Truth be told this article is exactly why a lot of (mostly untraveled) people from the US have a really distorted view of the rest of the world.
What an odd interpretation of this story—projecting a Yugoslavian problem onto the US. Sounds like "blame the US" diversion to me. McDonald's is a company of US origin but the Yugoslavian work ethic is a thing that would exist even if Ray Kroc had never been born.
Also: I think US citizens are a lot more well-travelled than you assume. Sure, they work hard and don't get much holiday time, but they do travel quite a lot in their free time.
As person from country that was in former Yugoslavia i can say that situation is not simple as Americans see it. Yugoslav variation of socialism (yeah, it is important to yell that it wasn't communism) had flaws and advances. In short: 1. Humans come first. Even before money. 2. But, but, lot of people exploited 1. due bad organization, nepotism, ... Because of 1. people had, for example, health care and education fo…
Truth be told this article is exactly why a lot of (mostly untraveled) people from the US have a really distorted view of the rest of the world.
What an odd interpretation of this story—projecting a Yugoslavian problem onto the US. Sounds like "blame the US" diversion to me. McDonald's is a company of US origin but the Yugoslavian work ethic is a thing that would exist even if Ray Kroc had never been born. Also: I think US citizens are a lot more well-travelled than you assume. Sure, they work hard and don't get much holiday time, but they do travel quite a l…
Huh? Odd interpretations all around then - I thought I was blaming the media?
In my ignorance I must have interpreted the article like this: 1. Communism = bad, 2. all Communist people lazy = Communism doomed to fail, 3. big Western company comes bringing enlightenment but people no want jobs (couldn't possible have anything to do with lousy pay = must mean communists be lazy), 4. everybody knows in capitalism people work incredibly productively 8 hours per day - except those crazy Yugoslavs
Blame it on the communism still goes hand in hand with the era when the article was published, but today...? Really - "a Yugoslavian problem"?
EDIT (after your edit): Also - where do I say or assume that a lot of US citizens are not well-travelled? Please read again...
Truth be told this article is exactly why a lot of (mostly untraveled) people from the US have a really distorted view of the rest of the world.
What an odd interpretation of this story—projecting a Yugoslavian problem onto the US. Sounds like "blame the US" diversion to me. McDonald's is a company of US origin but the Yugoslavian work ethic is a thing that would exist even if Ray Kroc had never been born. Also: I think US citizens are a lot more well-travelled than you assume. Sure, they work hard and don't get much holiday time, but they do travel quite a l…
The US citizens you hang out with, sure. And certainly, a lot of US citizens I know now are well-traveled as well. But I moved away from an area in central Pennsylvania where there were families who had lived in the same county since the 1600s. Friends who had, by their mid-twenties, never gone so far as New York, let alone across a national border.
It's certainly a mistake to think that all Americans are ignorant and sheltered, and it's great to see that more and more Americans have passports, but it's still very accurate to say that Americans are mostly untraveled.
Just to say that the TV series mentioned in the article, Dynasty[1], was really popular then. My parents watched it as well. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynasty_%28TV_series%29
TV has always presented unrealistic expectations. Look at the hit show "Friends" - there's no way that group of people could afford apartments that size in NYC with the jobs they had (waitress/chef/copywriter/actor).
Also, I bet the food prices aren't correspondingly low. I remember when McDonald's started expanding in Brazil a couple decades ago, prices were ridiculous (like $8-$9 equivalent for a big mac meal) but people still lined up around the block for the novelty and addictive quality of the food.
Same in france. McD's is very popular even though for the price of a Big Mac you can get two delicious sandwiches from the corner boulangerie. Or at least that is how it was in the 90's.
Why do people do that? Quick is so much tastier.
I fail to understand why many people choose a place to eat as if it was a first one in their life.
I remember some people on HN saying that having the right to a job would be better than having a minimum income. As I understand it the various communist countries are an excellent case study in why this is a bad idea.
I think a minimum income is a good idea in a society where there's little demand for unskilled labor. As long as the basic income is priced below the average wage of skilled labor, people will still have incentives to find employment... but those that can't, still have a minimum quality of life that should be expected in the first world.
> As long as the basic income is priced below the average wage of skilled labor, people will still have incentives to find employment...
I don't see how those two are related in this way. Unless you lose your basic income when you work.
According to a recent domestic survey, average Yugoslavs work efficiently for only half of their eight-hour workday. The rest of the time is spent reading newspapers, conducting private business or having interminable private chats with colleagues over coffee. According to a recent domestic survey, average I.T. managers work efficiently for only 10% of their eight-hour workday. The rest of the time is spent reading e…
Some disclosure: I've been born and raised in Canada and my parents are immigrants from the former Yugoslavia. I've taken many extended trips back home and I have to say that "working efficiently for only half of their eight-hour workday" is overstating their efficiency. Socialism destroyed work ethic in Yugoslavia amongst other things. The villagers and farmers were the only ones who had any work ethic left as they…
"People with money aren't viewed as investors, but crooks."
Explanation is easy, but understandably it's very hard for an American to grasp such a concept of life. People in
Yugoslavia didn't work a lot, it's true, but not because of some lazy Sloven mentality, but because they simply didn't have to. And it even didn't make much sense to work hard in socialism, because you could work a little or you could work a lot, at the end of the month you would still earn the same salary as everyone else. But it was OK for the majority. You had a decent living, no stress, health care was good. Country wasn't rich, but society was much more non-consumeristic back then and generally people had a lower expectations, so none of us who grew up there felt that we are missing something big. We were mostly part of the middle class and had our jeans and TVs and VCRs and music systems and ZX Spectrums and Commodores, watched MTV and listened to r'n'r, had long vacations and a chance to travel the world or spend summers in our parents' holiday houses on the Adriatic seaside. Social differences were not big, everyone was more or less equally poor (or equally rich). I know it sounds unreal from the todays world, but it was a really nice country to live in. Of course, such system was not competitive enough to be sustainable without external financing, so it all started to collapse in 90s, and then it progressed into wars and nationalism and now life is not like that anymore. Now people are happy with their 8hx7 work at MacDonald's, because there are other even worse ones...
Some disclosure: I've been born and raised in Canada and my parents are immigrants from the former Yugoslavia. I've taken many extended trips back home and I have to say that "working efficiently for only half of their eight-hour workday" is overstating their efficiency. Socialism destroyed work ethic in Yugoslavia amongst other things. The villagers and farmers were the only ones who had any work ethic left as they…
Well, to be fair, anywhere the Habsburgs ruled is like this because that's the way their empire worked. You could only get rich by exploiting others or engaging in corruption - or be born into it because your ancestors did that.
> anywhere the Hapsburgs ruled
... which is why Austria and the Netherlands are so poor and backwards??
