November 21, 2005
ALL THAT FREE TIME TO SPEND DOUSING CAR FIRES.... (via Gene Brown):
NO WORK AND NO PLAY (James Surowiecki, 2005-11-28, The New Yorker)
[W]hile culture undoubtedly matters, not that long ago it was the Europeans who worked harder; in 1970, for instance, the French worked ten per cent more hours than Americans.So what changed? The Nobel Prize-winning economist Edward C. Prescott has pointed to sharp increases in Europe’s tax rates since 1970—higher taxes give workers less of an incentive to work extra hours. But taxes aren’t high enough to explain Europeans’ new taste for free time. A more plausible explanation was put forward recently by the economists Alberto Alesina, Edward Glaeser, and Bruce Sacerdote: European labor unions are far more powerful and European labor markets are far more tightly regulated than their American counterparts. In the seventies, Europe, like the U.S., was hit by high oil prices, high inflation, and slowing productivity. In response, labor unions fought for a reduced work week with no reduction in wages, and greater job protection. When it was hard to get wage increases, the unions pushed for more vacation time instead. Governments responded to political pressure by plumping for leisure, too; in France in the eighties, for instance, a succession of laws increased mandatory vacation time and limited employers’ ability to use overtime.
The difference in work habits between Europeans and Americans, in other words, isn’t a matter of European workers’ individually deciding they’d rather spend a few extra hours every week at the movies; it’s a case of collectively determined contracts and regulations.
There is a good deal to be said for this approach—most Americans, after all, are happy that the forty-hour week is written into law—but it has its costs. Even if you want to work more, it’s hard to do so: try getting anything done in Paris during August. And reducing the amount of work employees do makes it more expensive to employ people, which contributes to Europe’s high unemployment rate.
The embrace of leisure affects the job situation in Europe in other ways, too. Because Americans spend more hours at the office than Europeans, they spend fewer hours on tasks in the home: things like cooking, cleaning, and child care. This is especially true of American women, who, according to a study by the economists Richard Freeman and Ronald Schettkat, spend ten fewer hours a week on household jobs than European women do. Instead of doing these jobs themselves, Americans pay other people to do them.
MORE:
-PDF: Work and Lesiure in the U.S. and Europe: Why So Different (March 2005) (Edward L. Glaeser, Alberto Alesina, and Bruce Sacerdote)
Americans like leisure, too. It's just that when the efficency of global trade reached the point in the mid-to-late 1970s that lower cost foreign imports could challenge many union-dominated industries in the U.S., given the choice between abandoning free trade and erecting barriers or allowing those imports in an either improving the quality of the dometic product and/or developing new industries for the future American workforce, the U.S. chose the latter by the beginning of the 1980s.
The French, meanwhile, are fighting to scrub every world trade deal they can find to maintain their current trade policies, in order to shield their workers from actually having to work like everybody else does. If they keep that up they'll have a whole nation of people who don't want to work on things no one wants to buy.
Posted by: John at November 21, 2005 8:50 PMWe work hard, drive hard, fight hard.
Posted by: Lou Gots at November 21, 2005 10:51 PMThe French have always been resistant to doing stuff the smart way.
When everyone else in Europe began to plant potatoes during the 18th century, as part of a varied-crop strategy to avoid famine, (worked, too), the French said non.
That was part of the reason why there was a famine near the end of the 18th century in France, leading to a revolution.
There's going to be at least one more revolution in France, mid-way through the 21st century, when it becomes crystal clear that the French will not be paying their retirees as promised.
Where that will fall on the timeline with respect to the French Islamic Holocaust, I dunno.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://brothersjuddblog.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at November 22, 2005 2:11 AM
The French are a real contradiction. For instance, it was a French company that, by opening a semi-conductor factory in Singapore in the late sixties, essentially turned that small patch of real estate into a per capita superpower. And recently a French automaker saved Nissan, turning it around in amazing fashion.
The French/Quebecois that I know who have stuck with the Roman Catholic church are the most wonderful, most productive friends you could ever have: one friend of mine just had her seventh child and is still practicing medicine while home-schooling her family. She's part Spanish, but much of her family is still in France. Her twelve year old daughter can read my 125,000 word novel-in-progress in four hours in her second language with full comprehension.
France is certainly wasting its potential. Probably began in earnest with the Huguenot persecution that essentially sent its entire textile and chemical industry to Switzerland.
Posted by: Randall Voth at November 22, 2005 2:16 AMRandall, but did she enjoy it?
Posted by: RC at November 22, 2005 7:25 AMRC -- is that a comment on my novel or her reading?
She enjoyed it immensely but didn't "get" everything. So I'm adding some nasty magical creatures to explain the evil things a bit better. Maybe the tenth rewrite will be the charm.
Posted by: Randall Voth at November 22, 2005 9:13 AM