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Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy

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Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy

#111

Post by anentropic »

Someone1234 wrote: post #16
cmollis wrote: post #9

It's frowned upon to take any time off in the US. I've seen it viewed as a sign of a lack of commitment or even laziness. Consequently, we take less time off because we're scared we're going to lose our jobs. No one is congratulated for taking time off in the middle of a project for your 'sanity' or 'to re-charge'. Everyone is scared. There is no safety net. It's no way to live, but it's our reality.

> There is no safety net. That's a wonderfully succinct way of describing the US. It seems like in a lot of EU countries if you fail there is something to catch you (higher, longer, easier to get unemployment pay for one example), whereas there really is no lower limit on how low the US will let you fall (e.g. healthcare is a privilege not a right in the US). They do say that the US has some of the highest anti-depre…

this is also why the USA is a lot more religious than other developed countries

Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy

#112

Post by walshemj »

Someone1234 wrote: post #16
cmollis wrote: post #9

It's frowned upon to take any time off in the US. I've seen it viewed as a sign of a lack of commitment or even laziness. Consequently, we take less time off because we're scared we're going to lose our jobs. No one is congratulated for taking time off in the middle of a project for your 'sanity' or 'to re-charge'. Everyone is scared. There is no safety net. It's no way to live, but it's our reality.

> There is no safety net. That's a wonderfully succinct way of describing the US. It seems like in a lot of EU countries if you fail there is something to catch you (higher, longer, easier to get unemployment pay for one example), whereas there really is no lower limit on how low the US will let you fall (e.g. healthcare is a privilege not a right in the US). They do say that the US has some of the highest anti-depre…

don't down vote comments like this because you disagree with obamacare

Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy

#113

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

autokad wrote: post #38
thegeomaster wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How big a sample size of Europeans does your consultant have? Your claim that "Europeans go on vacation and projects get held up and they can never catch up again" is... dubious at best.

i made a statement, backed it up by mentioning productivity, and then made a reference to a real world example that I have observed, unlike the article that just mostly made platitudes. if you'd like further evidence, the EU area has an unemployment rate close to 12%. companies are not anxious to hire europeans for one reason or another.

Most EU unemployment is in the countries comprehensively raped by the IMF/EU Central Bank/European Commission cabal, who swooped in after 2008 demanding huge cuts in social spending so that the bond investors who were partly responsible for the crisis would be inconvenienced as little as possible.

Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Cyprus have seen huge leaps in unemployment, underage prostitution, suicide, child and adult mortality, and drug use as a result.

They used to be solid economies, with EU-wide unemployment running at around 7%. Now they're hollowed out shells.

'Employers' have nothing to do with this. It was purely a political decision, based on bad economic science (at best) and north-south racism at worst.

Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy

#114

Post by nsxwolf »

01Michael10 wrote: post #87
nsxwolf wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many people in the US don't take their vacation days because they've read things like this and not because of their own experience. If you're afraid of taking vacation only because of what you've heard from the media, I suggest you try taking your vacation and see what happens. In all likelihood it will be a career non-event.

You actually think people decide whether to take a vacation or not because of what they read in the media and NOT based on the culture of the company they work at?

Notice what I said here: "If you're afraid of taking vacation only because of what you've heard from the media"

If you're afraid of taking vacation because of first hand knowledge about the culture of your company wrt vacations, by all means, be afraid of taking time off.

Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy

#115

Post by pumblechook »

ghshephard wrote: post #20

Even worse is the new trend in technology companies to eliminate "Set Vacation". It used to be the case that you felt "obliged" somehow to take your 10 days of vacation a year, because you saw it piling up. Even better, if you were laid off, you could get the vacation in cash, and that helped when you were cut off without a job. But now, a lot of technology companies are saying, "No Set Vacation - you need to negotia…

The ironic part about this is that companies think this is a benefit to the employee, when in reality this seems to be a classic example of the psychological anchoring bias that influences people to take LESS vacation. For those who aren't familiar, this is a well established psychological heuristic that says our decisions are heavily influenced by some 'anchoring' information, in this case, the number of vacation days allowed.

I'm heavily paraphrasing Kahneman here, but numerous experiments have shown this effect in a variety of ways. Perhaps most counterintuitively, in an experiment where an arbitrary limit was set on the purchase of soup on sale, the amount of soup people bought was twice what was bought when no arbitrary limit was set. I'm not aware of any empirical studies examining this with vacation days, but anecdotal evidence like this seems to support the influence of this effect. I'd be extremely interested to see the data on the number of vacation days taken by employees at the no set vacation companies vs. others.

Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy

#116

Post by brightsize »

jmct wrote: post #43
dasil003 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vacation policies are the least of it. How about the lack of a safety net? Take health care. Civilized people should agree that medical care in a rich country should be available to everyone. The thought of people dying in the streets from preventable disease and injury sounds pretty horrendous. But for the past 20 years we've been fed the same fabricated FUD about socialized medicine that has no basis in reality. Pe…

Would you mind naming the generic drug? It seems like this is a powerful argument against having (only) for-profit healthcare. I'd like to be able to point to a specific case of what you're describing.

A data point from the USA: I take a very low dose of lamotrigene extended-release (mild epilepsy). The brand-name cost of this was $1200-$1400 per month. The recently available generic version of this costs nearly $400/mo. And this is, again, for a very low dose. For someone with a moderate or severe seizure (or bipolor - it's used for that too) disorder, the cost might be 4-5x this.

While one might argue that the name-brand version costs so much because of high R&D costs (dubious in my opinion), it's difficult to make that argument for the generic. It's expensive because the manufacturer can get away with it -- it's very much needed by the patients but the market is sufficiently limited in size that few potential competitors choose to target it.

Generics can be inexpensive if the drug in question has a very large market - statins for example. But if not, and you don't work for a company that provides health insurance with prescription drug coverage, a drug you need may well be a drug that you cannot get because of its cost.

Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy

#117

Post by baq »

lnanek2 wrote: post #13
coreymgilmore wrote: post #2

I feel this article is a little weak in one major sense: comparing the US to European countries based on non-working time is okay, but you also need to compare a metric like GDP. Using this, the US is #6 world-wide only behind two European countries. So yes, Euros may get more time off, but the US is a way more economically powerful and productive country economically. Hurting the economy, sure people get burned out,…

Yeah, all these Europe's way are better articles and books fall a little flat considering how terrible their economies are nowadays. It sounds like they are saying, "come be like us! Our nations can't even make their debt payments!"

as if the US didn't go through a debt-ceiling crisis every other year.

Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy

#118

Post by cognivore »

If you're in tech, the way to do avoid this is:

- Develop mission critical systems.

- Make sure no one else understands them.

- When you're gone, break them so your employer suffers and realizes they can't be without you.

- Act like you don't care and want your time off.

Works for raises,too.

Of course, if you have a good employer, none of that is necessary.

Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy

#119

Post by mncolinlee »

jasonkester wrote: post #83

That Cadillac ad is awesome. I'd never seen it before. It watches like a parody, but at the end you're hit by the reality that yes, this guy is being completely serious. The message really is "sure, I traded away my quality of life, but look at all this stuff! " That's actually the notion that Cadillac is trying to sell. Amazing that they're doing such a good job of it. Fortunately, there's no real trick to getting b…

The ad also inspired several parodies, including this one from Ford. The Cadillac ad is clearly trying to sell to an affluent, white, conservative audience which still believes their hard work and no vacation pays off. In the ad, they show their success with the car they drive. It's a study in market segmentation.

Ford's parody spins it around by focusing on social consciousness, eco-friendliness, and diversity, a better message for their electric vehicle audience. You could look at the ad subject's "dirt from food" startup as a literal circle of life, an homage to organic farming and green living.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAN61QK0aUI

Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy

#120

Post by rmc »

vvvv wrote: post #53
ghshephard wrote: post #20

Even worse is the new trend in technology companies to eliminate "Set Vacation". It used to be the case that you felt "obliged" somehow to take your 10 days of vacation a year, because you saw it piling up. Even better, if you were laid off, you could get the vacation in cash, and that helped when you were cut off without a job. But now, a lot of technology companies are saying, "No Set Vacation - you need to negotia…

Is there no legal requirement for minimum number of days off?

Welcome to America! Land of the Free!
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