U.S. CEO to France: ‘How Stupid Do You Think We Are?’

I don't think this is entirely true. In fact, I think Americans have been caring more and more over the past few decades, especially about items made in Asia (and please don't mention Apple).

In France, the verb 'work' is travailler. Traditionally this meant literally to toil, a chore, an obligation. In Germany, the word werken means to build, create, do. The German word more aligned with travailler is arbeit. This lack of correlation in the word work I believe may explain the differences in the approach and cultural views towards work that I see across Europe, particularly with latin root romance languages.

The second factor I've seen is climate. In the more productive northern European countries, it's generally colder. There's been a historical need for produce and for people to work (not endure or arbeit) to trade in order to get everything you need in terms of food and shelter.

South of the Olive line something strange happens. If you look at Spain you'll see that there's a long siesta during the day. This is because for a large part of the year Spain's too hot to work in during most of the afternoon. While we have air conditioning now, hundreds of years of cultural differences I feel may have led us with ingrained ideas about what work is and what it means, with those differences reinforced by climate.

For example, in Turkey there's no such thing as a siesta (there's no time in Istanbul for one anyway). Culturally it doesn't really exist, yet it's as hot as parts of Spain that do.

I could be completely wrong about this, but it's just something I've noticed. I do believe that the unions are crippling France's productivity, but France is as likely to change in the short term as the rest of Europe to France's view IMHO.

EDIT : I'm not saying that Germans, Brits or whoever are harder working, or that the French, Spanish, Moomins are lazy, far from it. I'm pointing out some differences in how people perceive work (i.e. neutrally or with negative connotations) based on language and culture, based solely on my own experience. For what it's worth I've worked with lazy Brits and Germans and hard working French and Spanish people. The Moomins I've never worked with, sorry if you're a Moomin and my ignorance upset you.

raverbashing makes a good point here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5252446

"travailler" comes from Latin, in spanish the same word is "trabajar", notice the resemblance. It literally means "to work" in english. Just saying this because I don't really buy it that "travailler" in French means "to toil".

I understand he felt the urge to vent his spleen at someone, but now they are going to be blackballed should they ever need anything from the French government.