Fortune Magazine Asks "Are Americans too lazy?"
I have to tell you that when I saw this reported on The Situation Room, my head almost exploded. I had to go a check out the article. Here a couple of things that it said:
<blockquotes>The surprising report of our relative sloth arrives in new research from the UN's International Labor Organization, which looks at working hours around the world. When it comes to what we might call hard work, meaning the proportion of workers who put in more than 48 hours a week, America is near the bottom of the heap. About 18% of our employed people work that much.</blockquotes>
I don’t know about you, but when I worked, I put in 10-12 hour days, 6-7 day/week. And I was extremely productive. I know people who work 2 jobs, just to make ends meet. And remember that lady at the Bush photo op who said that she worked 3 jobs. Bush’s response? "How uniquely American!"
But that is besides the point. For over a decade, the business world has focused on productivity. The productivity number has been closely watched. Everything was hunky dory as long as it kept increasing. And Americans were seen as the most productive workers in the world. Heck, we are still seen as that. We can get more done in fewer hours. What does that say? Yet, the powers that be are grousing about our leisure time.
<blockquotes>We have increased our leisure time enormously over the past 40 years -- so much so that it "corresponds roughly to an additional five to ten weeks of vacation a year," says a study by Mark Aguiar of the Boston Fed and Erik Hurst of the University of Chicago business school, who conducted the study.</blockquotes>
And what are they including in the leisure time?
<blockquotes>Put it all together, and the researchers figure we're getting about 117 hours of leisure per week (including sleep), vs. 110 hours in 1965.</blockquotes>
Man. We are getting too much sleep! Hey, who needs 8 hours/night. If we cut that out, we could work another full time job. No seriously. We need to get our priorities straight. This is what Jeffrey Immelt had to say after a recent visit to China.
General Electric chief Jeff Immelt put it bluntly while recalling a trip to Beijing last year, when he got a big order from the Transport Ministry: "The whole ministry was working all day on a Sunday. I believe in quality of life, work-life balance, all that stuff. But that's the competition. So unless we're willing to compete ..."
As we have seen lately, the Chinese produce inferior and unsafe goods. Goods that don’t meet our standards. They have slave workers or people who are paid subsistence wages. So what if Americans can’t compete at that standard. So what if Americans are more productive. That’s cool. The truth is coming out.
These multinational corporations want to take us back to good old days of the nineteenth century. That was when people worked 12 hour days, 6 days a week for a $1. No scratch that. They want do do one better. They want us to work 12 hour days, 7 days a week for a $1.
MKC
http://money.cnn.com/...