Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations

#61

Post by Vivtek » Thu, Sep 30, 2010, 2:17 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #2

There's no such thing as a free lunch; whether or not we're less productive, nobody's paying you for the hours you don't work. And, indeed, aren't Germany's wages, by sector, consistently lower than those in the US?

Yeah. They also have a working health care system, excellent public transit so no matter where you live you don't need a car, and so on. Clothing is insanely expensive. Food is more expensive if you're on a ramen diet, less expensive if you eat produce or bread and good deli meats.

Quality of life is higher no matter what you earn. Germany is set up so you can enjoy your days and your life.

Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations

#62

Post by Vivtek » Thu, Sep 30, 2010, 2:19 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #51

sasvari wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These numbers don't take the lifetime of the houses into account. Without having actual data I would say German houses have a higher lifetime than US counterparts. In Europe, and especially in Germany, houses are usually built not for a decade, but for multiple decades (more robust houses, better insulation etc.). I am not sure if this also applies to most American houses. Do the numbers then still reflect the actual…

Is it your impression that people in the US replace their physical houses every decade? Mine was built in the 1920's.

Mine was built in 1885, but we're not typical, tptacek.

Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations

#63

Post by BrandonM » Thu, Sep 30, 2010, 3:20 AM UTC

fforw wrote: post #55

charlesju wrote: post #54

My counter argument: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin... USA GDP - 14.2 T Germany GDP - 3.3 T

Of course you also have 3.5 times the population http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP... difference only 26%... guess you should move to Qatar or Luxembourg though -- but when you're not rich from oil or moving large sums of bank money around, that high GDP is not actually helping, is it? And then there is stuff like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-of-life_index .

> And then there is stuff like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-of-life_index.

Wow, that article looks pretty bogus. Here are their factors:

2. Family life: Divorce rate. My parents are divorced and they both seem pretty happy. This metric seems very biased and not clearly beneficial. Is it better to keep an unhappy marriage together or to create two new happier marriages?

3. Community life: country has either high rate of church attendance or trade-union membership. Seriously? Apparently freelancing atheists are miserable.

6. Climate and geography: Latitude, to distinguish between warmer and colder climates. It's ridiculous to claim that latitude is a prime determiner of quality-of-life. Some people prefer tropical beaches, but others love changing seasons and still others like ice fishing. As far as climate and geography are concerned, would you rather live in a Saharan desert or Crete? Places with similar latitudes can have vastly different climates, anyways.

7. Job security: Unemployment rate. Fair enough, but low unemployment rate isn't necessarily an indicator of job security: there could still be high churn. Also, a nation that provides a sufficient level of services means that the unemployed are never too badly off, while a country that provides none could see its few unemployed living in misery. Serious question: would a country with single-worker households have an unemployment rate near 50%?

9. Gender equality: Measured using ratio of average male and female earnings. Terrible. Does this even factor in number of hours worked? It certainly doesn't account for differences in the work being performed or for cultural differences.

By my count, about half of those metrics are crap. Creating an index from that is basically hokum. Anyone could tweak the metrics to almost arbitrarily reorder the rankings.

Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations

#64

Post by tptacek » Thu, Sep 30, 2010, 3:35 AM UTC

Vivtek wrote: post #62

tptacek wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it your impression that people in the US replace their physical houses every decade? Mine was built in the 1920's.

Mine was built in 1885, but we're not typical, tptacek.

The average house in Oak Park is many, many decades old. I don't know what Europeans think of us, but I hope there isn't a stereotype that we live in disposable houses!

Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations

#65

Post by eru » Thu, Sep 30, 2010, 3:36 AM UTC

ugh wrote: post #48

I think it’s funny that productivity is often the only frame which is used to discuss Germany’s mandated vacation [1]. That’s not at all the intent of the law, its purpose is not increasing productivity. It exists because German lawmakers think that every employee deserves at least four weeks of paid vacation the same way US lawmakers think that every employee deserves at least $7.25 per hour [2]. I [3] am completely…

> Germans are extremely wealthy so I’m not exactly concerned.

... and fond of footnotes.

Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations

#66

Post by eru » Thu, Sep 30, 2010, 3:38 AM UTC

Vivtek wrote: post #61

tptacek wrote: post #2

There's no such thing as a free lunch; whether or not we're less productive, nobody's paying you for the hours you don't work. And, indeed, aren't Germany's wages, by sector, consistently lower than those in the US?

Yeah. They also have a working health care system, excellent public transit so no matter where you live you don't need a car, and so on. Clothing is insanely expensive. Food is more expensive if you're on a ramen diet, less expensive if you eat produce or bread and good deli meats. Quality of life is higher no matter what you earn. Germany is set up so you can enjoy your days and your life.

> no matter where you live you don't need a car [...]

In the city, yes. In the suburbs most people consider a car a necessity to get to work.

Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations

#67

Post by eru » Thu, Sep 30, 2010, 3:42 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #39

ido wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My source is living in Austria, which has a very similar housing market to Germany & having friends in California & New York who pay $2000 a month for an apartment nobody here would pay even half (maybe not even a third or a quarter) of that for. And there are also much cheaper cities in Germany, I was comparing the most expensive in both countries since you talked about major US metro areas. Pretty sure that even if…

Don't let actual research statistics and my actual argument (US v Germany, not Berlin v NYC) get in the way of your life experience. Honestly, it's not that hard to actually gather the statistics and muster an argument based on evidence. Every major metro area tracks these numbers. Having just replied to another comment with 4 minutes of Google research to establish the rough parity between the cost of the Berlin ren…

Berlin is poorer than German average. So I'd take comparisons of Berlin with major metropolitan areas in the US with a grain of salt.

Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations

#68

Post by gamble » Thu, Sep 30, 2010, 6:47 AM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #5

tptacek wrote: post #2

There's no such thing as a free lunch; whether or not we're less productive, nobody's paying you for the hours you don't work. And, indeed, aren't Germany's wages, by sector, consistently lower than those in the US?

According to Max Klein, that is certainly true for programmers. Based on the numbers he gave, "a good programmer" in Germany gets paid less than a fresh college grad in the US. http://maxkle.in/giving-up-on-europe/

There is no country where programmers are as well paid as the US. Even in Canada, where cost-of-living and salaries are normally comparable, programmers are paid at least 20-30% less. I'm not sure why, but it's a dramatic difference.

Of course, it's also the reason US companies are so eager to outsource programming jobs.

Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations

#69

Post by lionhearted » Thu, Sep 30, 2010, 6:56 AM UTC

ShabbyDoo wrote: post #10

What is the marginal cost to an employer in Germany of an hour of labor? And, in the US? The article did not explicitly state the metric used to quantify "output", but, given other similar studies I've seen, I must presume that profit/employee across the economy is a likely underlying metric. Given such a metric, could labor cost differences explain this "efficiency"? Let us consider a contrived example where, in Ohi…

This matches my limited experience. I toured a German factory once - their level of technology and processes are astounding. I watched a car getting painted - it was on a catwalk over running water with turbines to capture some energy from the process, and bristles on the turbines to take most of the paint out and recycle the water. The efficiencies are enormous, technology investment very high.

I haven't been through so many factories to compare, but the investments in technology I saw seem higher than in the American factories I've been through. Small sample size, though, basically anecdotal, so take me with a grain of salt here.

Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations

#70

Post by ido » Thu, Sep 30, 2010, 7:08 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #39

ido wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My source is living in Austria, which has a very similar housing market to Germany & having friends in California & New York who pay $2000 a month for an apartment nobody here would pay even half (maybe not even a third or a quarter) of that for. And there are also much cheaper cities in Germany, I was comparing the most expensive in both countries since you talked about major US metro areas. Pretty sure that even if…

Don't let actual research statistics and my actual argument (US v Germany, not Berlin v NYC) get in the way of your life experience. Honestly, it's not that hard to actually gather the statistics and muster an argument based on evidence. Every major metro area tracks these numbers. Having just replied to another comment with 4 minutes of Google research to establish the rough parity between the cost of the Berlin ren…

    And, sorry, no, I'm talking about 
    major metro, not suburbs.


    The average cost of a newly built 
    **detached house** in Germany

There are practically no detached houses in major metros in Germany, except in the very outskirts of the city & suburbs.

The few exceptions to that rule are extremely expensive. This is why the comparison is not 100% apt - detached houses are a common form of housing major US cities but very uncommon in major German cities.