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America's misguided culture of overwork

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Re: America's misguided culture of overwork

#61

Post by gyardley »

arethuza wrote: post #22
mike-cardwell wrote: post #2

I'm surprised wealth distribution wasn't mentioned in the stuff about GDP comparison. I'm no Economist but I was under the impression that wealth is distributed more evenly in European countries than in the US. We have rich people here in Europe but the US seems to have lots of insanely rich people and lots of poor people to go with it...

Norway is an interesting example - one of the highest per capita GDP figures but unusual in that the distribution of incomes is very narrow e.g. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspon...

Norway is a very lovely country but I doubt there's a sustainable model there for the rest of the world to follow, since we all can't become the world's third-largest exporter of oil.

Re: America's misguided culture of overwork

#63

Post by roc »

berntb wrote: post #43
Nitramp wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, but he's at least a bit wrong in both directions. I was surprised to read people in Tupelo are three times wealthier than people in Hamburg; Tupelo might have a higher GDP, but certainly not three times. Maybe he was trying to be polemic? I still agree with the sentiment of the article. European societies sacrifice a bit of growth potential and individual freedom to get better living conditions for all. I th…

>>European societies sacrifice a bit of growth potential and individual freedom to get better living conditions for all. I think that's a wise move The problem with sacrificing growth rates ought to be that interest accumulate -- that is, Europe becomes further and further behind. But that seems to be countered by a variant of "second mover advantage" -- it is easier to grow fast when you are far behind (see e.g. Chi…

Or it could be simple: growth rates absent context might not be a useful measure or goal.

Re: America's misguided culture of overwork

#64

Post by mike-cardwell »

gyardley wrote: post #61
arethuza wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norway is an interesting example - one of the highest per capita GDP figures but unusual in that the distribution of incomes is very narrow e.g. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspon...

Norway is a very lovely country but I doubt there's a sustainable model there for the rest of the world to follow, since we all can't become the world's third-largest exporter of oil.

It depends which model you're looking at. Fair wealth distribution is a sustainable model.

If Norway behaved like the US, most of the money from oil would probably go to a small handful of privileged people.

Re: America's misguided culture of overwork

#65

Post by arethuza »

gyardley wrote: post #61
arethuza wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norway is an interesting example - one of the highest per capita GDP figures but unusual in that the distribution of incomes is very narrow e.g. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspon...

Norway is a very lovely country but I doubt there's a sustainable model there for the rest of the world to follow, since we all can't become the world's third-largest exporter of oil.

I think Norway is interesting because they have such a narrow distribution of wealth even though they have vast riches from oil, not because of those riches.

Edit: The Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund apparently owns 1% of global equities! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norw...

Re: America's misguided culture of overwork

#66

Post by gyardley »

I'm starting to think there's something to the idea of a national culture - nothing genetic, but a set of high-level assumptions and attitudes about life that inform the vast majority of people in a region, across the political spectrum. I've personally run into vast differences in attitudes about privacy and government between Americans and Germans, and I've been thinking a lot lately about Heinrich's 'WEIRD' paper (which finds differences between Americans and other Western nations - and Western nations and the rest of the world - on psychological tests.)

I suspect that because of certain prevalent American values (autonomy, distrust of authority, a bit of the Horatio Alger myth) they've naturally optimized to the work environment best suited to them. I further suspect that America could only switch to a German system very, very gradually. The country's just not currently suited for social democracy - they'd be terrible at it.

Re: America's misguided culture of overwork

#67

Post by gyardley »

Tichy wrote: post #60

It feels funny that Germany is being marked as the prototypical socialist country. We don't think of us like that. It seems even in the US the state is paying for things (streets, school?), so the US is also socialist? It seems to me that by the definition that most US commentators seem to use, any country with taxes is socialist. As for the health insurance, note that it is only mandatory for employed people. If you…

Many Americans don't distinguish between 'socialist' and 'social democracy', since there hasn't been a strong social democratic tradition in America for generations. You should just swap out the two terms, and then (hopefully) the conversation will feel a bit less weird.

Re: America's misguided culture of overwork

#68

Post by masklinn »

gyardley wrote: post #61
arethuza wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norway is an interesting example - one of the highest per capita GDP figures but unusual in that the distribution of incomes is very narrow e.g. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspon...

Norway is a very lovely country but I doubt there's a sustainable model there for the rest of the world to follow, since we all can't become the world's third-largest exporter of oil.

Except most of the oil-riches are stashed away, not spent as it is in Saudi Arabia.

Re: America's misguided culture of overwork

#69

Post by patrickgzill »

My personal experience with Germans is that they are hard workers for several hours, then they take off and play. During the time they are working they are focused on getting work done.

Americans will put in long hours, but then during the course of the day will play in the form of checking personal email, talking around the water cooler, etc.

You can cross ref. this with NASA's finding that programmers who were only allowed to work 5 days a week of 8 hour days were as productive and had less bugs in their code than those allowed to work more hours.

Re: America's misguided culture of overwork

#70

Post by Luc »

lenni wrote: post #6

Hmm, I enjoy hearing all the praise heap onto us (Germany) latetly. There was a time when Germany was called the sick, fat old man of Europe, too inflexible and and stubborn to able to adjust to a changing environment. I'm sure once the growth lessens the tone will change again - I'll enjoy it as long as it lasts.

The good average performance numbers are especially impressive when you consider West-Germany absorbed the underdeveloped East-German economy in 1990, and still provides massive subsidy transfers (afaik). You must be doing something right!
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