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Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

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Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#271

Post by antisthenes »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #115
charlesdm wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shocking how average people accept the salaries they make and tax rates they pay.. smart people know better.

Indeed. Just think of the social safety net and universal healthcare we could have in the US if we taxed the highest marginal income rates appropriately. EDIT: And how much more holiday/vacation time we'd have if it was mandated at the federal level.

You need to tax wealth as well, not just income. Accumulated wealth is what results and continues the inequality, not incomes.

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#272

Post by RandomName2020 »

TDL wrote: post #263
RandomName2020 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back up claims? It is common knowledge - bus drivers for example, working for Santa Clara county transit make $35/h, bus drivers for (contracted) Google and such make less than $20.

That's not common knowledge to me, especially since I don't live in California. You have asserted certain claims and offer no evidence. "Common knowledge" isn't evidence.

I do not know how to even reply to that. Bus drivers, post delivery people, municipal construction workers etc. - all have better salaries and benefits than similar private workers. I am not sure how any adult living anywhere in US could manage to not know that.

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#273

Post by gutnor »

ajmurmann wrote: post #32

I find it astonishing how positive Bloomberg tries to spin this: People earn a wider range of incomes in the U.S., so “workers have an incentive to try harder to move up the job ladder because a promotion is worth more,” said Dora Gicheva -The income range in the US is so large that there are lots of people at the bottom end who have to work multiple jobs. How much does that have to do with the longer work hours, Blo…

> -This sounds less like people in Europe are "discouraged" from working, rather than many Americans must work longer because they can't retire.

It is very difficult to generalise. In Belgium for example you are legally forbidden to work. If you work or earn more than a very small threshold you lose your state pension. But then the pension used to be good for regular employee, so there was not really a need to work for a lot either.

Really those analysis are like tea leaves reading. You can build whatever story, but at the end of the day each country is a unique snowflake and another country model cannot just be applied.

Take the Belgian model before, so now put an incentive for older generations to work and you realise that another difference with the US is that the unemployment is much higher and you just added additional pressure on the job market.

Dig a bit more and you realise that Belgium has a unusually high level of old generation unemployment because of the specific model (early pension) they used to handle the worst of factory closure. So those people have been written off the job market and putting them back in is just resurrecting the initial problem only worse considering you would need to compensate for the years/decades of missing investment in the affected region/sector.

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#274

Post by roebk »

wil421 wrote: post #214
creshal wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have more (paid) vacation and more public holidays and sick leave is both paid for and not counted towards the vacation budget, and more maternity/paternity leave, and some countries have extra leave for things like family funerals. It's not hard to "work less" like that.

I have all this things in the US. Sick leave is not counted in my vacation. Maternity leave is much longer than paternity. And is paid for in full at my company for a time. FMLA allows 12 weeks total but it can be unpaid. The main difference I've seen with the Europeans I work with is, they take big chunks off at a time in summer. They pay more taxes but have more time off. Most likely don't get full pay for Maternit…

It's great that you have all things things, but are they standard in the US? I think that's the main issue here, that as a baseline, europeans tend to get more time off.

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#275

Post by antisthenes »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #172
RandomName2020 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (e.g. Federal government jobs and some companies) but these are frequently viewed as undesirable Federal and government (city, state etc.) jobs (perhaps excluding IT) are some of the most desirable jobs in US, with long waiting lines. Got try get a city job in NYC....

Yes, they are highly desirable to people that are non-ambitious and strongly risk averse, which includes a non-trivial percentage of the population. For a certain kind of person, those jobs are perfect; the pay and opportunity isn't great but the risk and level of effort is also low. I've worked in these organizations before; the people that take these jobs don't want much out of life, just looking to coast. But most…

No offense, but everything you wrote makes you sound like a condescending asshole that bases their views on people on a short stint at some gov. agency.

How do you know what those people were doing in their lives? Were their performing their job adequately? If yes, I don't really see the issue.

Many of the federal jobs are just as demanding and rewarding as those in the private sector and they are so highly desired, that the hiring process has to be very selective, so it leads to at least some quality in the candidates.

> But most Americans find government jobs to be unfulfilling and stifling for exactly the same reason -- it is a dead-end.

Perhaps you should stop extrapolating your preconceived (and incorrect) notions to most Americans and instead consider the alternative.

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#276

Post by cloverich »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #115
charlesdm wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shocking how average people accept the salaries they make and tax rates they pay.. smart people know better.

Indeed. Just think of the social safety net and universal healthcare we could have in the US if we taxed the highest marginal income rates appropriately. EDIT: And how much more holiday/vacation time we'd have if it was mandated at the federal level.

Raising the tax rates to 45% would (optimistically) generate 250 billion in the first year, which is ~20% of just medicare and medicaid. Which is only to say, improving access to health care and making it sustainable in this country is a much more complicated problem.

EDIT: Links:

- http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/17/business/putting-numbers-t...

- https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/images/pubs...

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#277

Post by antisthenes »

TDL wrote: post #263
RandomName2020 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back up claims? It is common knowledge - bus drivers for example, working for Santa Clara county transit make $35/h, bus drivers for (contracted) Google and such make less than $20.

That's not common knowledge to me, especially since I don't live in California. You have asserted certain claims and offer no evidence. "Common knowledge" isn't evidence.

> "Common knowledge" isn't evidence.

But it is. The data for public salaries generally has very good availability in the Information age.

If you're trying to participate in a discussion in an informed way, you should at least conduct the minimum due diligence to do so.

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#278

Post by seszett »

matt4077 wrote: post #239
nathan_f77 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true. I'm already working remotely as a freelancer, so I wish it was as easy as just moving to Italy. Unfortunately you can't do that if you're not employed by a company, or have a ton of money to invest. I just found this startup visa, though: http://italiastartupvisa.mise.gov.it/#direct-application-sec... I think I might actually look into this.

Assuming you're American, I believe you can get a Schengen visa for most of Europe from any number of countries, including Britain (if you hurry, and it may not be called Schengen since they aren't a member). So try shopping around – it's usually easy if you have ancestors from a country and every country has additional programs for certain purposes (being jewish, for example, gets you German citizenship with no furt…

A Schengen visa allows you to travel freely in the EU, but not to live anywhere unless you actually have a long-term visa for the place.

All administrative acts will require you to have a long-term visa in the country you are doing them.

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#279

Post by toomuchtodo »

cloverich wrote: post #276
toomuchtodo wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Just think of the social safety net and universal healthcare we could have in the US if we taxed the highest marginal income rates appropriately. EDIT: And how much more holiday/vacation time we'd have if it was mandated at the federal level.

Raising the tax rates to 45% would (optimistically) generate 250 billion in the first year, which is ~20% of just medicare and medicaid . Which is only to say, improving access to health care and making it sustainable in this country is a much more complicated problem. EDIT: Links: - http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/17/business/putting-numbers-t... - https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/images/pubs...

I agree that we'd also have to drive down healthcare costs using single payer.

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#280

Post by fauigerzigerk »

fsloth wrote: post #259
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, the incentive to rise above your parents' percentile is much less if that next percentile doesn't feel much better. At the end of the day, the difficulty with these comparisons is that social mobility measured in percentiles may be the same in a country where it is next to impossible to rise above your parents' social class as in a country where it is completely pointless to even want that.

I'd claim in many european nations rising is motivated by percieved better chances to have a psychologically fullfilling career, rather than considerable improvement in finances - since the increases are not that thrillingly high. But does this make the urge to rise pointless? In my country (Finland), for instance we don't force anyone to live in the streets. IMO, this creates huge amount of value from second order n…

I agree completely. But doing something _only_ for the purpose of moving into a higher income bracket may indeed be pointless (or less desirable) in a more equal society.

In such a society, any meaningful definition of social mobility has to include more than just income percentiles.

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