I prefer co-op games like the James Webb telescope. Thanks ESA for a perfect launch.
I love how in every topic about WFH there’s some dudebro going on about the economy suffering due to supposed lessened productivity and I’m like… Why should I care?
Don’t you even think about the billionaires, bro?
I love the abstract “productivity”.
Like yo, cancer is incredibly productive.
Demolishing subsistence farms and replacing them with cash crop slave plantations is mad profitable.
I could make thousands of dollars in a day if I just sold everything I own.
Our metrics of economic growth revolve around basically doing all of the above, to varying degrees of figurative vs. literal-ness.
This reminded me of an old joke:
Two economists are walking down the street with their friend when they come across a fresh, streaming pile of dog shit. The first economist jokingly tells the other “I’ll give you a million dollars if you eat that pile of dog shit”. To his surprise, the second economist grabs it off the ground and eats it without hesitation. A deal is a deal so the first economist hands over a million dollars.
A few minutes later they come across a second pile of shit. The second economist, wanting to give his peer a taste of his own medicine, says he’ll give the first economist a million dollars if he eats it. The first economist agrees and does so, winning him a million dollars.
Their friend, rather confused, asks what the point of all this was, the first economist gave the second economist a million dollars, and then the second economist gave it right back. All they’ve accomplished is to eat two piles of shit.
The two economists look rather taken aback. “Well sure,” they say, “but we’ve grown the economy by two million dollars!”
The story is interesting but not very lifelike. The first economist would be much richer than the first, if they were OK with spending that much money on humiliating someone else. The likelihood that the second economist would accept the same deal is impossible in my mind. That amount of money is just humiliation money to them, not really worth it.
That’s not how productivity works. It’s basically looking at how much a person can produce with a given amount of labor.
Take that small scale subsistence farmer. Individually, they will live a precarious life. Their country will not have the surplus food needed for other pursuits like building cities, engaging in R&D, developing science, and so on. A smaller and smaller number of people need to be able to feed more and more using less land per person.
Manually copied manuscripts are another example. They were painstakingly copied over by hand in an incredibly low productivity manner. The introduction of the printing press essentially eliminated an art form, but gave rise to practical mass media.
In the present day, computers have been the main form of productivity booster. While arguably social media is a drag on productivity, overall computers open up a broad range of possibilities.
Like yo, cancer is incredibly productive.
Cancer is incredibly costly to society. Think about it, a single person getting cancer could mean many hours of them being in the hospital. Net zero on productivity
Demolishing subsistence farms and replacing them with cash crop slave plantations is mad profitable.
As I detailed above, transitioning from unproductive farms to highly productive farms is necessary. Don’t believe me, ask Mao.
I could make thousands of dollars in a day if I just sold everything I own.
That would not be a productive activity since there would be no value added. Arguably there would be less value, since that stuff is likely worth more to you than it is to another person.
There’s no Americans bragging about that. Corporations and the government, sure. The rest of us are to busy living in pain
Most Americans have no clue what the rest of the world is like.
Most Americans don’t even understand the progressive income tax system we have, they will go so far as to decline raises because it’ll put them in a higher bracket and they think that will mean less take home pay. It doesn’t! You should always take a raise!
I believe I’ll someday move to a country that has good policies for everything from healthcare, to work life balance, and social safety nets, and I’ll never have to deal with the American nightmare again.
To be fair, the rest of the world isn’t easily accessible for most Americans
Education is broken because on purpose
It’s literally one Google search away. And if they want to travel, you’ll be able to speak English to basically everyone (under 40)
There’s actually a tricky spot for folks who get certain social services which are tied to income. A small raise can bump you out of eligibility for things like medicaid and food stamps, and thus can in fact result in higher expenses, less money in your pocket, and a lower quality of life.
Yep! The welfare cliff I believe it’s called. Evidence of a poorly designed welfare system, which I think some see as a feature not a bug sadly.
God please let me move to Europe I don’t even care what language I have to learn I just wanna be able to live without worrying about affording a doctor appointment.
Dutch American Friendship Treaty.
Sprich Deutsch du Hurensohn.
I understood that!
Duolingo, you son of a bitch you’ve done it again!
Did Duolingo teach you what “Hurensohn” means?
If not duolingo, then certainly this year’s r/Place helped!
Yes. For everyone who missed it, “Hurensohn” ist the German word for CEO.
Just call your boss a Hurensohn tomorrow to impress them.
just wanna be able to live without worrying about affording a doctor appointment.
If you avoid the flatlander areas, Canada may be for you. We also speak English; just, without the accent. :-P
(unless you live on the island that’s an hour’s ferry from France)
Speaking a language without an accent is like wearing clothes without a material
Idk I’m from the central US and I had a German foreign exchange student tell me we didn’t have a mimicable accent. I know it’s not true but it was interesting to hear that from someone who’s familiar with everyone around her speaking in a completely different way, even when using English.
If you work in academia, you don’t need to learn a new language. English is the working language. Also the 5 weeks of holiday is nice, but what really helps is the working day.
I started as a bioinformatician a month ago. I come in to the office at 0830 have coffee from 09:00 til 09:45 with my boss and colleagues, work a bit, have lunch from 12:00 untill 13:15, work a bit, go home at 15:30. That’s my day.
Maybe you don’t need the language for work. But you will need te learn the language eventually for other day to day interactions.
Or the paper works outside of the labs.
Don’t know about other countries, but in Norway you always have the option of getting websites and government information in English. Everyone speaks it including cashier’s, cleaners etc.
The same thing is not true in Germany and Spain.
I would most certainly disagree that every person speaks English. Especially older people don’t, but in general many people here do not speak a good english
Dutchie here, we do the same. Everybody speaks (some form of) English, almost everything is also available in English.
This is true but also keep in mind that Dutch is still leading in most cases. E.g. if you have a contract that’s both in English and Dutch, if issues arise the Dutch translation will usually be the one that is followed
Dutch is still leading in most cases.
Sint Maarten should check-in and tell us about the English-Dutch separation and the class system it all but foments. It’s 90% fascinating if 10% disappointing.
but in Norway [:] English. Everyone speaks it
Scandinavia is absolutely killing it for bilingualism, among so many other ways they’re killin’ it – no, really, other countries should just study them for clues in general. My experiences (just Sweden, Denmark and bonus Iceland, so far) is that they say Hej and listen for your “hello”, flipping over into beautiful and perfect English without hesitation. Their language programmes are just fucking astounding, really.
Spain’s fine in the touristy spots, but Spanish itself is VERY accessible as a language, so it’s kinda moot like France.
In Germany I will have to rely heavily on the kindness of strangers as I will never grok the language.
im in the country for almost 10 years now without speaking a word. not true.
Seven hour day with an hour and fifteen minute lunch. What kind of magic is this? What’s the catch?
The catch is that you live in Europe and cops won’t beat you to death.
As an american, who gives a shit about all that stuff when your family savings can be wiped out, home foreclosed upon, and bankrupted just because you get sick or suffer an injury!? Even if you plan and do everything right, it could still happen to you, through no fault of your own.
So, IMO until we have universal healthcare like every other modern nation, they all beat us…
or you can just move to a different country. Ez.
lower unemployment
Doesn’t matter, I can only have two, maybe three jobs at once so any more than that is irrelevant to me
higher growth
I get the same $8/hr whether the GDP goes up, stays the same or goes down. You can’t leave workers out of the distribution of wealth and then pretend that more wealth is good for workers
post ww2 socialist russia people had more disposable income and more vacation days than americans.
I usually just take a week over summer then the other 6 weeks at other times of the year. Hotels, fights and stuff pretty much double their prices over the summer.
I recall going to the UK after brexit, to a house party with family friends. I was hounded with how do you function with only a 2 week holiday. I then shared i had 4 weeks after 5 years. They were so confused that we could function with less than 6 weeks of vacation.
Burn out in the USA is a real thing. Our politicians will never vote for a mandatory vacation for anyone other than them selves
It’s amazing how submissive American men are.
If you complain about it some Americans will just call you lazy. lol. Same thing with the cost of healthcare. They’ll just tell you to get a better job or better healthcare. They never speak about the root cause of the problem.
Which side means I get to have rights and keep them?
Europe I’d say
Don’t want to brag, but I took my compulsory 2-week vacation in July. I’m having another week of vacation in the middle of August and I’m taking a whole month off in the middle of October when my second child is born (dad-vacation, in addition to the 18 months that the mom has as paid maternity leave). Oh and all of this is fully paid.
*Fully paid by your higher taxes.
Yup! And all we get for it is healthcare, childcare, college tuition, pensions, sick leave, maternity leave…
Don’t forget reliable and comfortable public transport and properly maintained roads and public infrastructure.
reliable
lol
I try explaining this to fellow Americans that you end up paying much less in the end and never have the stress of how you’re going to afford this stuff (or possibly even lose everything to a sudden health problem) but it falls on deaf ears if they’ve already been brainwashed. They refuse to hear that other countries have things figured out to make the lives of their citizens much more enjoyable.
*Fully paid by higher progressive taxes on wealthy people.
We are supporting each other in hard times and fun times. Whats the problem? Should we rather shoot, hate and make fun of each other instead?
Lol, we’ll see how that works out with your immigration policies.
I used to work for a French company. My colleagues in France would take the whole damn month of August off, and then complain that North Americans never worked.
TBF my experience with Japanese and American workers is that you spend a lot of time in the office, but aren’t particularly productive. Hardly surprising, given there’s loads of evidence that suggests a strict enforcement of leisure time, actually increases productivity.
No one works at 100% if they work 70 hours a week and check their emails during the weekend.
Or as I once put it to a boss, when he asked me why I was leaving the office at 1700 on the dot, I finish my work in 8 hours, my colleagues need 9.
I couldn’t justify a 80k-100k pay cut for an extra week of PTO.
What about three weeks of extra annual leave, public holidays, real healthcare with no bullshit co-pays (and unlimited sick days, they don’t count towards “pto”), a maximum 35 hour work week… Because that’s more like what it would look like for a higher value job like that. Depends on the country and the job, of course. But in my case in the UK right now, and in my last job in Germany, my total “pto” in US terms has been roughly two months. (Which is a lot even here, but it’s not by any means unheard of, and easy to get if it’s a priority to you). Doing a job with an average salary of about 100k in the US, and I get paid a little over 50k £ for it, which is about 1.5 times the median salary here, so even after the recent inflation it affords a pretty comfortable lifestyle, it’s enough money to pay the mortgage and take holidays to the continent in my ample time off.
Sorry, this turned into a bit of a rant, but tldr: it’s not just “an extra week”
Still not worth it. I broke my leg 3 years ago I paid $2.4k total with my insurance. Today it’d be more like $5k as my insurance isn’t as good, but it would still be worth it to stay in the US even if I broke a bone every 3 months! However, two months of PTO is certainly something. But to be honest, my mentality is in a place where I’d probably end up doing some work on the side if I honestly had 8 weeks of PTO. Even when I had unlimited PTO, I only took like 4-6 weeks a year.
I think broadly speaking, if you make under $120k/year in the US, your quality of life will be better in Western Europe just because of the social safety net and worker’s protections. And this is especially true if you’re planning on having children.
{edit, I have no idea why the Lemmy algorithm decided to put this on my front page today}
I think that big difference is for low paid workers, rather than higher flyers.
Comparing a store assistant position between Lidl USA and Lidl UK.
Lidl USA
- Starting pay $16.00 per hour
- Up to 20 days of Paid Time Off (PTO) to use for sickness or vacation, plus 6 paid holidays annually
Lidl UK
- Starting pay £12 (current exchange rate $15.21)
- 30 days holiday (increasing to 35 after 5 years service)
- 10 days sick.
This reddit-ass post
