Take the day off!
You certainly deserve it:
American workers stay longer in the office, at the factory or on the farm than their counterparts in Europe and most other rich nations, and they produce more per person over the year.
They also get more done per hour than everyone but the Norwegians, according to a U.N. report released Monday, which said the United States “leads the world in labor productivity.”
The average U.S. worker produces $63,885 of wealth per year, more than their counterparts in all other countries, the International Labor Organization said in its report. Ireland comes in second at $55,986, followed by at Luxembourg at $55,641, Belgium at $55,235 and France at $54,609.
Ireland nipping at our heels, is it?
Thank God for Guinness!
But its “Labour Day”, Lex.
L-A-B-O-U-R …
See?
Oh well, whatever….
Happy Labour Day, Sir!
I’m off to finish my book and take a nap in the sun, I think. Cuz I too deserve it
I see two reasons why you thank God for Guinness:
1) It gives the Irish strength to keep up with us
2) It keeps the Irish from ruling the world!
With tongue firmly in cheek (or at least having cheek),
Happy Labor Day!
This, IMHO, is the REAL reason why Europeans hate us so. If Americans didn’t work so hard and have such high productivity, then Europeans could sit back and enjoy their 35 Hr. work weeks and 2 Mo. vacations. As it is, we are breathing down their necks and appear to threaten their very lifestyle.
And we rub it in with big cars, big sports (compare the average pro football center to the average pro soccer center), big movies, everything big – read ‘gross’ in European sensibilities. Not to mention big foreign policy/world harmony expectations.
Never mind that the Indians and the Chinese are breathing down our necks*.
*A brief note for any under 30’s here in Lex’s peanut gallery: When I was your age, the Japanese and Germans were breathing down our necks big time. Disaster was frequently and loudly predicted – about on a level, currently, of death by Global Warming. And y’all know what happened. At least give it a thought.
Old friends in England used to marvel at how hard we worked, how little time we had off and at our lifestyle in general. Living large by their standards, quite large indeed. They could take 6 weeks off from work at one time, and still have sick time, holidays and misc. days off left over. They couldn’t believe we could be happy with our measly 3 weeks of vacation time per year and our paltry 8 holidays.
They had a hard time reconciling our happiness to our state of “overwork”, compared to them and theirs.
I’ll take my state of existence any day…
Happy Labor Day & nice new look. Those concerned with EU opinions need not be concerned – they are slowly modeling themselves on us – not sure that’s such a great thing – in 10 years overseas I never confused my neighbors’ friendship with the spew from their governments. The ones I work with today may say some stupid things but it’s hard to ignore they voted with their feet.
Just think how far ahead we’d be if people worked all the hours they billed.
Left out of the article is the fact that the 20 highest-earning U.S. executives made three times as much as their European counterparts … even though the European companies generated $19 billion more in sales.
CEOs in large American companies made 364 times the pay of the average U.S worker. IOW, they made in one day what it took an average worker an entire year to earn.
In the decade that ended in 2006,
CEO pay rose roughly 45 percent, adjusted for inflation.
Yet for the same period, the minimum wage in real dollars decreased by 7%!
In 2006, the 20 top hedge fund managers’ average income was an incredible, $657 million for the year. James Simons of Renaissance Technologies had 2006 compensation of a staggering $1.5 billion – yes billion – for the year!
Yes, the American worker is indeed the world’s most productive. Too bad others reap the excessive rewards of his exceptional labor.
Link (pdf)
We’ll be hanging Bolshiviks after the revolution this time comrade. I’ll save you a spot on the lamp post next to Pelosi.
Having heard you hold forth on this topic before fliterman, I anxiously await your recommendations on how the government will right this market-driven imbalance and formulate the calculus of “correct” CEO compensation.
Casca — Then we implied ‘Bolsheviks’ will hang with some odd and interesting company – stockholder groups, the Council for Institutional Investors, and many well known capitalists including Warren Buffet, who has long been outraged and has spoken out repeatedly on excessive CEO compensation.
Lex — After 7 years of benign neglect, the government can (and should) do a number of things: Adjust accounting rules to better reflect and govern CEO compensation; improve disclosure rules to expose “hidden” compensation; increase SEC investigations in areas like back-dating stock options; vigorously prosecute corruption; and adjust tax laws to lessen the excesses.
Morale and production suffer within a company when the hourly wage earner sees what amounts to legalized theft from his company. But the poor worker can do little about it.
However, the excesses have become so great that stockholders, boards of directors, and large instructional investors are finally stepping in. As happened in the early ’90’s, the pendulum is about to (hopefully) reverse, to halt these excesses.
Rewarding departing CEO’s many excessive millions, especially when their company has lost billions during their tenure just isn’t right. It’s time for both the public and private sectors to join in checking this abuse.
What’s at stake is nothing less than the public trust, essential to a thriving free-market economy