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Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy

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Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy

#131

Post by walshemj »

mike_hearn wrote: post #110
switch007 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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) For the avoidance of doubt, that does not include England (these days). People with cancer in the final stages are declared fit to work

Can you show me a link for that? I'd be interested in reading about it. What I've read is that a lot of people on disability benefits (higher than jobseekers allowance) were in fact just fine and when properly re-examined magically stopped being disabled. However, that assumes the review assessment was more reliable than the old one. I'd be interested in data showing whether it is or isn't.

Well this goes back decades when in order to massage the unemployment figures GP's (family doctors) where encouraged to mark people as disabled to get the figures down.

now the government has outsourced the test to a third party who get paid on the "savings" the produce so you get things like terminally ill people so yes the tests are now being fiddled

Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy

#132

Post by Dewie »

cbr wrote: post #77
hnnewguy wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the US experiences significantly higher GDP per capita This is to be expected, if Americans are working longer hours than their European counterparts. If you do a little back-of-the-envelope normalization (GDP/capita/average hours worked), the results are much closer. Norway, of course, absolutely dominates by this metric. US: 28.9 France: 24.3 Germany: 26.4 Sweden: 25.4 Norway: 38.0

> Norway, of course, absolutely dominates by this metric. This is North Sea oil, right? Hard to generalize from.

USA is the country with a domestic market of 300+ million people, largely English-speaking, and has not seen a war on its soil in modern times, right? Hard to compare to anything else, then.

It's funny how people immediately just say because oil whenever it is brought up, and think that it magically explains everything. Yes, a ridiculous proportion of export is from that industry. But it's not like finding oil immediately makes people prosperous - you have to manage it. Do you want long-term prosperity? Or do you want boom towns with high local inflation, high crime etc.?

Going into how the Norwegian petroleum industry works would reveal a strategy that is very different from how countries like the US (or Canada in the prairie provinces) would have handled the same discovery. And it works.

Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy

#134

Post by mike_hearn »

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!"

If you want to compare individual EU countries with something, compare them against individual US states, which also vary widely in terms of how well they do economically.

Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy

#135

Post by jonnathanson »

nsxwolf wrote: post #47
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.

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.

"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."

It's been my experience that one's freedom to take vacation -- not just technical freedom, but emotional freedom -- really depends on the company's culture in general, and on one's boss in specific. Sure, a lot of it is psychological. But if you've never worked for a boss or company who explicitly discourage vacation, legitimate sick days, etc., then at least know that those people and those companies exist. I can't tell you if they're the exception or if they're the rule. I sincerely hope it's the former. But I do know that they're out there, in great number. For every few employees who've been media-conditioned to fear vacation, there's a manager who's been media-conditioned to disrespect vacation.

Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy

#136

Post by bradleysmith »

ghshephard wrote: post #24
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #12

>The United States is the only advanced country that doesn't guarantee that its citizens will get paid vacation time and holidays I find the reasoning consistently maddening. What they should be saying is that there is no federal mandate for private employers to pay workers during vacation/convalescence/maternity leave. In point of fact, for government workers there is paid annual/maternity/paternity leave which ends…

Which, of course, makes it great for the private employers (the 1%), but not so great for the private employees (the 99% that was mentioned in the article)

over half of the 6mil firms in the US with payrolls in this country have between 1 and 9 employees. ('08 numbers[0]).

"employer" != 1%

"policies good for employers" != "policies only good for 1%"

[0]-https://www.census.gov/econ/smallbus.html

Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy

#137

Post by resu_nimda »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #98
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…

That guy is the poster child for the Materialistic Self Entitled Baby Boomer Me Generation. Materialism and greed are literally everything that is wrong with the world. Spoilied Douchebags like he and his generation are a legacy hangover from post-WW2 America, a time of middle class economic excess greater than any the HUMAN RACE has ever seen. Americans aren't exceptional in any way. We just got lucky by being the o…

I like how you edited "Self Entitled" into the generational title, just to really drive home the disgust. ;)

I partially disagree, though. I do think Americans are exceptional, even if I haven't settled on exactly how, and I definitely don't think of it as a wholly positive trait. But this juxtaposition from your post is interesting:

Americans aren't exceptional in any way.

Americans love to believe that the individual is greater than his situation.

Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy

#138

Post by noelherrick »

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.

This is not true. I can prove that just by saying that myself, my co-workers, and my family (all Americans) are perfectly fine with taking time-off and we're not scared of losing our jobs. My manager encourages his team to take time-off.

There is a safety net, it's just not as protective as European welfare.

There are jobs that like salt mines, filled with workaholics and sadistic bosses, or so I'm given to understand, but I've never been in one. The worst company I've worked for that had very little regard for their employees gave good vacation time.

I think a mistake we make when thinking about American policy is thinking there's an American policy. Each state has their own laws and every company is allowed to be different. This has its good parts and its bad parts. Startups seem to thrive in America but I've heard other people complain about the restrictive laws in their countries that make startups harder. Likewise, the American worker seems to work harder and longer than their developed peers.

Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy

#139

Post by shmerl »

theklub wrote: post #18
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.

All depends where you work and the culture there. Might be frowned upon in some places but where I work everyone is more than happy to see people take time off.

Agreed, not all environment are so negative. But even if attitude is positive, average vacation time in US is still way less than in Europe.

Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy

#140

Post by lsh123 »

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…

I've made an interesting observation in my team when I worked at companies with "no set vacation" policy: I've always had some people who never took vacation and I've also had other people who wanted more vacation time than one would expect. There was no middle ground.
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