Slashdot Mirror
Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds (bloomberg.com)
Americans are addicted to their jobs. U.S. workers not only put in more hours than workers do almost anywhere else. They're also increasingly retiring later and taking fewer vacation days, reports Bloomberg. From the article: A new study tries to measure precisely how much more Americans work than Europeans do overall. The answer: The average person in Europe works 19 percent less than the average person in the U.S. That's about 258 fewer hours per year, or about an hour less each weekday. Another way to look at it: U.S. workers put in almost 25 percent more hours than Europeans. Hours worked vary a lot by country, according to the unpublished working paper by economists Alexander Bick of Arizona State University, Bettina Bruggemann of McMaster University in Ontario, and Nicola Fuchs-Schundeln of Goethe University Frankfurt. Swiss work habits are most similar to Americans', while Italians are the least likely to be at work, putting in 29 percent fewer hours per year than Americans do.
I mean bragging about our victory over socialized medicine is fun and all..
That does it, I'm gonna troll slashdot more
Table-ized A.I.
Working more does not necessarily mean more productivity. It's especially hard to be productive when you're burning your limited PTO/vacation allotments for unplanned family illnesses rather than... you know... planned restful downtime.
Need more unions and workers rights!
As Americans measure everything by size and not quality, I am not surprised by this. My USA counterparts are much more at the office, and producing less work than the continental ones. Make a study about effectiveness and I am your man!
Americans have to work more hours and take fewer vacation days because they are poorer at this point, given that USA is running 500,000,000,000 a year trade deficit and has been running that for 2 decades now, Americans cannot afford anything, they are completely stuck in debt and their government in concert with the Federal reserve are destroying the value of their money, value of theirs savings every days. Government spending and money printing, pushing interest rates down to keep borrowing more by doing things like 'operation twist' (the Fed buying long term bonds at negative real interest rates because nobody else would), all of this is expanding the money supply making USD less valuable all the time, thus making Americans less productive every day.
The only way out of this insanity is to restructure the debts, an honest default on the USD denominated debt, stopping all government spending (yes, this means all wars, all SS payments, all Medicare payments, everything). You have to clear away all of your debts, allow the bond holders to lose money so that the interest rates would reset to normal levels (only real market without government intervention can set real interest rates). Get the government out of your money because otherwise you will never have vacations or retirement savings or anything.
You can't handle the truth.
Wage slave here. Recently changed jobs (moved) and new company gives only 8 days a year vacation+Personal Holiday+mandatory holiday. I would love to work less... My wife and I are still discussing if we could afford for me to be Mr. Mom and her to work (she does make 2x what I make)... Lately I have been working the actual hours I get paid for, and have even been taking all of the breaks I am entitled to, but nobody ever takes, and my life satisfaction has gone way up. It's not that most americans are addicted to their job, it's that they are made to feel that if they don't work 120% of the hours they are "paid to work" then they will look like slackers and be let go.
True. It also doesn't take into account the quality of work done. It might just mean Europeans are 25% more efficient.
It's highly unlikely that we're addicted to our jobs. It's not usually by any choice that someone will work more and get less vacation. This is a cultural issue that's being pushed on the working classes by employers. I'd love to have a mandatory month of vacation and see everyone work less than 40 hours per week, as they tend to do in Europe.
Bite my shiny metal ass!
What do they have to show for it? That depends on whether you fit in.
If you fit in, you've got money to show for it.
If you don't fit in, you've got nothing to show for it.
Pfft. Get back to me when hours worked equals productivity.
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
Americans don't like to work. We're trying to survive with rising costs, leaps in inflation of everyday goods.
And this only scrapes the surface, I wager Americans also spend a significant greater amount of time commuting to work than their western European counterparts.
These seven issues need attention by the federal government. (Which is unlikely to act due to corporate lobbying efforts)
1. Employment At Will
Replace with the "Just Cause" model.
2. Contingent (Temporary) Employees
Enact rules to make sure that contingent employees are treated the same as regular employees.
3. H-1B visa's
Cut back on the number of H-1B visas, and make sure that they are paid the same as US citizens.
4. Binding arbitration in Employment Agreements
Prohibit the use of binding arbitration in employment agreements, or at least make it optional.
5. Noncompete Agreements
Ban Noncompetes at the federal level.
6. Lack of statutory vacation and sick leave at the federal level.
Enact a minimum federal standard for vacation and sick leave days.
7. Abuse of Exempt employees with regard to overtime.
Limit the use of overtime to 48 hours averaged over a 6 week period (Like the European Working Time Directive)
Conventional wisdom says that everything about Europeans is always better than everything about Americans. You get socially rewarded by high-social-status people for saying so. So not working is better than working in this case, regardless of whether that makes sense or not.
I work in government IT. My contract prohibits me from working more than 40 hours a week. I get paid federal holidays, 20 Paid Time Off (PTO) days and five unpaid day offs. No gold-plated pension and/or watch, however. I also make 50% less than my Silicon Valley counterparts in the public sector. But I'm well rested. ;)
Which is why a lot of people have two jobs, and two jobs is almost becoming a requirement. That certainly doesn't mean better productivity, and when you consider the US has the dollar, which is the world's reserve currency, a future where that is no longer the case is pretty alarming.
Could be. We may be a simulation, and the server owner(s) sell "interference time" to the highest bidders. "Q" and Trump are customers who come to screw around in the "ant farm" as avatars. (Hillary doesn't give the vibe of a vacationer.)
We are toys, analogous to Toy Story, except we don't know, like Buzz.
Table-ized A.I.
Someone else linked this which seems to indicate that south Europeans are simply lazy sods.
However, when measured as value added per hour worked, Norway had the highest labour productivity level per worker at $46.55, followed by the US at $43.66 and France at $42.99.
So, if a good hardworking Nord tells me I'm doing my work wrong, I'll listen (but may ignore the advice). If a Frank criticizes me for anything, I'll pour out his wine and feed his cheese to the rats.
1. no real work week. a plurality of americans work in the service sector, which is far different than an office job. theyre intentionally scheduled to work 39 hours, or some subset below 40, to avoid insurance from their employer which is mandated by law. This has become less of an issue lately due to the affordable care act, however it doesnt excuse the fact that most service sector does not have a set schedule.
2. no schedules. service sector and manufacturing often have mandatory overtime requirements. You cant be fired, by law, for refusing overtime however in almost all states you can simply fire the worker for no reason at all. Hence, it pays to work overtimes to stay in the good grace of the employer. finally
3. low wages. if youre only working for ten dollars an hour at 20 hours a week, youre working 2-3 jobs to maintain an apartment and a car (a car is generally required in america.) if you have kids or a family, or are a single parent, the burden requires you to pick up far more than 40 hours of work at a low pay grade. this isnt likely to change as the united states has the unique approach of using children as punishment for sex. contraception, abortion, and even simple reproductive education in the United states are inconsistent and wraught with urban legends, religious overtones, and outright pseudoscience.
4. predatory culture of consumption. everything here is offered on credit, with unlimited financing and relatively lax regulation (especially in subprime markets) of terms. In the US its not uncommon for a security guard making $13 an hour to drive a Lexus or Acura luxury sedan, because the terms and conditions of her credit never take into account the fact that a $48,000 touring sedan isnt in their budget. US check caching companies can charge more than 50% interest with impunity, and many do. The average US citizen carries more than ten thousand dollars in debt at any given time.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Productivity and "working more" are not the same thing.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I mean, if you think adding 1 hour more a day (8 becomes 9) is a 25% increase in hours, you need to go back and do a little recalculating...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Yeah, all my friends who brag about working 10h-12h days spend much of it online social media or shooting the proverbial shit.
I come in at 6:30-7 and I spend 4-5h on mental stuff but then I'm utterly done. Got a good boss, he knows I get the plurality of team's shit done and doesn't blink twice when I head out at lunch at noon and don't come back till 3:30 because I'm playing disc golf or some such, see if I missed anything and head home.
Any of the seatwarmers here try that and they'd be out of work the next day. But then they take a week to solve problems it takes me a day, tops, all because they can't concentrate. Multitasking, my ass.
Productivity and "working more" are not the same thing.
This poster was replying to a post that tried to imply that europeans were just more efficient. Also, one common thread you hear is that productivity starts to fall as hours increase. This poster was saying that for the USA, even working more than other people we still seem to have the most productivity per hour worked. I think it still wouldn't hurt to try to reduce the number of hours worked but to be working the most hours per week and still have the most productivity per hour is actually kindof impressive.
Buried in all the statisics abuse in the summaries there is a paper of significance only to historians. This paper is based on numbers for 2005-2007, before the financial crisis.
It also does not reflect work per person, but work for a theoretical average person age 15-64. Employment rate is a component of this person, so as employment rate drops so does the hours this average person works.
Actually, that feels intuitively wrong, the ~25 hours per week in the US seems way too high when employment rate is factored in, but I am not interested enough in how much we all worked 10 years ago to read the paper more carefully.
Besides, I don't have time for this, I have to get back to work.
"Proximity to wonder has blunted our perception and appreciation of it" --Tim Hartnell in 'Exploring ARTIFICIAL INTELLI
Americans do work hard, you're right. And the productivity numbers are impressive, despite my best efforts to bring down the average.
You are welcome on my lawn.
EU overall trades at a *profit*. There may be some of the smaller countries struggling (notably Greece) but overall EU does not have to internally inflates its economy with QE.
This is a problem with a few key economies that run at huge deficits and go the easy short-term route of internally inflating their economies. Japan had it for decades, US followed, UK joined them.
I found that I was most productive in the morning. Afternoon is mostly for "busy work". It was a waste of time to stay at work later in the day.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
The USA spend about as much for "defense" than the rest of the world. This is a huge cost (of order 1T$/yr) that the main superpower is unable to let other countries cover in a way or another (say by buying USD for free). In the end being US citizen has a cost that translates in more work time, lower life quality than a couple of other countries.
Let's rephrase that. A huge part of the government's spending goes directly into the pockets of the boards of companies like Halliburton so that they can spend it in the middle east on ridiculous opulence like a hotel with a water filled lobby.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Americans are addicted to their jobs. U.S. workers not only put in more hours than workers do almost anywhere else. They're also increasingly retiring later and taking fewer vacation days, ...
Perhaps we're just afraid of being unemployed and destitute. Employers show little loyalty to their employees (Pro Tip: If your company says "employees are our most valuable asset" start looking for another job.), the social safety net is not as strong as in Europe and it's clear that our politicians don't really care about the poor and (arguably) middle class -- look at the various budgets, including the latest Republican House budget which gets 62% from low/moderate income programs while also including tax cuts for the wealthy. (see below).
House GOP Budget Gets 62 Percent of Budget Cuts From Low- and Moderate-Income Programs
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
It's a lot harder to quit your job and strike out on your own now that having health insurance is the law. I'm in my late 30's and can't do what i did in my 20's because i went without insurance for many years.
If a few hundred dollars a month for health insurance is the difference between you starting a business vs not bothering you probably were doomed to failure from the start. That's a flimsy excuse to not try. It's no harder to start your own business than it ever was and in a lot of ways it's easier today than in years gone by. There certainly are more resources available to help a budding entrepreneur.
We are NOT addicted to our jobs. We HAVE to work 25% more than everyone else to KEEP our jobs, because workers in the US have ZERO protection against anti-competitive, inhumane, and employment practices that are ILLEGAL in Europe.
We have to compete with workers in countries where there are no labor laws, no environmental standards, no minimum wages, no nothing. We have to compete with people who are essentially state-owned slaves. We're trying to break out in the lead in the race to the bottom, because if we don't, we lose our jobs to one of those people.
And, our own government is leading the charge. So-called "liberals" and their banker buddies have been trying to make indentured servants of middle class America for ages - ever since the New Deal, all while claiming to want to "help."
Help us how, exactly? By making it prohibitively expensive to do things in the US? By imposing onerous and overbearing regulations that don't make sense? By telling me that slinging burgers at McDonalds is economically equivalent to the job I do that I spend $100K on a degree for? Please.
Some regulation is necessary, of course. There is a "right" amount that makes working safe and effective, and that levels the playing field. But, we surpassed that long ago. Today it is an active assault by government on entrepreneurship and individual success.
I've voted for Democrats all my life. As a black man I took it as my duty, having been told by my father who grew up during the Civil Rights Movement that Democrats were the only ones who fought for minority rights. I now know that my father was hoodwinked, and I refuse to be hoodwinked as well.
Wage Slaves
F-U corporate 'Mer'ka.
The fact that a lot of people in the US have multiple jobs working many hours just to be able to buy food and pay rent is not something you should be proud of.
No - they just enjoy their sweet free time.
Even without countless hours extra work time, they have a decent standard of living.
They simply don't need to work that hard to have a comfortable life, or run deep in debt..
Now - if you LIKE to work hard and long, just to get your rent and other basic living stuff payed, I guess you love the American way of life. Nothing wrong with that. I guess the employers love that kind of ethos.
Me? I think I know what I like...
It might just mean Europeans are 25% more efficient.
Nope. Americans not only work more, but also get more done per hour than any European countries except Luxembourgh and Norway.
It should read "American spend 25% more time at work than worker Europe". My experience working and watching various type of environment, is that at the end of the day, your average US worker did the same work as your average Europe worker, just in a longer time.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I think it is interesting to see and note. It's data. More data gives you more things to compare. We aren't exactly comparing like for like here. The US is huge. Yet it is compared to European countries, some of which are tiny. Look, we're different. So that we work more is just a data point, and judgement shouldn't be passed down on that data alone. The type of work is relevant as well.
Moreover, how do other places like Japan or China or Australia compare? We likely won't have comparable data, so it makes coming to conclusions more tricky.
I get that this is a simple generalized comparison. Jumping to conclusions based on it is quite irresponsible, IMO.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
From Work and Leisure in the U.S. and Europe: Why So Different?, hours worked by Europeans and Americans were about the same in the 1960's, although the number of hours were dropping for all every year. In about 1980, the US and Europe diverged, with hours continuing to drop in Europe, but the US plateauing.
Two reasons have been explored. The first is due to tax differences, and indeed labor taxes have been rising in the EU since the end of the 1960's. The other is differences in labor regulations, such as the requirement for contracts, limitations in legal working hours (such as the 35 hour workweek established in 2000 in France).
True. It also doesn't take into account the quality of work done. It might just mean Europeans are 25% more efficient.
I think it means that Americans get less paid vacation than Europeans and they are more afraid of losing their jobs.
Yeah, and most of those extra people are 65+'s who can't afford to retire. Nice life.
Bye!
Everybody with ambition moves to America. Soon all that will be left is old money and bums.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Europeans are also not one hegemon. Liberals love to whine about diversity and then actually ignore it. Or they perhaps suppress the idea that people are different because it doesn't match their simplistic notion of equality.
Each country in Europe is distinct. They are each their own thing that's developed over thousands of years. They are not a mishmash of all ethnicities (like the US tends to be).
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I guess that means I'm way worse off.
Please don't force me to work less just so that you don't feel peer pressure to work more.
And, depending on how you count, >60% of the people in the country live in urban areas. I guess we're all idiots.
Or maybe you're such a narcissist that you can't imagine a different way of life than your own.
Or is it what they claim? Staying at the office long hours is not necessarily correlated with working. Many stay at the office long hours because they can't stand going home, in this country where being divorced multiple times is commonplace.
Well when productivity is measured in USD and you can print them it's not as much impressive.
Europe, required min - 26 working days, typical 30 days.
US, required min - ? , typical working 10 days.
Sure americans work more by that metric alone.
Multitasking just means you do a lot of jobs at once, poorly.
One thing I could see contributing to this difference is the amount of time _wasted_ at work. Now that I'm a dad whose wife also works, as soon as I'm in the office the proverbial clock starts ticking. If I don't want to be stuck doing stuff after the kids go to bed at night, I have to get my work done in that narrow window of time. Lots of tech employers, especially Silicon Valley type companies operate on the college campus model, where long hours in the office are encouraged and part of the culture. Google serves 3 meals a day to their employees, and expects you to be there long before/long after those meals to make up for it. Your workplace becomes your extended family, and you are expected to put in time accordingly. If you want to see an extreme of this, look at Japanese work culture, where salarymen work massive amounts of hours _and_ have to go drinking with the boss when they're done.
If more employers would adopt the "get your stuff done when you want, as long as it gets done" mentality, I think most people would choose to be at work fewer hours. This may not be true for recent college grads who have no commitments at home, but I think it's very true for anyone wanting to maintain some sort of home life. You could say that in the traditional family, the father was the one working all the time and that was all that mattered, but I think priorities and society are shifting away from that.
I've known some Greeks outside Greece. They, at least, are not particularly lazy. Says nothing about Greek government employees either, those people are lazy as fuck worldwide.
Greece's economy is mostly underground. They learned that under the Ottomans. The problem is getting Greeks to pay taxes, even Greek government employees don't pay their taxes with impunity.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
less vacation, worse health care, and less job security (Google up 2016 layoffs).
USA! USA! We're number 1
USA! USA! We're number 1
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
True. It also doesn't take into account the quality of work done. It might just mean Europeans are 25% more efficient.
European countries and cultures are just too variable to make that assumption. Norway is not the same as Germany which is not the same as France which is not the same as Italy which is not the same as Greece which is not the same as Romania and so on and so on.
Mmm, that's productivity per worker. If that Frenchman, who manages to be within about 1.5% as productive as an American while working 20% less tells an American something about productivity, the American might want to grab a pen and take notes.
However, if the hardworking Norwegian works 258 hours less per year, using the numbers in the OP, the productivity advantage disappears to the tune of $745 per year. Of course it's more complicated. The Norwegian may be paying higher taxes that make the situation worse but then may get better social government support during the working years and in retirement than a US worker - or even less. Whether the Norwegian has a happier existence during working years and a longer retirement needs to be figured in and putting a dollar amount on that would be hard to do. Economics is complicated.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
In the three months to June 2016, the employment rate of the population aged 15-64 years stood at 64.7 percent, up 0.1 percentage points compared to the first quarter. Permanent employment rate for people aged 15-64 came in at 48.8 percent in the second quarter, unchanged from thr preceding quarter but up by 0.2 percentage points year-on-year.
Well when productivity is measured in USD and you can print them it's not as much impressive.
So measure it in oil, gold, euro, whatever. USD is just a placeholder for purchasing power. There is some fluctuation between different placeholders but one of the reasons the USD is used as a default placeholder is that it tends to fluctuate less than other placeholders. Use the consumer price index or any other basket of goods (I'm assuming other countries have something similar) and you likely won't get much different results. Sure, the USA probably has some advantage to having the USD as the default placeholder but distorting calculation of value by any significant margin is not one of them nor is being able to magically print wealth.
I would agree, considering
1. I have a scary choice as an American worker;
2. If I elect NOT to choose freedom and 40-hour weeks, the employer will get every bit they can out of me without nearing the cost of another worker;
3. If I elect to enforce a choice, there are others that will happily take my place and work for less compensation, and there are plenty available*. This is about fear, not about what WILL happen for sure. Uncertainty is the biggest part of the fear, IMHO.
* That's not even taking into account contracted or off-shored labor.
Yes, Americans work more. More out of fear of loss, and the fear of loss comes from what there is to be lost. e.g. Billy Bob gets a job with Cyberdynetics as a systems engineer. He works more than 40 hours per week because his employer lets him, and he gets more income that way. Once a threshold is reached, the employer converts him to salary. On a salary, Billy knows what he can afford in his lifestyle and how to save enough to at least have a glimmering hope of there being a decent livable life after the floating age of retirement. He works more and more to ensure his job won't be given to "some kid" who costs 1/4 of what he does and is fresh out of college. By working more, he's showing his value and ability. The company makes the decision they were going to make with or without his traits - offshoring (for instance) can save 15% over a year's time and reduces liability (worker's comp, potential lawsuits) along with not giving a crap what "vacation time" is for the offshore company - they manage that crud. Total savings, more than 15%. All Company pays for is people (or something, somewhere) getting work done.
Most people in the position of "Billy" opt to increase their work hours to help them internally ensure themselves that when decisions are made of who to get rid of, he will be near the bottom of the list. Companies have wind of ideas and costs of those ideas passing around internally, occasionally, and people in the Billy spot tend to be in a fearful position and don't have much of a way to compensate for that fear other than using drugs/alcohol (which can definitely get you canned and on the bottom of any potential hire-me lists in the future), or working extra hours to ensure the employer sees and feels his worth. That leaves him in a position of a possibility of success that outweighs using substances to quash the fear. It's a downward spiral. Unless you're a C?O, your hair will most likely grey from stress in your late 30s to early 40s.
I could be completely wrong, but I've observed the center point of the "work more in USA" issue being an attempt to stay on top when there are so many young'uns available for low cost and being influenced to follow the Company's position on things because, you know, they're young. Less life experience. Easier to believe whatever you hear, if you want to, and feel invincible. That lowers with age and experience; repeat process. That's all I've got from observing those around me in different places at different ages, under different socio-economic conditions at the given time. There seems to be a constant. ...."and that's all I got ta say about that."
Doesn't that just simply point out how little guaranteed vacation time the US has compared to most European Nations ? Work + Quality of life = Europe.
End of Line.
Oh, the beauty of statistics...
Sadly, the page you linked is directly affected by purchasing power index (PPP).
How about checking this link? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Americans not only work more, but more of their money is redistributed to the .01% by the government.
Maybe they just realize that there's more to life than breaking your back for rich cunt who will throw you to the wolves when you hit 40.
It's per hour worked, so on that measure a Frenchman is less productive. However, the conversion of local currency to $ may affect the figure.
Another factor is that these are figures presumably averaged over all jobs. It might be that a French find cheese maker is more productive than one in the USA but that the scope for value add in cheese making is lower than average and if France has more cheese makers its productivity will appear lower, even if every like-for-like comparison favoured the French. Or vice-versa.
So more detail is needed.
Flat unemployment rates:
US unemployment: 6.1
France unemployment: 10.4
https://data.oecd.org/unemp/un...
These are people who are seeking work of course. If you 'give up' searching for work, you fall off the board.
For raw employment rates:
US: 68.2
France: 63.6
https://data.oecd.org/emp/empl...
Assuming you subtract the difference, you're left with roughly the same number of people 'not seeking employment' in either country:
US: 25.7%
France: 26%
Bye!
When you talk to some of these people who work full time for low wages, yet buy something like a high-end automobile on credit? You discover something interesting. Most of the time, it's not about them being so unable to do basic math that they don't realize they're "living above their means".
Rather, they're taking the attitude of, "Screw it.... If some lender is willing to let me get this, why not do it? Then I can drive something around I'm proud to be seen in and enjoy driving. If something happens and I can't make the monthly payment anymore? Oh well... let them come take it back from me. At least I got to enjoy using it while I had it."
In other words, they'd see YOU as the sucker for working as hard as they do, and still settling for driving around some 10 year old Toyota. I mean, YOU'RE the one playing into the hands of the bankers and the "system" -- all worried about hurting your credit score, instead of realizing that in the worst case scenario, you can just file bankruptcy, wipe away all the debts while hanging onto most of what you amassed up until then. Wait for 7 years and you're right back to where you were before with those scores and levels of "credit risk".
Yea we spend all that "Extra" work time fighting with the windows 10 machine,
That is wrong.
They get less done.
The rest are currency conversion errors and mountain high differences in financial markets etc.
A typical worker, earning less then lets say $50,000 per year, is not even half as productive/efficient in the US as in Europe. Otherwise all your jobs would not be outsourced to China, India or other asian countries.
The GNP/capita is no measure at all when you can manipulate local costs, exchange rates and can invent artificial spendings or gains.
A country that has a financial market that dominates 50% of the money flow has obviously twice the GNP versus a country that has no financial market. But: nothing was produced. There is no productivity at all
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The problem is getting Greeks to pay taxes, even Greek government employees don't pay their taxes with impunity.
That is nonsense. Like in any other country taxes on wages are deduced before payout and transferred to the government at wage payout. And usually you get deduced more than you actually own them, so you have an incentive to make a tax declaration to get the to much payed tax back.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
FTFY.
The problem is that half of the time they're smoking or gossiping. Absolute shower, the lot of 'em.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This is pretty simple, really.
Look at your cost of living for the last 30 years. Find the trend. Extend that out the next fifty. Now go and find investments for your $2M that pay enough in interest and/or dividends to cover it.
Can't find it? You need more money in the bank.
Found it? Go ahead and retire.
Don't touch the principal; leave that to your kids so they can be considered "old money" when they grow up.
Simple.
-- sigs cause cancer.
"European Lifestyle" also means single payer medicine, 4 or more weeks vacation, and an efficient mass transit system.
Reminds me of when I went to Germany for a week to attend a music festival in Leipzig. I was talking to the Germans and the typical reaction was along the lines of "You rich Americans who can afford to fly to a different continent for a week to attend a music festival." My answer was "you rich Europeans that can afford to take more than a week off of work. I have to get back to pay for all this." There is certainly a difference in vacation idealologies that I observed. Europeans cut costs, stay in hostels, camp even in major cities, etc. They'll take their several weeks and backpack around Europe with barely enough money to buy food and beer. This seems because they have lots of vacation time and somewhat less money. Americans work a lot, as evidenced by this article, and get just a fraction of a European's vacation. In such a case, the American idea of a vacation is typically "money is no object" so while they are vacation, they splurge because although they'll have to work hard to pay it all back, they'll probably do so before they get another vacation. This probably contributes some of the American image abroad.
Turns out US workers as about as productive per hour as the best of European countries - with the notable exception of Norway which kicks everyone's ass in productivity per hour. So it sure does look like the US is that 20% or so more productive due to those extra hours.
Yes, many Europeans work less than folks in the US and they also have a higher standard of living in some nations. Looks like socialism is kicking capitalism square in the rear end to me.
They might find that during said time the Parisian Frenchman will have written several copies of his letter of resignation as well.
note extreme use of sarcasm
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
<quote><p>Productivity and "working more" are not the same thing.</p></quote>
<p>This poster was replying to a post that tried to imply that europeans were just more efficient. Also, one common thread you hear is that productivity starts to fall as hours increase. This poster was saying that for the USA, even working more than other people we still seem to have the most productivity per hour worked. I think it still wouldn't hurt to try to reduce the number of hours worked but to be working the most hours per week and still have the most productivity per hour is actually kindof impressive.</p></quote>
I would suggest that we don't actually know what "productivity" actually is. Not that we don't have figures to represent productivity, or that we haven't established categories of economic data that we use to generate productivity estimates
But it's a measure of something that changes depending on what you are measuring, and what you choose to measure often comes down to what you do in the first place. A nation that has a large agricultural economy will choose to use different parameters than a nation that has a large automated manufacturing sector, and one that has a large fundamental industrial capacity (steel making or shipbuilding, for example) a different set again.
The problem, of course, comes when you throw these various economies together and compare them
So, productivity numbers are generally useful but specifically useless. You can use them to establish baselines and glean trends that are useful to a certain extent, but to compare two different economies the value becomes diluted and of dubious merit.
Maybe Germany might find productivity values useful in making economic goals for the future, to assess where it should be putting it's assets for competitive advantages versus the rest of the world, and the US might find similar value in similar fact gathering, but comparing Germany to the US, it becomes much more difficult to come up with a set of measurable criteria that doesn't favour one over the other, because they are significantly different economies structurally.
I remember in the 1990's if you were to compare productivity figures for various nations worldwide, they all came down to a single metric
I have no doubt that adopting computers were important factors in how efficiently work got done, but it's absurd that a single metric represented the entire picture. The result was Productivity figures that said one economy (the US) apparently became many times more productive than any other economy on Earth, overnight.
Plus, and I say this as an Economics major in college, anything that involves an economist is tantamount to guessing.
The study quotes a 19% difference. So why inflate that by 31% to 25%? And even worse, use that inflated number in the headline?
I live in Belgium and Belgians (Flemish) are not the same as Belgians (Walloons). And the difference in working laws and mentality between Flanders and The Netherlands is so great that many companies have a hard time operating in both.
The way you adress people (be it customers or workers) is so different that where it is polite in one place, it will be felt as an insult in the other.
And also: it is al about being efficient. This might be great for managers and companies. Most people I know in Europe are not interested in efficiency. They are interesten in their free time.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Seems to be Europe as a whole. What about France? They could drag the entire continent down. What about these new migrants, almost all young men with no skill. You know, like an invading force. I'm seeing pictures of Europe and I'm not seeing women and children. I'm seeing soldier aged men.
Sorry to hear that, bro. :(
They just don't have a voice.
Unlike the heavily unionized Germany, France, Italy and Great Britain.
24% VAT in greece, much less on some islands. Good luck making that 'automatic'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Maybe some people have found jobs that they enjoy doing?
Maybe they retire, get bored in a month or two, and go back to work as a "consultant"?
One thing: People that work at something, even volunteer work, tend to live longer...
I think it still wouldn't hurt to try to reduce the number of hours worked but to be working the most hours per week and still have the most productivity per hour is actually kindof impressive.
Not really, the US economy has inherent efficiencies which make it easier to achieve greater GDP without individual workers actually being any better.