Most comments seem to origin in the US. Some contributors may be interested in the situation in Europe. Here the data for the three biggest European economies.
-------------------
Paid Leave
European Union requires all its member states to guarantee by law minimally four weeks of paid leave for all employees.
Average paid holiday days per year for full-time employees in 2008:
- Germany 30 days, plus 10.5 days public holidays
- France 25 days, plus 11 days public holidays
- United Kingdom 24.7 days, plus 8 days public holidays
-------
Working hours
Actual average weekly work hours for full-time employees in Europe
- United Kingdom 40,9 hours (2008)
- Germany 38.8 hours (2010)
- France 38,4 hours (2008)
-------------------
And no, my experience in four European countries (UK, Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic) suggests that workers are not punished in any way if they take their vacations.
In Germany, the minimum wage for most people is unemployment benefits! There is no point in trying to pay someone less then what they would get for sitting at home. I have met people there that had been unemployed for years because they could not find work in their chosen profession. ("Wildlife manager" - talk about a niche!)
True - but outdated since years.
Germany had to find out the hard way that the labor market was (and still is) one of the least flexible in the world.
Therefore they had to change the overly generous laws. For instance, today an unemployed 35 year old single gets up to 15 months of unemployment benefit at maximum. But afterwards he only gets 11,50 Euro (about 16,70 US$) welfare a day, plus subsidies for housing and heating. I strongly doubt this is the "unemployment benefit" your "wildlife manager" referred to...
This massive cutbacks actually had to be introduced by a leftist social-democratic government, as even they found state money running out while too many citizens stayed lazy at home.
And a last remark:
Your statement about most sensible countries (i.e.: any "western" country apart from the US) have tiered minimum wages is also flawed for a few other reasons also. The reasons are named Austria, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Norway, Sweden. Not one of these countries has a statutory minimum wage (at least they hadn't four years ago, the last time I researched it).
So whatever your point was or is - please base it on facts, not wildly overstretched, outdated or simply wrong "facts". Trolls are already a pain, but people with strong opinions accompanied with very limited knowledge of the world are a far more dangerous PIA (as they might convince someone).
HTF could the parent be rated as "Informative" ? Will we rate conspiration theorists "informative" now regularly?
Surf the net, visit the world and make your own decisions.
For instance, murders in 1999 or 2000:
12685 USA (about 0.04 per 1000 inhabitants)
1051 France (~0.01)
960 Germany (~0.01)
850 United Kingdom (~0.01)
637 Japan (less then 0.01)
More murders per capita then in the US happen mostly in less developed countries (top three: Colombia, South Africa, Jamaica).
It's mentionable that most follow-up nations of the former Soviet Union (including Russia) have higher murder rates than the US. Another shameful exception was Poland, which was on par with the US till short ago.
Please get the facts right before you post such a humbug:
> Large portions of Western Europe were bombed
> to the stone age during WWII
Mostly correct. Germany was (rightfully) hit most far and away.
> and have been able to build more modern
> cities from scratch.
Wrong. Look at a map af nearly any city in Germany: you will find basically the same layout as hundreds of years before (sometimes up to two milleniums back to the Romans).
> The US has cities that date back to the
> original colonies and their infrastructure
> is just about as old.
So what? Conclusions?
In most parts of Europe most parts of the infrastructure is older.
> Mix in the problem that we are, as a Federal
> Republic and Federal laws are limited due to
> State's Rights
Once more - conclusions? Germany is a federal state too (as opposed eg. to highly centralized France).
> you have one big catch-22 that makes
> progress difficult.
As demonstrated obviously wrong.
> In this tournament they put all
> the engines on identical comptuers
This is not correct.
In fact, every contestant is allowed to use his own hardware.
Contestants which are not opting for their own hardware, get an Pentium-4 with 2,8 GHz from the Bar-Ilan-University.
Crafty (freeware) brings its own quad-Opteron machine with 2,4 GHz!
Two other contestants are playing on quad-Opterons, too. Fritz and Shredder are playing with 2,2 GHz resp. 2,0 GHz. Both machines are from the sponsor Transtec.
Wrong. They are not the "Christian Socialist Union", but "Christian Social Union".
"Gerhardt Schroeder, the current Chancellor, is from the major "liberal" opposition party."
Wrong. He's a left winger from the "Social Democratic Party of Germany" (SPD). They are not in opposition, but form a koalitiopn majority government together with the Greens.
The liberal Party is the FDP ("Free Democratic Party"). On average abour 5 to 10% of the votes.
Kohl, was from the CDU/CSU.
Wrong. He was from the CDU.
"West Germany only had one Chancellor in the postwar era from the opposition party"
Wrong. Ever heard of Willy Brandt, Nobel Prize laureate? Left-wing (SPD) chancellor.
Ever saw Helmut Schmidt meeting Jimmy Carter? SPD chancellor.
All the rest were CDU/CSU
There was no chancellor of the CSU ever.
Man, if you're an adult American, I now much better understand, why many of you are without a clue who you're voting for...
BTW:
guess for Americans it's the equivalent of the Republican Party.
Sure... Even if they are right centrists, they are advocating legal abortion, were not opposing more gay rights (but less than left-wingers), are strongly pro-European, and prefer political systems were the majority of the popuar votes gives the majority in parliaments...
Slashdot Mirror
Most comments seem to origin in the US. Some contributors may be interested in the situation in Europe. Here the data for the three biggest European economies.
-------------------
Paid Leave
European Union requires all its member states to guarantee by law minimally four weeks of paid leave for all employees.
Average paid holiday days per year for full-time employees in 2008:
- Germany 30 days, plus 10.5 days public holidays
- France 25 days, plus 11 days public holidays
- United Kingdom 24.7 days, plus 8 days public holidays
-------
Working hours
Actual average weekly work hours for full-time employees in Europe
- United Kingdom 40,9 hours (2008)
- Germany 38.8 hours (2010)
- France 38,4 hours (2008)
-------------------
And no, my experience in four European countries (UK, Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic) suggests that workers are not punished in any way if they take their vacations.
In Germany, the minimum wage for most people is unemployment benefits! There is no point in trying to pay someone less then what they would get for sitting at home. I have met people there that had been unemployed for years because they could not find work in their chosen profession. ("Wildlife manager" - talk about a niche!)
True - but outdated since years.
Germany had to find out the hard way that the labor market was (and still is) one of the least flexible in the world.
Therefore they had to change the overly generous laws. For instance, today an unemployed 35 year old single gets up to 15 months of unemployment benefit at maximum. But afterwards he only gets 11,50 Euro (about 16,70 US$) welfare a day, plus subsidies for housing and heating. I strongly doubt this is the "unemployment benefit" your "wildlife manager" referred to...
This massive cutbacks actually had to be introduced by a leftist social-democratic government, as even they found state money running out while too many citizens stayed lazy at home.
And a last remark: Your statement about most sensible countries (i.e.: any "western" country apart from the US) have tiered minimum wages is also flawed for a few other reasons also. The reasons are named Austria, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Norway, Sweden. Not one of these countries has a statutory minimum wage (at least they hadn't four years ago, the last time I researched it).
So whatever your point was or is - please base it on facts, not wildly overstretched, outdated or simply wrong "facts". Trolls are already a pain, but people with strong opinions accompanied with very limited knowledge of the world are a far more dangerous PIA (as they might convince someone).
Most sensible countries (i.e.: any "western" country apart from the US) have tiered minimum wages.
Germany (the "western" country with second most inhabitants after the US) has no minimum wage at all, and never had.
Did I mention those countries all have lower youth delinquency rates than the US to
And they have way lower delinquency rates than the US. Don't try to construct a causality. There simply is none.
Surf the net, visit the world and make your own decisions.
For instance, murders in 1999 or 2000:
12685 USA (about 0.04 per 1000 inhabitants)
1051 France (~0.01)
960 Germany (~0.01)
850 United Kingdom (~0.01)
637 Japan (less then 0.01)
More murders per capita then in the US happen mostly in less developed countries (top three: Colombia, South Africa, Jamaica).
It's mentionable that most follow-up nations of the former Soviet Union (including Russia) have higher murder rates than the US. Another shameful exception was Poland, which was on par with the US till short ago.
> Large portions of Western Europe were bombed
> to the stone age during WWII
Mostly correct. Germany was (rightfully) hit most far and away.
> and have been able to build more modern
> cities from scratch.
Wrong. Look at a map af nearly any city in Germany: you will find basically the same layout as hundreds of years before (sometimes up to two milleniums back to the Romans).
> The US has cities that date back to the
> original colonies and their infrastructure
> is just about as old.
So what? Conclusions?
In most parts of Europe most parts of the infrastructure is older.
> Mix in the problem that we are, as a Federal
> Republic and Federal laws are limited due to
> State's Rights
Once more - conclusions? Germany is a federal state too (as opposed eg. to highly centralized France).
> you have one big catch-22 that makes
> progress difficult.
As demonstrated obviously wrong.
> the engines on identical comptuers
This is not correct.
In fact, every contestant is allowed to use his own hardware.
Contestants which are not opting for their own hardware, get an Pentium-4 with 2,8 GHz from the Bar-Ilan-University.
Crafty (freeware) brings its own quad-Opteron machine with 2,4 GHz!
Two other contestants are playing on quad-Opterons, too. Fritz and Shredder are playing with 2,2 GHz resp. 2,0 GHz. Both machines are from the sponsor Transtec.
The liberal Party is the FDP ("Free Democratic Party"). On average abour 5 to 10% of the votes.
Wrong. He was from the CDU. Wrong. Ever heard of Willy Brandt, Nobel Prize laureate? Left-wing (SPD) chancellor. Ever saw Helmut Schmidt meeting Jimmy Carter? SPD chancellor. There was no chancellor of the CSU ever.Man, if you're an adult American, I now much better understand, why many of you are without a clue who you're voting for...
BTW:
Sure... Even if they are right centrists, they are advocating legal abortion, were not opposing more gay rights (but less than left-wingers), are strongly pro-European, and prefer political systems were the majority of the popuar votes gives the majority in parliaments...