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Yugoslavs Find No Paradise at McDonald's (1988)

articles.latimes.com

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Re: Yugoslavs Find No Paradise at McDonald's (1988)

#41

Post by [deleted] »

Vivtek wrote: post #29
skylan_q wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Yugoslavs Find No Paradise at McDonald's (1988)

#43

Post by flexie »

Vivtek wrote: post #29
skylan_q wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nah. Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Northern Spain, Northern Italy. Those are really wealthy and quite efficient places. And most of those have been so for decades if not centuries.

If the EU consisted of just those places it would probably be as productive per capita as California.

Re: Yugoslavs Find No Paradise at McDonald's (1988)

#44

Post by T-hawk »

dasil003 wrote: post #10
nick2 wrote: post #5

"Trained employees are quitting because they find they have to work like Westerners and get paid like East Europeans." That says it all. You always get what you pay for.

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.

Prices in the US are creeping up to that level too. A full meal of Big Mac, fries, and drink is over $7 at all but the most rural McDonald's locations now.

Re: Yugoslavs Find No Paradise at McDonald's (1988)

#45

Post by ams6110 »

edw519 wrote: post #9

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…

Why pick on IT managers? When I read that sentence I immediately thought "that describes almost every American "office" employee I've ever seen or worked with." By and large most people see work as a means to enable a lifestyle, not something they do for its own sake. Therefore they do the minimum that they can get away with.

Re: Yugoslavs Find No Paradise at McDonald's (1988)

#46

Post by greenyoda »

nick2 wrote: post #5

"Trained employees are quitting because they find they have to work like Westerners and get paid like East Europeans." That says it all. You always get what you pay for.

"Trained employees are quitting because they find they have to work like Westerners and get paid like East Europeans. ... You always get what you pay for."

And I'd guess that employees are similarly averse to being exploited all over the world. For example, if you were hired as a developer in the U.S. at an average salary but your employer expected you to work twelve hours every day and answer support calls in the middle of the night, you'd quickly realize that you could find another job where you could get the same salary with less painful working conditions.

And the constant departure of qualified employees should be a strong signal to management that they don't pay enough.

Re: Yugoslavs Find No Paradise at McDonald's (1988)

#47

Post by ivanhoe »

unimpressive wrote: post #2

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.

Not really. The problem with communism was the state-enforced mediocracy, not the social security. With minimum income you still can earn more if you wish, you simply have to work more. In communism you are paid as much as you need (or as much as government decides that you need), and it's not based on your work or skills. All people are presumed to work as hard as they can, because it's an idealistic society, a pure utopia. That's why there was no real communism to the day (and probably will not ever be), only a bunch of failed socialistic experiments that turned into corrupted dictatorships.

Re: Yugoslavs Find No Paradise at McDonald's (1988)

#48

Post by dasil003 »

T-hawk wrote: post #44
dasil003 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Prices in the US are creeping up to that level too. A full meal of Big Mac, fries, and drink is over $7 at all but the most rural McDonald's locations now.

Sure, but in 1993 I'm pretty sure a #1 meal was $2.99.

Re: Yugoslavs Find No Paradise at McDonald's (1988)

#49

Post by babuskov »

The article, and all the comments here are missing the main reason for this behavior. I'm 36 now, and I live in Serbia. When Socialism was ruling, all the companies were owned and run by the state. The wages were determined by the company you work for. Difference in wage for same position in some non-profitable company and a profitable one, would easily be 20x. So, the only thing that mattered was not your knowledge, but whether you could get a job at shoe company or oil refinery. Getting one in oil refinery was much better. The other thing is that people got fired really, really rarely. So, you get the job and you're settled for life. Even pensions are much higher and provided by the state.

Now, when a foreign company enters, esp. one with reputation of being a big, profitable business, people would assume that getting a job there is the same, or even better than working at a big domestic company.

Sadly, this is still true for many people today. We have a lot of foreign companies here now, and many people have got the job, just to quit days or weeks later. Main complaint being: there's too much work. People only stick and work in companies where wages are 40-50% above the average wage in domestic companies. We still suffer from low productivity.

This is slowly changing, and I assume it will be much better in 5-10 years. 7-13 year old kids who are in school now are growing up in a different kind of system, and their parent are also young enough to have sane perspective on state of things. They enter the workforce in 5-10 years from now.

Our main problem now is current youth, who were raised during the war, whose parents could not teach them good value system, because all they could see on television was that criminals and people waging wars are idols for boys, and folk singers for girls. Also, many criminals earned a lot of money during the war and seeing them go unpunished was really a bad message to all children. Those children are 15-25 years old now, and a lot of them simply have no goals in life, see no perspective and either want to become criminals themselves or leave the country.

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