French workers fight for the right to be lazy

[Sikander]

Most of us would like to not work at all and get paid handsomely for it. The question is really one of how to get as close as we can in a dynamic world economy. One thing we could do is to as much as possible reduce the barriers which make it harder for each of us to reach our golden mean whereby we are working as little as possible while making enough money to meet our needs. One huge disincentive to employer flexibility in the U.S. is the costs associated with the number of employees a firm has. It is cheaper to work your people into the ground with overtime than it is to hire enough of them to do the job without undue overtime and few days off.

Some of the impediments to a shorter workweek are structural and no amount of policy tinkering will effect them, such as training costs. If two people share a block of hours the training and hiring costs for their firm will be double what hiring one employee to fill the position will be. But the government does create or avoids assuming responsibilities which might ameliorate other disincentives. Benefits packages and particularly health insurance and tax / administration costs are the biggest culprits. We should either have national health insurance or force everyone to pay their own way and arrange for their own insurance. Not for profit insurance groups would serve us much better than what our employers offer us anyway, and they can thank us for taking this responsibility out of their hands by paying us what they would have payed for our insurance and pocketing the administration savings in order to increase their competitiveness. No disincentives to hiring should be present in the tax system either, and here the government could really make a difference easily and immediately.

[Kidlicious]

Sikander,

So to help us work less we should do everything we can to help our employers. What a bunch of right wing bull.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

This thing's eight pages long, and I can't be asked to read through it all; so if this has been said, so be it:

The French are more productive than Americans, as are most "lazy" Europeans with their generous vacation times. We have the strongest economy on the planet, but when you look at how much we work to produce that economy -- as opposed to how much the French or teh Dutch work to produce theirs -- they're actually more productive than we are.

The problem is, Americans, especially white-collar Americans, fetishize work. I'd happily take a 12.5% reduction in pay in exchange for a 12.5% reduction in the work week; I'd happily see my pay reduced by an additional 4% in exchange for an extra 2 weeks of vacation every year. But most employers would be appalled if I suggested that deal, and I look "lazy" -- instead of like a good, Adam-Smithian rational actor -- for even suggesting it.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Kidicious
Sikander,

So to help us work less we should do everything we can to help our employers. What a bunch of right wing bull.

Have you just given up reading other people's posts now and resorted to calling them names, or has it been an evolutionary process to reach this nadir point?

[Kidlicious]

I didn't call him names. He obviously looks at things from an employers perspective. How is that not right wing?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Read it again, will you? Instead of knee jerking, as you are quite fond of. And 'right wing bull' definetly is throwing around names.

[MikeH]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
This thing's eight pages long, and I can't be asked to read through it all; so if this has been said, so be it:

The French are more productive than Americans, as are most "lazy" Europeans with their generous vacation times. We have the strongest economy on the planet, but when you look at how much we work to produce that economy -- as opposed to how much the French or teh Dutch work to produce theirs -- they're actually more productive than we are.

The problem is, Americans, especially white-collar Americans, fetishize work. I'd happily take a 12.5% reduction in pay in exchange for a 12.5% reduction in the work week; I'd happily see my pay reduced by an additional 4% in exchange for an extra 2 weeks of vacation every year. But most employers would be appalled if I suggested that deal, and I look "lazy" -- instead of like a good, Adam-Smithian rational actor -- for even suggesting it.

Great summary.

[Kidlicious]

I read it a few times already. He's saying that we need to lower labor costs at the expense of workers and govt revenue. Sure he makes it look pretty by proposing national health care, but if you pay attention he even states that he's in favor of it because it would benefit companies, which is exactly correct.

[Imran Siddiqui]

He's saying that we need to lower labor costs at the expense of workers and govt revenue.

Read it again.

[GePap]

I love how the informative posts get lost in a sea of chaff.

In my job, my typical day was leaving home around 8am in the office from 9am to 7pm (eating lunch in the office), getting back home at 8pm. There were also weekend workdays sometimes, thought thankfully it was normally just an afternoon here or there.

That generally comes out to a 50 hour workweek- but as many of you may note from my postings, it was not a very productive 50 hours (I did not particulalrly like the job.) Of course, I only ever got paid for 35 hours a week, because by law this is what municipal employees should work, and then anything above that is overtime, but I never got a dime of overtime, ever. So I guess I was wasting the extra 15 hours on Poly given that I was not actually getting paid for them....

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

He's saying that we need to lower labor costs at the expense of workers and govt revenue.

Read it again.

You read it again, and again, and again.

[pchang]

Hammers have a tendency to see everything else as a nail.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by pchang
Hammers have a tendency to see everything else as a nail.

I think that's what I said.

[pchang]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
The problem is, Americans, especially white-collar Americans, fetishize work. I'd happily take a 12.5% reduction in pay in exchange for a 12.5% reduction in the work week; I'd happily see my pay reduced by an additional 4% in exchange for an extra 2 weeks of vacation every year. But most employers would be appalled if I suggested that deal, and I look "lazy" -- instead of like a good, Adam-Smithian rational actor -- for even suggesting it.

When the French first switched to a 35 hour work week, I said it was a good idea. I also said I would gladly give up 12.5% pay for a 12.5% work reduction. In fact, I said we should just move to a 32 hour work week and that I would gladly give up 20% pay to get it. Everyone else said I was nuts and that there was no way they would take the pay cuts for lower hours. They just wanted the lower hours and no pay cuts. It was just another proof of the correctness of that bread and circuses line.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Kidicious
I think that's what I said.

He was talking about you, oh ignorant one .