e. someone else is paying the piper for you. sooner or later, he will not be able to do it any more.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
And yet France is falling way behind Germany:
http://business.financialpost.com/2013/02/21/markets-swoon-as-data-kills-hopes-of-early-recovery-for-eurozone/
Citizens demand lower taxes, get them. Less money coming in = risk of bankrupcy. That's not a failure of government, that's math.
For poor people. Rest assured, when the rich guy bitches about a streetlight, it gets fixed that day, while the single mom tries to get someone, ANYONE, to listen to her about the water that's so bad her cat won't drink it gets ignored. (First-hand experience.)
That's what happens when you can't pay for public safety because the world will end if the rich asshole can't save $100/year on his property insurance. (Again, first-hand experience.)
Fixed that for you.
Your point?
Fixed that for you.
Follow the rules and that won't happen. Don't like the rules? Elect someone else. Can't get that person elected? Tough shit, follow the rules.
Thanks, "War on Drugs". You can't really blame the cops for wanting to keep the lights on.
And yet your taxes are lower than they've been in half a century. And, the IRS' budget has been cut for two years running.
Your rage at 'the evil nasty gub'mint" is misplaced. You should really be angry at the rich (most of the above), the liars ("Your taxes are going up! The government wants to take your guns/rights/property/religion away! The size of government is growing!"), and the self-described morally superior (war on drugs.) Who, come to think of it, have an undue influence in government. Maybe we should work on that instead of trashing the idea of self-government without a viable alternative to anarchy.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
On the other hand, a Doctor is worth 10x of a good engineer and easily should be able to make 10x the money.
Unless you're healthy and need a bridge built...
Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
"To the market! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems." - Every CEO.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Man, these 3-hour work days are killing me!
George Jetson
So... Do they have collapsible flying cars as well?
I have to seriously disagree - I'm a part owner (largest minority share) in the startup I work at, I'm CTO, and I work my a** off. I get in at 9am, work through lunch much of the time, get "off" at 6pm, then go home, do dinner with the family, and half of my weeknights I go back to work. I work every other weekend. I have one intern, and I also play "Manager" of most of the company as well as my programming and other technical pursuits. I have to ensure salespeople are hitting their goals, working with them to set reasonable goals, and discussing with my other two partners when those goals aren't met. I am on the hook for a not insignificant percentage of the company's debt, so yeah, I'm gonna be pissed if people are slacking off and I'm paying out the nose for it.
. Define sqrt(x) as something really evil like (x / rand()), and bury it deep. Watch your coworkers go nuts.
If equivalently 25 people are loafing around doing nothing, your support load is the same. If it's any higher, then you actually have less work than they do.
The good news is that Marxism is rarely fatal these days,
It's killing a hell of a lot of north Koreans every day.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I have to seriously disagree - I'm a part owner (largest minority share) in the startup I work at, I'm CTO, and I work my a** off. I get in at 9am, work through lunch much of the time, get "off" at 6pm, then go home, do dinner with the family, and half of my weeknights I go back to work. I work every other weekend. I have one intern, and I also play "Manager" of most of the company as well as my programming and other technical pursuits. I have to ensure salespeople are hitting their goals, working with them to set reasonable goals, and discussing with my other two partners when those goals aren't met. I am on the hook for a not insignificant percentage of the company's debt, so yeah, I'm gonna be pissed if people are slacking off and I'm paying out the nose for it.
The key difference between you and "Manager" is "part owner," as you say. I'm talking about middle management.
Less work and big pay is what management is all about.
I don't know where you work, but in most of the companies I've ever worked for, the higher you go, the more you work. It's not at all uncommon for a senior manager or director at Apple to put in 60-hour weeks.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The CEO is more like a Sheriff. The Lords own him too.
Anyone who thinks it's a good idea to charge ten times the cash and do a quarter of the work deserves to starve.
Kind of like how the business lowers their production costs by hiring low cost labor but still sells their tires for the same price, pocketing the difference? Why would one not want to charge as much as possible for their labor? The French actually value their free time, and don't want to be wage slaves to their employers.
I have wondered why, in a society who's needs are over-filled, we are so concerned with productivity. Couldn't we all, at this point afford to take a little time off? Don't we have more job seekers than jobs? Seems our capacity outstrips our need. Yet we still need to work longer hours for less pay and always be more productive. Why? Because the system requires it. The profit motive doesn't understand leisure time. ROI doesn't care about human spirit and dignity. the monetary system needs constant growth or it will collapse. So we all stay on the treadmill not for ourselves, but to support a system that constantly requires more.
Am I coming off too Marxist? I never know...
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
I work full time. I can barely afford my rent. It's a bit more than a cupboard, but strangely enough all the cupboards cost exactly the same as this. Regardless of landlord. I think that's some sort of informal price fixing going on, where they all decided it would be to their collective benefit never to offer anything under £500/pcm.
I had a roommate who was a union plumber and I really couldn't believe how fucking bad the union was. It really didn't do shit for him. The real telling thing was during the recession. I mean what someone does for you in times of plenty isn't nearly as telling as in times of need. Well basically he sat at home, idle, because they had no work. He got a "raise" during that period because he'd reached the next tier in their ranking system, but there was no work so it didn't do shit.
They had no unemployment assistance or anything, all their training was paid-for education through the University of Phoenix. In fact, he couldn't collect government unemployment insurance because he was still technically employed. They would release him at his request (which he eventually did) and he'd then be eligible but they warned him he'd then be at the back of the line to get a job back when work came back.
They still wanted their union dues though, those were not waived despite lack of work. Oh, and they told him if he left, he couldn't take a non-union job for 2 years. Such preventions aren't legal in this state, but they told him anyhow.
I really can't see anything useful they did for him. I mean I guess on paper he had reasonably high pay per hour, though I don't have a scale of other plumbers to compare it to, but that doesn't do any good if hours worked = 0. Their concern seemed to be to protect the union and collect dues, not to look out for their employees.
If I had the money, I'd buy the factory. And start an ad campaign all over France, featuring the CEO's letter, and then saying: buy French, boycot highway robbers.
And I just *adore* the kiddies here on slashdot, who think that they're worth the money they make working 60 or 80 hours a week, and look down on unions, that force 1.5x for > 40 hr, and even the chance to have an actual life.... but, no, you live to work, you don't work to live, because you have no life, or significant others, or....
mark
So if the workers do like their bosses do it's wrong? Less work and big pay is what management is all about.
For them, not you. Now get back to work.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Another communist country down the toilet!
It's a testament to American propaganda that anything not American Capitalism is called communism or socialism.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Our society (USian) as a whole worships the CEO class right now. This behavor is an outgrowth of that.
There is no reason to give credibility to it. If the story didn't have the "he's a CEO" aspect we'd question why his opinion was important. Just because he is a CEO doesn't mean that he has credibility if you look at the world with a critical eye.
How much does this CEO make again? Yeah talk to me when he takes a pay cut.
Just a question: Why is it that one always moves to maximise profit? I know about some market forces requiring a certain level of profit and effectiveness etc to be competitive. I just wish it didn't always have to be about maximising profits, but rather about making stuff that people need/want and make a decent living doing it.
Careful what you wish for: someone somewhere can do your job cheaper too.
Then they deserve to have it. Anything standing in their way is an act of aggression.
--libman
[nt]
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I visisited an east german company for electric motors in 1990, and was quite surprised by the huge number of people crowding the place. As some of these motors have been in production for remote controlled cranes, I asked my guide why they operated their own cranes with a bunch of ladies instead.
Answer: the state (the guide meant GDR) has an obligation to give a job out to everyone, so they left the old stuff in place to be able to offer jobs as crane operators. With the sale of the factory to a west german company 80% of the staff were fired. Result: the remaining people, aka their town, companies and the state, had to pay these with "welfare" money via rising taxes. Productivity increases, output stays at the same level, but the overall balance shows only a difference for the few people in charge of the "new" company. These guys made a fortune out of it :-)
The federal owned company model, widley used in france, seems to operate on a similar mindset, but is better tuned - as long as the company earns some profit it makes no difference wether you pay wages or welfare, but for social reasons wages look better. When the profits turning red some people have to go.
US model, strict capitalism: you can get rich as private owner of such a company by firing as many as possible and have somebody else (aka the remaining workers) pay the welfare for the laid off ones. Make sure nobody taxes the welfare money out of you, ask for reduced taxes, and a workers union is a no-go.
With the rise in productivity profits and welfare money rise similar. Choose one of the models above.
Don't forget dodging paying the companies share of taxes.
Just once in my life to see a global worker action for like 3 months of no one finger lifted.
In California, tenure comes after two years.
Although you are "tenured" (removed from probationary status) after two years, that doesn't mean you can't be furloughed. All tenure does is secure your spot on the bottom of the senority list for your school. If you are near the bottom of that list and the school district needs to layoff some-number of teachers, you probably still lose your job. Moving to a new school district will start the clock again.
With the current budgetary environment in California, this isn't a merely theoretical, it is what is happening to nearly all recently hired teachers. Even surviving to tenure, nearly all people on the bottom of the senority list get layoff notices every year until the districts figure out their budget, and hire most (but not all) of them back. Young, enthusiastic, qualified teachers (including several who were friends of mine) are leaving the state for more stable job opportunities elsewhere.
Basically, tenure doesn't mean much in the CA system. Non-tenured means simply the probationary period (kind of like a teacher internship) is still going on. Basically it's all about senority with teachers.
Of course nobody like a layoff, but real organizations (including non-profit organizations) would use an unfortuante layoff opportunity to clean house, where as schools are forced to simply sacrifice the future for today.
I'm sure such folks do exist. However, I prefer competency. I've heard some of my less ... economically minded friends say similar things. "Healthcare would be better if folks remembered that healing is a CALLING, not a JOB!" Uhm. You haven't been thoroughly covered in some idiot's blood before, have you? Or cleaned bedpans. Or had to do any one of the fifty billion soul crushing parts of the medical industry.
Medical school is long, hard and expensive. Even if it was free, I'd hope it was long and hard. Doctors require a certain amount of intelligence. There are a limited number of folks that can realistically become a certified doctor. Those folks tend to be in demand. Any doctor could have become a lawyer, management or any other fairly high level gig. Sure, many doctors like helping heal folks. But they also may like living comfortably. Pay them as much as a burger flipper, and you're going to get more burger flipper results.
Meetings aren't work.
I think the issue is when you feel that you deserve to work a couple hours a day (or week) and get paid more than other people who work for 10s of hours a week (or day) and be paid the same amount.
I own a business. I'm in the business of selling my labor. Therefore, I'm going to maximize MY profits. That means getting paid as much as I can for as little work as possible. If business owners shouldn't be stigmatized for being greedy assholes, then workers shouldn't be stigmatized for being lazy assholes.
This double standard has to go.
In business, you don't maximize profits by having less of them. Getting paid as much as you can for a particular work is a proper business goal, getting it for as little work as possible is just plain laziness.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
If the HSA contract stipulates a $500 fine for workers or companies that are not on an authorized list it might work..
Cheap storage VM.
If unions are so bad and are not needed, why are those other non-union jobs paying half what the union jobs pay?
Cheap storage VM.
You have it backwards. All those low-paid assembly line workers are underpaid. It is the management, especially the upper management and CEOs, who are vastly overpaid.
In this world there are "makers" and there are "takers". Makers make things, thinks like widgets or ditches or source code or cups of coffee. Takers are the people who watch the makers, then take some of the value created by the makers. Often they take most of the value created by the makers.
I don't begrudge takers their due. They do add value to the economy, just not very much. The average CEO should be making, oh, maybe half or three-quarters as much as an assembly line worker. That would be "efficient allocation of resources", which means that value (dollars) are allotted to the people who create the value in the economy. CEOs create nearly zero value, so they should earn close to zero dollars.
Alas, we live in a world with mostly free-ish markets, and free markets are terrible at efficient allocation of resources. Free markets tend to concentrate value to people who already have it, instead of people who create it. That's why we need regulated markets, so that we can have efficient allocation of resources.
Still, though, if a French person is doing 3/8 of a day's work, then he should expect to be paid 3/8 of a day's wages.
You, sir, are awesome. I've been looking for those words for years. I will plagiarize these two paragraphs to death, I hope you don't mind.
I think the issue is when you feel that you deserve to work a couple hours a day (or week) and get paid more than other people who work for 10s of hours a week (or day) and be paid the same amount.
And, if you work about 1.5x the time and make 300x the salary? This describes the modern CEO.
I think the truth lies somewhere in between.
That is all.
A doctor will always have a greater worth to society and economy than a burger flipper. Always. You cannot argue otherwise.
False. Many doctors have negative worth to society; I submit Doctor Oz and Doctor Deepak Chopra for your consideration. Furthermore, it was easy to make that argument.
But ignore the falseness of your hyperbole, you compared two "makers". Doctors make health performances; burger flippers make burgers. But if you compare a maker (like a doctor) to a taker (like a CEO) then it is not at all clear why the taker is earning more than minimum wage. CEOs add almost nothing to society, so it is uneconomic, inefficient and immoral to pay them more than anyone else in the world. The problem is that we have free(ish) markets which inexorably leads to inefficient distribution of value. Specifically, CEOs are corrupt motherfuckers who run cliques like gangs and enrich eachother -- the normal way of business in free(ish) markets. The answer is to regulate markets such as with progressive income taxes. In America today we have progressive taxes that go from 10-32%, but we should rearrange that to go from -500% to 99.9%. That would allow us to allocate value earned more closely to according to value created, and CEOs would still get to be takers living rich off the backs of the hard work of others.
Is it? More than compared to the "small-government free-market utopia" of Darfur?
It's not at all uncommon for a senior manager or director at Apple to put in 60-hour weeks.
Nor, from what I hear, is it uncommon for an engineer at Apple to do the same. Yet the pay is quite incommensurate. Making comments like "the bosses work so much harder" is really pretty effing stupid. The reason they're paid more is because (supposedly) their work has more value, not because they're working more hours. Plus, once you get into a subjective measure like "value of work", the metric has lost all comparative value. As such, it's really hard to say that the CEO's salaries are "fair" because they "work harder".
That is all.
wrong.
it's no-limit communism for the top 1 %
guaranteed state contracts, federal tax breaks for top grossing corps, legislation dictated solely by corporate needs (both to avoid flight of capital and to induce new markets)
i.e. the government doles out to those who already possess wealth
those who are not already rich (the poor, the middle class, etc) are conscripted into (most cases) a permanent debt - pay check - cyclical existence.
http://www.bopsecrets.org/CF/graffiti.htm
Yeah, change the rules. That's a good one. Meanwhile, the businesses are changing the rules in favor of the business executives.
... deserves to starve.
No one deserves to starve. It's a horrible way to die.
A doctors value is largely related to the artificial scarcity created by the regulatory bodies in place. I have studied alongside doctors and they are generally no more able nor smarter than any other professional (often less-so). Not that I have anything against doctors, we just have a very skewed view of them.
Thats nothing, I work for a US corporation and I spend 6h on bullshit every day. Seariously! I am 20% as productive as when we was a startup (and so effective that we could impress a multinational comapny). The bs involves explaining my work in metrics and acronyms my superiors can report to their superiors (it is really just abstract figures with no relation to actual progrss) and folowing policies set up to prevent some misuse of company funds (but the policies are so badly worded that all actual work is severely hindered and any thief has just to change his thefts slightly to be policy compliant. and etc. that is so depressing that I go fine tuning resume thater than telling them...
If America were socialist, the government would own those corporations
they basically do in a sense... the Fed is pumping $85 billion into the private sector a month, so guess where the "capital" for private investment is coming from?
it's even worse than socialism because the taxpayer pays but the shareholder keeps
capitalism has nothing to do with lords... capitalism is where people invest in business and there is risk attached to that investment in that if the business performs poorly the investor doesn't get their money back, and if the business does well they get a dividend (so its sort of like gambling).
i've never heard of lords losing money when crops fail
so i guess that makes you one of the brainwashed sheep i mentioned... how does that feel?
Well, not really.
There are others laws and you can work anything between 35 and 39 hours.
With some other contract types, you don't have hours rules, but days. My contract state I must work something like 220 days per year, my boss ask 40 hours per week. But in practice, as long as you do your job in time, you can work less hours. (but more in "rush periods")
Most CEO will try to make you do over-hours and not paid them to you, so in most case, you have a 35 hours contract and work near 40, if you don't or protest or anything, well, they made you quit.
No one has answered that question.
Instead I see a lot of brain washed socialists here who cannot imagine that chance and happenstance actually occur - Bill Gates was at the right place at the right time AND was brilliant at doing business. That's why he's so rich.
So, what's the alternative to Capitalism (which requires a free society)? Pervasive government control (read: Socialism and/or Communism)?
Why is government considered so pure and altruistic? Which of the most prolific mass murders didn't commandeer a government to achieve their atrocities? Of the top 10 mass murders in history, there totals at least 250 Million murdered at the hands of the governments they wielded.
For that very reason, the United States' Founding Fathers expressly limited our government from abridging our basic, natural, divinely apportioned right to keep and bare arms: to protect us from those who would wield governments against us... whether foreign or domestic.
undue influence on government is the fault of government that created the situation where government influence can be bought in the first place
corporations didn't make politicians corrupt
if government was smaller, there would be no power for politicians to be able to sell and then corporations would have nothing to buy
corporations receiving bailouts is no different to a poor person receiving a welfare check.... the government makes them available, and anyone who qualifies wants to get it
if someone put $100 in front of you and said you could take it, would you not take it?
corporations take what the government offers them in the same way that everyone else does
corporations may pay politicians to give them handouts, but its the politician who is corrupt in accepting the bribe and executing the bailout... and the politician can only do that because the government he works for allows him to do it... shrink government and it doesn't matter how big the bribe is if the politician doesn't have the authority to execute bailouts to his corporate buddies even if he wanted to
you left wing liberal morons need to go back to school... corporations (and the rich that benefit from them) aren't your enemy... nobody forces you to buy the computer that helps to make bill gates one of the wealthiest individuals in the world
on the other hand, you are FORCED to pay taxes that are handed out to corporations as bailouts
Titan International is based in Quincy, Illinois. Having lived in Quincy, Illinois for years and having done business with Titan, International I can tell you they are not slave drivers. Taylor is a hard ass. He does expect hard work. He does take issue with certain unions but he's willing to work with them when they are making reasonable demands for concessions. No, he's not some out of touch elitist.
Taylor owns (or at least did own, maybe it's been sold) a rock radio station because he wanted the town to have music on FM radio that he likes. The station's nickname is his nickname: "The Grizz". He ran for the Republican nomination for president in the past, and IIRC he was the only candidate to do so who could tell reporters the price of a loaf of bread or gallon of milk.
Morry's gruff and doesn't mind hurting some feelings, but he's not trying to keep people down. He comes from a hard-working background and he expects hard work for good pay. His factories offer some of the highest blue-collar pay in the areas they are located. His office staff aren't exactly underpaid either. I found doing contract and freelance work for them to be pretty much a fair deal even when we weren't in perfect agreement on terms. They were working on meeting their interests and I was working on mine.
It sounds like the guy is more mad that they're only working three hours a day, as opposed to the pay rates.
I'd be curious to see his response if someone said "we can guarantee 8 hours/day"
In FL a new 4 year grad earns 45k+pension+benefits. Most teachers I know work from 8-3 in the classroom and a few hours outside of that, and a many of them hold second hand jobs, not because they have to by any means, but to simply support frivolous expenses. Add in the ridiculous amount of holidays and summer off, and they are one of the most overpaid professions in my opinion. It takes little special education and ability to teach and almost anyone can do it. Could I walk into any classroom tomorrow K-12 and teach it, yes with out a doubt.
IIZENII, you obvious know nothing about teaching, have never taught, and likely do not know any teachers. My father was a professor, and I have been in contact with teachers throughout my life. In addition, while my chosen career did not explicitly call for teaching, I made it a point to ensure that I taught my clients enough about what I was doing that the problems they were having were no longer complete mysteries. Let me address some of your points - first off, there is that working day. Most teachers I have known typically get to their classroom at least an hour before school starts, to make sure that they are up to speed on the day's lessons, do final checks that the materials they need are at hand and the room is fairly neat. As for the time afterwards, even taking your numbers it means that teachers work upwards of two hours of unpaid overtime every day. If the tests a teacher gives require more than checking one option of a multiple choice question, then, it can take up to an hour to grade. With too many classrooms having 40 or so students in them, that is anywhere from 20 to 40 hours of other work each week. Add to that the time that it takes the teacher to re-work lesson plans to take into account new data, or the changes implemented by politically motivated school boards and you add more hours to the week.
As for what teacher's earn...The salaries in the high-population states may be relatively high, but, as others have pointed out, the cost of living can be much higher. In Tennessee, for example, the average salary is closer to $37K. In the 1960s, that would have been a good wage. Now, it is close to allowing the teacher to receive food stamps and other state aid. If the teacher is a single person, with no children, it is quite possible to exist on that level of income. All you have to give up are vacations, eating out, and tickets to entertainment events. If the teacher happens to be a single mother, the situation is much, much more challenging.
Finally, as for your remark that "anyone can teach". I have to take issue with that after decades of observing the profession, both from the inside and the outside. Being able to present information is a skill that anyone can have. Being able to teach it - I. E. present it to a student in a form that allows them to understand it, and incorporate that understanding into their model of reality - is more of a gift. The problem is that no two people learn in the same manner, so, what works with one will fail with another. When I am explaining concepts about how the computer works, for example, I have to find concrete examples that people can grasp. To explain how a hard drive works, with one person I might use the example of the pigeonholes that the Post office used to use for sorting mail. With another person, a room full of filing cabinets works better. With a third person, referring to the stacks of a library gives them insight to start them on the path of understanding. Good, gifted teachers understand this, and can tell when a student is not getting it, and, can work to find that concrete example that brings understanding. Poor teachers are only able to present the data they have in one fashion. I am reminded of "The Big Bang Theory", and Sheldon Cooper as a perfect example of the latter teacher. His character is, without a doubt, a genius who is perfe
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Because @ $ 15 hr similar job descriptions still own a mortgage, a car loan and 2.3 kids while paying the utilities and feeding. For this part of the country that sample wage comparative of the union wage is fine. Wanna pay less @ the checkout stand? Think of how many union wages you've paid for a chain from raw materials,shipping,inspecting,approving,receiving,facilitating,assembly,packaging,shipping,receiving,stocking,and even bagging your purchase. Paying twice as many wages for your purchase, because the overhead gets passed on to the consumer, not the stockholder,not the owner. Not bad for a guy w the same S.S., state and federal taxes withheld, just like everyone. Of course now the union jobs are disappearing, people have left the city and those that haven't clamber for what's left that doesn't rely on the aircraft industry. Unfortunately having "aircraft" on your resume is death for finding other jobs locally. They just assume you'll find another aircraft job and leave them holding the bag on the time they spent training you. Our many pawnshops are fat with the booty of excesses bought under the false security of Unions and Corporations having a handshake. I may write kinda apocalyptically with a little bitterness, but I've watched this situation go from a thriving fun place to live to a dog eat dog pit over the last quarter century. From when I got here to now I've seen a change of white to black. I just want to retire and leave. They say " you can't go home again". I would append that" home doesn't stay around long."
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
A guy walks into a restaurant, he asks "How much for a bowl of soup?". "Four dollars" replies the proprietor. "Why, that's an outrage" the guy sputters, "it's only two dollard for a bowl across the street". "Why don't you eat there?" asks the proprietor. "They're out of soup" mumbles the guy. The proprietor looks the guy in the eye and says "If we were out of soup, it would be two dollars as well".
which is to let the gains in productivity put people out of work, drive down wages and then raise costs for the (very small) number of servants the rulers and the owners need. You're right, there will be work, but if there's very little of it and your entire quality of life depends on it then we'll all fight among ourselves for it.
Basically, the mistake you're making is you assume you're needed. You're not. There's a million, no billions just like you. Again, it's the whole 'American Exceptionalism' thing. Ya, you might not be American, but you're not immune from the sentiment...
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paid like shit because there's 10 million guys just like them gunning for their jobs.
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Productivity has risen so much since 1950 that we should be able to work 4 hour days.
You probably can, but you'd have to go back to living how people did in 1950. Family in a 400 sq ft house. One old car. Only appliances are a stove and washing machine. One weeks worth of clothes. Porridge every day for breakfast because that's what you can afford. That was what was considered middle class in 1950.
Given how productive we are these days the goal of the rich western nations should be a three day work week, of 5 hour days with lots of vacation time.
There would be much less unemployment, workers would be happy, and there would be leisure time for spending and keeping the economy going.
OK, maybe I exaggerate, but one day there will be NO work that machines can't do. It will be a bigger upheaval than the industrial revolution. It will end capitalism as we know it. I expect the transition to suck, but once that's over it will be GREAT.
Anarchists never rule
Then, let them. If there enough people willing to do your job for less, you need to increase your skill and change to a job in higher demand.
As a country, we need to stop fearing the workers in other countries. If they can do something cheaper and more efficiently, we benefit through the cheaper goods and services they provide. We need to innovate and find what it is that we do cheapest and most efficiently. Artificially controlling prices through minimum and overly inflated wages puts us at a natural disadvantage that someone somewhere is just waiting to capitalize on.
Except management has incentive to hire the staff necessary to do the job for the lowest wage while still meeting the business goals. If they don't, the market and the shareholders will respond accordingly. If upper-management runs a corporation into the ground, as you hypothesized, they likely won't hold a job at the level again. Such things don't look to good on the old resume. They are held accountable for their career like anyone else. You act like they get their golden parachute and make off like bandits. That's just a ridiculous caricature.
Making comments like "the bosses work so much harder" is really pretty effing stupid.
Not quite as stupid as trying to put words in my mouth.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"Think about it. Nationmaster ranks France as #18 in terms of GDP per capita, at $36,500 per person, yet France works much less than most developed nations. Read more: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2009-08-20/markets/30087051_1_capita-france-s-gdp-work#ixzz2LamkO7rg"
per captia is a red herring. look at the in/outflows (aka exports/imports), France has a lot of old money, as well as a political power with its banks and such. It's a HUGE advantage over a 3rd world country, unless they have something... like Uranium.
In business, you don't maximize profits by having less of them. Getting paid as much as you can for a particular work is a proper business goal, getting it for as little work as possible is just plain laziness.
What you praised and what you criticized are the same thing.
I do 3 hours of work. I want to be paid as much as I can be paid for those 3 hours of work. That works for a business, and it works for an employee.
If I make $40 for every hour worked I'm going to try to make $50 instead if I can. If I have to work 90 seconds to make a dollar I'm going to try to only have to work 72 seconds to make a dollar. The first is the attitude you praised, the second is the one you called laziness. Mathematically they are identical.
For some reason in the US it is a virtue to work 48 hours/wk and make $100k/yr, and it is an even bigger virtue to work 48 hours/wk and make $200k/yr or work 60 hours/wk and make $150k/yr. However, for whatever reason the idea of working 10 hours/wk and making $40k/yr is considered laziness. I call it contentment - if your labor is valuable enough that you can live comfortably on a short work week more power to you.
Hate to self-reply, but a second issue concerning laziness.
Laziness itself is a virtue. For whatever reason culture in the US is to work for the sake of work, but if you consider work no more than a means to an end then minimizing the work involved to achieve that end is nothing more than efficiency.
I have to seriously disagree - I'm a part owner (largest minority share) in the startup I work at.
Most owners tend to work FAR less than employees. I happen to be a part owner in a few hundred companies, and I couldn't even tell you what those companies are let alone what is going on inside them.
Sure, the average small business owner does tend to work a lot harder, especially when starting up. However, at some point they either retire or sell the business and at that point they get a ton of return for no additional labor.
I've got nothing against people who own small businesses, but in general they're well-compensated for their time.
You're always free to make your life better, but never at the expense of anyone else. Being successful and well off isn't obscene, it's something most aspire for. Although, your sense of entitlement to other people's money definitely is.
what's to keep the world from becoming one big North Korea, where a few ultra wealthy have use the military to keep everything to themselves...
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This is precisely the kind of ignorance that I was alluding to.
Everyone tends to think that everyone else's profession or vocation doesn't require any training or practice. So people generally devalue your time and think that you should work for free. People are generally too stupid to understand the depths of their ignorance and why they should respect the skills of others (even tradesmen).
Knowing your shit takes time and other people's time.
Thinking that doctors don't really need to know anything is much like trying to represent yourself in court.
Scarcity is caused by the fact that you have to take time to learn stuff. You can't just start carving into people.
Things like licensing are just the END of a long process.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
i don't think if i work 2 hours a week i deserve to get paid more than starving chinese people, but i still bargain for the best deal i can get.
Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it. If you and your employer or clients agree to a free (as in freedom) exchange, then it was by definition acceptable to all parties. The worth of any good or service, including labor, is always in the eye of the beholder. Therefore, it's pointless to talk about what's "deserved" as if it were something independent of the contract itself.
North Korea and Marxism in the same sentence? You are being rather silly.
You really need to research medical tourism.
You are probably right that the $3 doctor is that bad.
But the $12 doctor (as compared to our $50 doctor) is often equally trained and has a higher level of trained nursing staff.
You can go to india and china and guam and taiwan and get very high quality care for about 15 to 20% of the price as in the U.S. And stay in a luxury hotel quality hospital room for a couple weeks instead of being punted out after 3-4 days like in the U.S.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
"Pander to my private business interests. No, this is not greedy of me." -ganjadude
Indeed. Damn those people who think we should be trying to make our lives easier rather than a handful of obscenely rich individuals even wealthier !
Dud... I live in a house built in 1955.
It's 1200 square feet + 500 square foot converted garage and a carport. And add another 500 square feet un conditioned patio and then another 200 square foot storage shed. It cost $68,000 in 1998 (and $155,000 today). Those built in 1950 were about 1200 sq feet but were on quarter acre lots because land was so damn cheap.
Your point is valid about smaller houses but 400 square feet is overdoing it a bit. :-)
And the car was new. At least my grandpa's was all the way back to 1946. New cars much more often than today. They drove all over the country in those cars too.
Agree on the appliances but add a spanking new 9" black and white TV and a refrigerator.
Definitely a clothesline and iron.
Cold cereal, eggs and bacon - possibly at the K&P store counter.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
If you think a CEO doesn't have the money and contacts to sleep with your wife your mistaken (they just don't want to). They also have a very easy time getting any one in that stands in their way thrown in jail, thanks to their army of lawyers, and a government that relies on them. Also If you don't think corporations are at least partly responsible for some of the wars, killing many just to get better prices or a new franchise, then i envy your ignorance (it must be nice there)
Reminds me of school, and we all know that if you enjoyed school, you'll love work... In comparison, tinkering with an interesting software problem can sometimes be so fun I could feel ashamed to be paid for it.
Singe capitulard mangeur de fromage
I new they had the best free health care in the world but the best working conditions too
What are we doing wrong?!
Capitalism most certainly does have to do with Lords. It didn't spring out of a vacuum. It came from the conflict between feudal lords and kings. And no, the Fed doesn't own the businesses. The fed is giving money from the general population to the businesses, it isn't taking ownership.
Capitalism is about owning the mechanisms of production. It's when you extend private property beyond personal possessions into the realm of land, factories, mines, farms, etc, and you exercise control over those resources without regard for the interests of your fellow man. Just like the feudal lords used to do, except with more freedom of mobility.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
You replied to what was in your head rather than what I wrote.
How many hours do CEOs typically work per day again?
Try refuting the argument, if you can. Well, you probably can't, so I guess tossing the F word is about all you have.
Recessions didn't last as long before FDR. Generally the market pulled itself out after a relatively short correction. FDR actually prolonged the depression by useless make-work projects and his other "interventions". Borrow money to pay a guy to dig holes and then someone else will hire a guy to fill them back in. (Or take the broken window fallacy if you prefer).
In america, "working harder" usually means in reality simply putting in more hours, even if they aren't productive hours. Henry Ford favored a 40 hour work week because it made for better productivity from his workers, which means more overall profit for the company. Since american companies generally don't care about quality and prefer to have their workers too burned out to have lives because people who are too stressed to live make better slaves, it's no wonder that american CEOs would prefer cheap slave-lobor factories over good ones. There's a reason that it's hard to find quality products in the US anymore, and it's not only the fault of the CEOs, it's the fault of every worker who puts up with being treated like a slave while pretending that it's just working hard.
The US isn't that far down the socialist way yet, but the current administration (and some prior ones) keep taking us steps in that direction.
I am not a 'profit at all costs' guy, but instilling a work ethic, and getting paid for the risks you take, is important. Getting a reasonable return on investment, and reasonable wage is important.
The 1900's work ethic may be 'old hat' but we need to put some of the ethic back in the mix. Personally, I find work fun. Not all of it, of course, but enough to keep me interested and liking going back. If my company can't make money off of my efforts, I need to not be there. And if I cannot feel sufficiently rewarded, I need to do something else.
The French, Italians, and any other group has their own method of 'corporate culture', and even if I don't agree with them, we can do business elsewhere. So just move on.
Now how can I get my ROI up?
There are a few flaws in your post.
First, doctors pay their own way through school and for their own insurance because of the same flaw in our system: profit. In a first world country, you get an education. In america, you get massive debt and a piece of paper.
Second, who do think designs the tools and machines that doctors use to do their jobs?
Yes, let's keep ignoring that gigantic housing bubble. Right. This is somehow the government's fault.
Managers?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Look, it's Uncle Joe Stalin, posting on /.! Welcome, Uncle Joe.
Thanks for the economic lesson. It's total childish tomfoolery, of course, but boy have we missed good old Uncle Joes like yourself since the Cold War ended and communism was tossed away like the rag doll economic system it is.
Let me guess, Uncle Joe, you were "educated" in an American university, no?
Results are all that matter. If someone says a job is difficult (s)he is incompetent. Hire the over-qualified.
Admittedly, French factory workers generally don't leave work too tuckered out. Alternately, French factories don't have a need to put safety netting on the roof to keep indentured workers from jumping off to escape their servitude.
But we in the U.S. have itch-youz, too. I went for a job interview where I was told by the hiring manager to not bother sitting down, they weren't hiring any Americans, "interviews" were just a formality so they could get more H-1Bs. Yep. NO SHIT! They were dragging people from India as fast as they could to work for a straight $8/hr with no insurance benefits, no holidays, vacation, or sick time. They all had to have 2nd jobs to pay rent. Many of them had to borrow large amounts of money from their extended families to bribe the Indian headhunters to even get them to the U.S. Furthermore, the company had their visa, so they couldn't even seek employment elsewhere.
How do I know this? I happened to meet one of their poor guest workers. She had a security badge from the company and I asked how she liked her job. She DIDN'T. She said it was a terrible place to work. She was a programmer. She and her husband had about $20000 in debt back home they'd scrounged up to get their U.S. jobs. She was pregnant. She couldn't get any time off to go to the doctor for prenatal care. The best she could do was a doc-in-a-box near her other job. Once the baby was born, she was probably going to lose her job. She wasn't sure she'd be able to stay in the U.S. Her husband hadn't seen her in about 5 months because his job with the same company was in another state. He wasn't going to be able to come when the baby was born.
The more I listened to this poor girl (I say "girl" because she's young enough to be my daughter), the more I though this story sounded more like it had been written by Charles Dickens or Harriet Beecher Stowe. And this was in 2006! She KNEW that most people didn't get treated like that--HELL, She worked at a SUBWAY for her 2nd job and they treated her MUCH better than the other company. PAID her more per hour, too. Still didn't have health care, but WOULD have it from Subway after she was there 6 months. Wouldn't pay for the baby, but I suppose it was some comfort.
Nasty things happen when history, culture and capitalism come together.
In America, we never had people throwing rocks in the streets, or the degree of labor organization that allowed for general strikes that shut down not just an industry, but whole sections of all industry the way they have in Europe. Without those things in our history, Americans accept the nature of Capitalism more easily than others do and without the boost being able to sell to a postwar world full of shattered and missing industries gave the U.S. economy, it is impossible for American industry to pacify workers, provide a profit for investors and maintain constant growth.
The result of this is business consolidation (fewer companies controlling more and more of all industry), wage stagnation, unemployment, predatory lending by banks that turn people with jobs into debt peons or use their mortgages to create derivatives-based real-estate bubbles, and a lot of other things that just don't bear thinking about by anyone who wants to make it until lunch with his sanity intact.
Oh, and the kicker in all this: a global business culture that has worked to make a backward, repressive, corrupt, environmentally lethal dictatorship, the most economically powerful nation in the world. The American response to all of this: "Obama's a socialist! He wants to take away our freedom (to be exploited by banks and insurance companies)!"
So. I'm thinking I'm thinking of writing a science fiction alternative history where the dominant species evolved from something else. Who wants to collaborate?
" It's total childish tomfoolery, of course, but boy have we missed good old Uncle Joes like yourself since the Cold War ended and communism was tossed away like the rag doll economic system it is."
/sarcasm hint
Oh yeah, totally. Minus the dictator, each according to his means, market regulation, and government redistribution of wealth. Other than that everything I said was commie to the bone.
Valuating staff according to their actual contribution to gross profit is not a communist idea. Correcting false valuations gives one a competitive edge. That is capitalism. There is nothing capitalist about focusing on the quick buck at revenue generation and overpaying management and executives. That isn't capitalism, it's just bad business. Do you honestly believe there is even one respect in which the CEO should be earning more than an engineer? Does he work harder? Certainly not. Not physically and certainly not mentally. Greater intellectual skills or education? Not even in the same ballpark.
They are not identical as long as your capability for work is not diminished by being paid more for it. If you manage to finish your work in less time, a business like approach would be investing your remaining time to get paid for something else too.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
I don't praise business or business values. They are dehumanizing to extreme. I just arguing against your idea of working less is business-like.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
So, I'm working in Grenoble France for a few weeks (US company) and I'm in the middle of some intense dev work so I go to the bistro and get a cary-out lunch and take it back to my desk. You'd have thought I'd grown an extra head the way my French co-workers looked at me. Eventually some guy from the site came and told me it was against the rules to eat at your desks and that in the future I was expected to use all 90 minutes at lunch away from my desk. Most of the French workers there were using 120 minutes of their 90 minute lunch regularly.
Same planet, different worlds.
Organization? You must be joking..
Yeah, nuke the fuckers from orbit and make a parking lot out of the rubbles. Let them know you cant suck forever, or else. Death to all snail eaters.
Singe capitulard mangeur de fromage
They are not identical as long as your capability for work is not diminished by being paid more for it. If you manage to finish your work in less time, a business like approach would be investing your remaining time to get paid for something else too.
Sure, if you value yourself as just another machine on the assembly line then the most cost effective way to exploit your body is to get as many hours as are cost-effective, but investing enough in maintenance and downtime so that on the whole you're as productive as possible.
A lot of executives treat their staff that way (though they don't mind burning them out more as they're easier to replace), so I guess I shouldn't be surprised if some treat themselves that way as well.
If you view work as a means to an end and not an end in itself, then it makes more sense to maximize the value of time not spent working. That could include working to bring in money to spend during that time, or it might include having more time to spend not working in the first place.
But, whatever floats your boat. If you're happier working 50 hours a week more power to you. Most people simply aren't - and it isn't because they're lazy - they're just working for themselves.
Well, I guess it depends on what you consider the purpose of business. If you consider the purpose of a business to gather money, then sure. If you consider gathering money just one of many purposes of a business, and that other ends are valid for their own sake, then not so much.
Ultimately what people try to do is to maximize the perceived value of their lives. Money has value, but other things have value as well. Just as no businessman would turn away somebody who wanted to trade a diamond ring for a hamburger even if the menu is denominated in dollars and not carats, people aren't going to turn away leisure time for money unless the money is pretty valuable.
without government support, the economy collapses
how much more socialist can you get?
Being Canadian dutch and growing up in a dutch community there are two general characteristics that make dutch successful. Short arms and deep pockets.
On the serious side, we are not afraid of work BUT we expect to be fairly compensated. When it comes to money we'd rather spend more on quality than less on junk. Combine these traits with being generally damn good engineers and entrepreneurs and you have a productive, no BS society. The dutch get shit done while others form committees.
Negative traits - cannot ever, to save our lives, admit we are wrong.
only that those downsides are better than the status quo.
No, it could be really bad, and most likely would plunge us into a recession immediately after going into effect.
I could see huge disruption if you went from zero tariffs to 10000% overnight. However, all you need to do is pass the law, have it go into effect in a year, and slowly ramp up over 5-10 years. That is slow enough to allow supply chains to adapt.
The tariff could be tied to environmental protections, worker safety, social safety net, and minimum wage. So, it might remain near-free trade between the US/EU/Jap/Aus/etc, and as you get into the third world tariffs would become considerable. However, any country could implement first world standards and benefit from free trade. The tariffs would not be set at a level to be discriminatory based on nationality alone. They'd just be enough to eliminate any incentive to do the race for the bottom.
The problem is that the very people who keep touting the power of the market have created a market where most work will never be done. It is their job to find ways to create a profit from work, and they're not doing it.
The problem is opportunity cost. The profit in fixing a bridge or whatever is pretty low, and there isn't much political advantage to spending the government funds to do it. The profit in selling Ponzi schemes to retirement funds is much higher, and there is plenty of campaign donations to go around to fund votes to support all the subsequent bailouts.
The US has become a country where doing tangible work has become unappealing to investors, to the point where a third of our economy consists of nothing more than shuffling money around while somehow tacking a few percent onto each transaction. Building things takes time measured in months, requires effort to manage, and has modest rewards. Financial schemes can be executed in microseconds for much higher returns.
...short and pathetic life. That CEO probably has never worked until he passed out from heat stress, worked till blisters on his hands popped and bled, or been sunburned so bad that it never healed. So I say he is nothing more than the investors lapdog getting steak dinners every night and a pat on the head GOOD BOY! You suckass MFer!!!
Pushing yourself until your body is damaged is hardly the same as "real work." You can demonstrate determination and resolve to get things done without abusing your physical self.
actually it's the federal reserve's fault for keeping interest rates artificially low for so long that there was (and still is) a housing problem
but the fed has no choice but to keep rates low because the government has borrowed so much money that to raise rates would bankrupt the entire country due to inability to pay interest
the us government can pay interest on its debt now and that is why the world keeps lending, but if it gets to the point where money has to be borrowed just to pay the interest your debt skyrockets exponentially
these idiot keynesians claim that the government isn't like a household because it isn't a user of the currency, but that's hogwash... if the government wasn't a user like the rest of us it wouldn't have to pay interest... it is a user of the currency, and surprise surprise keynesians are stupid
Great exaggeration, but wrong.
The French have a higher quality of life then most people in the US.
But, hey wanting a livable wage is a great sin in the US.
If the person with the money doesn't want to do it, they will agree to that.
TO expand you lame ass example:
If the person clipping your grass cost 300 dollars, but you made 1000 dollars from having your lawn clipped, wouldn't it be worth it?
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no it isn't.
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"To the market! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems." - Every CEO when wanting to lower benefits and wages.
Certainly want what they said when they where going out of business, and it's not something they say when a demand for employees goes up.
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Who are you to say a Doctor is more important then food preparation?
Or should earn more money?
"Don't you realize that if an economy were managed in such a way you effectively create huge disincentive for people to become doctors? "
False.
The Soviet union had no problem producing Doctors. Do you know why? Education was free. If you had the mental discipline to go through the education process, you could become a doctor.
Same with engineers and physicist . I know the US spent decades poo-pooing the soviet union, but there was a lot of good things that happened as well.
A LOT of educated scientist, engineers, and doctors came from that period, as did a lot of poets and writers.
If the US had done business with Russia, and helped them have a more open market when they asked, the world would have been better off.
that's number 3 on the reasons to hate Reagan
I am a US citizen old enough to remember duck and cover drills in grade schools.
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and the free market is killing a hell of a lot of Americans every day.
Did you have a point?
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I know a lot of Doctors. ALL of them are interested in treating, and healing the patient. It's an expensive trade, and they can get paid reasonably well.
If you want to talk about people providing 'medicine' and 'medical treatments' just for making money, look at acupuncturists, naturalpaths, and chiropractors.
The pretend to heal people to get rich.
You can like fancy cars AND want to medically treat people.
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"ho do think designs the tools and machines that doctors use to do their jobs?"
Doctors...of Engineering.
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" If so, everyone would do the easiest job with the lowest investment required"
history says other wise.
Sure, you may be a lazy couch potato, but most people like to do things, even if they are hard.
I bet there are people who would love to build robots to do all those thing people wouldn't want to do.
Money is a handcuff. I can't change and go into robotic engineering without have my salary slashed. Something that would put a terrible burden onto my family.
I don't know of a solution that doesn't involve mass produce general purpose robots. It seems the best solution is a regulated free market..for now.
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"Do you honestly believe there is even one respect in which the CEO should be earning more than an engineer?"
Yes. The CEO who built the company. If you don't think getting funding, handling employees, making business contact for future expansion, etc.. isn't hard, then you are delusional.
IF a CEO, any CEO, can use contacts and savvy to buy another company, or market a product, then yes, they are worth more then an Engineer. Dealing with over seas officials, time to market, trades. That is all hard work and makes a company profitable. Thus able to hire an engineer to make things.
If being an engineer alone was all it took, then there would be no upper management.
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work = energy.
working a little is possible save energy and money.
It's called working smart.
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Not if there are people who will do it for $20.
Do you look for higher priced gas?
Have you ever looked at food on sale at the Supermarket and said to yourself "Hmmm, I think that is too low. I shall pay extra."?
In France companies do not want to hire. Once they hire they can not downsize. Since they only expand on a sure thing and those are rare the economy suffers.
People find it hard to get a job. In a free market wages would go down. There would be no law saying you can not downsize. Labor would be inexpensive and expansion would start.
Once 95% of people who want to work have a job they start getting picky. They want more money. More vacation days. Flexible hours.
Companies that want good workers and want to keep them need to bring up the wages to stay competitive. (Unless there is collusion)
Workers get better pay and the job market stabilizes.
They huge problem here is not the wages. It is not the low productivity. These have been around for a long time now.
The big issues are the laws that stifle growth and the high taxes coupled with the threat of insane taxes to come.
Hold on to your cash and do not take a risk. That is what the job creators are doing now in France.
It WILL cost them jobs. Period.
You are clueless. Do you even know what CEOs do? Of do you think they sit in their offices and watch porn all day?
I think the most of them are vastly over paid, but don't think they work any less hard then employees, or bring no value to a company.
If I can get a deal in a county that save the company 10,000,000 dollars, how is that not adding to the value of the company?
If I can get talks on an acquisition, how does that not add value?
If I can make a deal with a supplier that saves od millions of dollars, that adds value to the company.
If I can get a stock increase by walking on stage and making an emotional argument about how excited we are about our product, how does that not add value?
If I could make you a million dollars, but you have to pay me 300,000 after you get it would it be worth it? Even if it took my 1 second to do it?
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Its not work. That's a mistake. its value add.
If I could make your company a billion dollars in 1 second, wouldn't I be worth paying 100 million to do that work?
a gross example of how 'work' isn't a comparable thing between job types.
If I spend all day on the golf course 5 days a week, but manage to score contracts is that work?
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you're an idiot.
How do you get data without meeting? make decisions? get information? contract negotiations, bidding?
meeting are work. The fact that you don't have the skills to run quality meeting makes you think they aren't real work.
Paper? some of the paper is called a check, they push to you. Other papers are called contracts, and they give the company a way to make money.
20 engineers without management or meeting equates to going out of business.
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oh, so now you move the goal post? fine.
Middle managers work, and work hard. A lot of hours, organizing, planning, setting goals, creating CPM for projects, setting priorities. They are the group that give you the details and what goals to focus on to meet larger overall goals.
I've been middle management, and screw that noise. I went back into programming where I don't work as hard.
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hahaha. most of them go out of business and go bankrupt.
Most owners work more. They are usually small companies and guess who need to take care of all the details?
You should try it some time, it's hell.
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you're an idiot. How do you get data without meeting? make decisions? get information? contract negotiations, bidding? meeting are work. The fact that you don't have the skills to run quality meeting makes you think they aren't real work.
Paper? some of the paper is called a check, they push to you. Other papers are called contracts, and they give the company a way to make money.
20 engineers without management or meeting equates to going out of business.
No you are an idiot. Of course some managers do something that resembles work. Many are just pushing papers around and can't make decisions. I have run plenty of meetings much more effectively than any manager I know. Sorry I made you cry.
oh, so now you move the goal post? fine.
I didn't move the goalpost, you did. Owner != manager
Middle managers ... creating TPS for projects.
FTFY.
If you "get a deal" or do "talks on acquisition" you haven't made anything. You aren't a maker, you are a taker. All that activity you do all day long, at the end of the day look down into the box where you put what you made and the box is empty. There is nothing in the box. You aren't a maker, you are a taker. That's all well and good but since you aren't actually adding anything to the economy the amount that you take out of the economy should be very small, certainly smaller than anyone who actually makes things. So, take your lowest paid employee, subtract a small bit from his pay, and that's about what you deserve as CEO.
If you want to receive things from the economy, you should put things into the economy. Not fake things, not "talks" or "deals" or "stocks" or "arguments", but things. Otherwise you are a leech sucking the value out of the makers.
Most owners work more. They are usually small companies...
Most owners don't own small companies. That was half of my point. I did say that owners of small companies do tend to work hard, but that is a small portion of all owners. Most owners just own stock.
Even Doctor Oz, as loony as he is, has done a number of successful good quality heart surgeries. He seems to be the king of the placebos though.
Good point, but I mean net value to society. Some heart surgeries, while nice, can't make up for the incredible disservice he has done to our nation with his disgusting, self-interested campaign of nonsense misinformation.