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Ranchers.net

Believe me, I am not a Buddhist and have no relation to this blog. I thought the article put into perspective the choices management/capital is giving Americans and it brings into question whether or not our "values" are real or just imaginary tools of deception.

Notes in Samsara
Politics, Culture, American Buddhism, Economics, and Technology
Friday, July 29, 2005
Krugman cites OECD: France's Productivity Per Hour Higher than US...


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[A] ccording to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, productivity in France - G.D.P. per hour worked - is actually a bit higher than in the United States.

It's true that France's G.D.P. per person is well below that of the United States. But that's because French workers spend more time with their families.

O.K., I'm oversimplifying a bit. There are several reasons why the French put in fewer hours of work per capita than we do. One is that some of the French would like to work, but can't: France's unemployment rate, which tends to run about four percentage points higher than the U.S. rate, is a real problem. Another is that many French citizens retire early. But the main story is that full-time French workers work shorter weeks and take more vacations than full-time American workers...

I've been looking at a new study of international differences in working hours by Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser, at Harvard, and Bruce Sacerdote, at Dartmouth. The study's main point is that differences in government regulations, rather than culture (or taxes), explain why Europeans work less than Americans.

But the study also suggests that in this case, government regulations actually allow people to make a desirable tradeoff - to modestly lower income in return for more time with friends and family - the kind of deal an individual would find hard to negotiate. The authors write: "It is hard to obtain more vacation for yourself from your employer and even harder, if you do, to coordinate with all your friends to get the same deal and go on vacation together."



We really don't get enough vacation in the US.


The other difference of course is we have extremist cheap labor Republicans.
They don't.
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