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I find it astonishing how positive Bloomberg tries to spin this: People earn a wider range of incomes in the U.S., so “workers have an incentive to try harder

I find it astonishing how positive Bloomberg tries to spin this: People earn a wider range of incomes in the U.S., so “workers have an incentive to try harder to move up the job ladder because a promotion is worth more,” said Dora Gicheva -The income range in the US is so large that there are lots of people at the bottom end who have to work multiple jobs. How much does that have to do with the longer work hours, Bloomberg? Generous pensions in Europe are also a strong factor in discouraging older people from working, the study said. In the U.S., more people over 65 are working than at any point in the past 50 years. The U.S.’s shift from traditional pensions to 401(k) plans makes it harder for Americans to know when it’s safe to retire. -This sounds less like people in Europe are "discouraged" from working, rather than many Americans must work longer because they can't retire. Edit: Formatting

walshemj 10y ago
I had a boss (CTO) who worked in the USA (SV) and the UK he commented that he got about the same amount of work from both teams bear in mind that the UK team was ex civil service :-)
adwn 10y ago
> I find it astonishing how positive Bloomberg tries to spin this Reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8
- christophilus 10y ago
  Wow. That pretty much sums the problem up, right there. Talk about spin.
- lazyant 10y ago
  That ad reminds me of an ad I saw in the US in 99 or so, it depicts a man waking up super early (kissing their children who are asleep) and leaving to work, it was for (used?) Mercedes I think, same idea, work super hard to drive a nice car, I thought it was the most depressing ad I ever saw.
- lagadu 10y ago
  Dear god, the concept that someone thought this was a good commercial is almost breathtaking.
JBlue42 10y ago
And working more hours doesn't necessarily mean more income. I support an AEC firm and the 'architects' (quotes because most have not been licensed yet) typically work 10-12 hour days, sometimes weekends on a salary. Their take home income might be at a certain level but their effective hourly rate is reduced. Now, there is the argument out there that working those incredible hours can lead to more income since in American work culture a lot of managers see overwork = strong work ethic / good employee (rather than, as I see it, poor planning and utilization of resources). I've worked crazy hours (80-90 hours/week) in other circumstances but I was paid for each and every one (with OT and double time). It was great money but I burned out eventually and have pursued the 40 hr/week life instead.
- pc86 10y ago
  Working more means more income only insofar as it's pretty hard to get promoted if you're working 40 hours and everyone else is working 80 even if you're better producer.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    "Working", I'm in and out of offices all day. The amount of dead time spent in those places is insane. This is why I need to start my own business, sitting at a desk pretending to work helps no one and yet is the only way to get ahead.
jypepin 10y ago
It's a very light analysis from me, so might not be fully true, but I live in the US, now in Europe, and in Canada before that. You could also say Canada is kind of in the middle. Well, maybe correlation doesn't imply causation in that case but here is what I can see: - US > Canada > Europe in terms of opportunities, be it starting salary, end-of-career salaries, and everything in the middle such as promotions, personal growth, etc. - Europe > Canada > US in terms of social support - Europe > Canada > US in terms of work/life balance. And it's interesting to see how things are different and it looks like there IS causation. - People in the US work more - The separation between work and personal life In the US people all have their emails/chats on their personal cellphone, will work on weekends without much reason, will be talking about work with friends more, will show more passion about their company, will show more ambition. In Europe, people seem to take their job more as a secondary things AFTER their life. Their have less coworkers-friends, they talk less about work, show less ambition about a promotion/new job coming. - People seem to try harder at lower scale jobs in the US There is often the excuse of the tips for waiters etc.. but it's the same for customer support and things like that. When you call cust sup in Europe, the service is way worst. People to try as hard to make the extra effort, etc. Overall you really explicitly see and feel that most people just see their current job as an end state, versus in the US people constantly work hard to reach the next step and have more ambition. I'm sure it's in part because there are indeed less opportunities (harder to get promotions, salaries varies less, etc.) and it's harder to move from a class to another compared to the US. That's mostly my feeling, but it seems like it's so obvious... and Canada, really, is in the middle of those 2 extremes.
- RandomName2020 10y ago
  > it's harder to move from a class to another compared to the US. Not true: social mobility in US is lower than in Europe and Canada.
  - pc86 10y ago
    [Citation needed]
    - 10y ago
nether 10y ago
I'm crushing it. The harder I work, the luckier I get. This is why the US has more billion dollar startups. This isn't my first rodeo. 25% more is nothing, try 50%. Eventually, work will set me free.
- corobo 10y ago
  No matter our differences, our The Apprentice candidates all sound the same
- ionised 10y ago
  Arbeit Macht Frei
pc86 10y ago
> > The U.S.’s shift from traditional pensions to 401(k) plans makes it harder for Americans to know when it’s safe to retire. Maybe I am misinterpreting but nobody is in a financial position to retire but continues working because of market volatility. Bonds are that volatile, and nobody with half a brain is heavily exposed to stocks if they have a high 6-/low 7-figure 401(k) and are planning on using that money for retirement income.
BeetleB 10y ago
>I find it astonishing how positive Bloomberg tries to spin this: >People earn a wider range of incomes in the U.S., so “workers have an incentive to try harder to move up the job ladder because a promotion is worth more,” said Dora Gicheva I do not view it as a positive spin. I could take the exact same statement and use it to point out the problem in the US. Almost everyone I know in the US, regardless of their current income, is trying to get a promotion, simply because one is available.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  More often than not it is because a promotion seems to be available, roughly equivalent to a carrot on a stick in front of a donkey.
vlehto 10y ago
Here in Finland there has been recent "boom" of pensioners getting part time jobs. They get something to do and bit of extra money. There is very little stress or risk as they can always fall back on pension. The only weird thing is that this has not happened sooner, as there is very "universal basic income" -like situation going on. It probably has something to do with overall elderly health improvements. And social perception that pensioners should be lightly sedated stay-at-home grandparents. "Pension discouraging people from working" is at least partially load of bullshit.
- fweespeech 10y ago
  > "Pension discouraging people from working" is at least partially load of bullshit. It discourages the people who need to be stay-at-home grandparents for health reasons from being forced to work. ;) That is always the dog whistle with US articles. The people who work more are being 'rewarded' and the people who don't work as hard or want to retire are 'moochers'.
zeveb 10y ago
> This sounds less like people in Europe are "discouraged" from working, rather than many Americans must work longer because they can't retire. Very few people retire at 20 or 40; I fail to see why in an era where people are starting to expect to live until their 80s they should stop working at 65. Is it not good for us all to have the contributions, knowledge & experience of those over 65 in the workplace? Pension plans (public & private) were built decades ago, based on assumptions which no longer hold true; should they not be revisited?
- BadCookie 10y ago
  Perhaps it is reasonable to expect a white-collar worker to work past 65, but how about a blue-collar worker or a laborer? Not everyone sits in a chair in front of a computer all day for their job.
  - wott 10y ago
    Even for white-collar and computer people, intellectual abilities do degrade over time too. If the task is demanding in that respect and you go below the threshold where it cannot be compensated by experience, performance will drop dramatically to the point of not being able to accomplish the tasks in a reasonable way. Of course the degradation rate and acceleration depend highly on the individual. But you cannot ask everybody to work these jobs after 65 or 70, even though these are white-collar jobs.
    - saiya-jin 10y ago
      Not sure why downvoted - there are people who stay mentally sharp until their 80s or 90s, and everybody keeps talking about them. These are rather exceptions. Most people suffer from slow mental decline, I could see it on my grandparents and their peers. That is, if you are still OK and not crippled physically or mentally by some accident/disease. It seems that for most healthy, after 70 body goes down the drain too. I cannot imagine myself doing same software dev work at this age, all the bullsh*t and pressures that corporate jobs contain would make me leave on my own. My plan is to retire earlier (60-61), not later! Enjoy the world, life and freedom of travel while there is still some strength in the body. I don't get why anybody would want to work more than necessary (unless your job is your hobby, but that is true for very few)
abysmallyideal 10y ago
All the "25% extra work" is doing is continue to widen the wealth gap. Their input into the economy is exploited by politicians, government, big business and banks. That is why Bloomberg, a well known shill piece for the 1%, is spinning it like a positive.
Shivetya 10y ago
Sadly, and i know this does not apply to all at the lower end of the income scale, you would be shocked at how some people spend the money they do get. Just get into the home rental business and you will see a world that really needs some fixing. I am still a believer in that you can move up in society but schools fail to teach people to prioritize their expenditures and to separate needs from desires. It is much easier to stay poor than to stay rich. I am not sure of the European mindset but I do find a lot of new generations never seem to let go of the need to have the latest stuff. I have relatives in the 75+ range and even they are the stereotype of age, even the stove is older than the kids. Yet the younger generations have bought into an ever in debt lifestyle mostly because they never lived through a real depression or war.
gutnor 10y ago
> -This sounds less like people in Europe are "discouraged" from working, rather than many Americans must work longer because they can't retire. It is very difficult to generalise. In Belgium for example you are legally forbidden to work. If you work or earn more than a very small threshold you lose your state pension. But then the pension used to be good for regular employee, so there was not really a need to work for a lot either. Really those analysis are like tea leaves reading. You can build whatever story, but at the end of the day each country is a unique snowflake and another country model cannot just be applied. Take the Belgian model before, so now put an incentive for older generations to work and you realise that another difference with the US is that the unemployment is much higher and you just added additional pressure on the job market. Dig a bit more and you realise that Belgium has a unusually high level of old generation unemployment because of the specific model (early pension) they used to handle the worst of factory closure. So those people have been written off the job market and putting them back in is just resurrecting the initial problem only worse considering you would need to compensate for the years/decades of missing investment in the affected region/sector.
exadeci 10y ago
And if you look at productivity USA is not beaten by European countries that work less
- ionised 10y ago
  How are you measuring productivity? GDP?

walshemj 10y ago

I had a boss (CTO) who worked in the USA (SV) and the UK he commented that he got about the same amount of work from both teams bear in mind that the UK team was ex civil service :-)

adwn 10y ago

> I find it astonishing how positive Bloomberg tries to spin this Reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8

christophilus 10y ago
Wow. That pretty much sums the problem up, right there. Talk about spin.
lazyant 10y ago
That ad reminds me of an ad I saw in the US in 99 or so, it depicts a man waking up super early (kissing their children who are asleep) and leaving to work, it was for (used?) Mercedes I think, same idea, work super hard to drive a nice car, I thought it was the most depressing ad I ever saw.
lagadu 10y ago
Dear god, the concept that someone thought this was a good commercial is almost breathtaking.

JBlue42 10y ago

And working more hours doesn't necessarily mean more income. I support an AEC firm and the 'architects' (quotes because most have not been licensed yet) typically work 10-12 hour days, sometimes weekends on a salary. Their take home income might be at a certain level but their effective hourly rate is reduced. Now, there is the argument out there that working those incredible hours can lead to more income since in American work culture a lot of managers see overwork = strong work ethic / good employee (rather than, as I see it, poor planning and utilization of resources). I've worked crazy hours (80-90 hours/week) in other circumstances but I was paid for each and every one (with OT and double time). It was great money but I burned out eventually and have pursued the 40 hr/week life instead.

pc86 10y ago
Working more means more income only insofar as it's pretty hard to get promoted if you're working 40 hours and everyone else is working 80 even if you're better producer.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  "Working", I'm in and out of offices all day. The amount of dead time spent in those places is insane. This is why I need to start my own business, sitting at a desk pretending to work helps no one and yet is the only way to get ahead.

jypepin 10y ago

It's a very light analysis from me, so might not be fully true, but I live in the US, now in Europe, and in Canada before that. You could also say Canada is kind of in the middle. Well, maybe correlation doesn't imply causation in that case but here is what I can see: - US > Canada > Europe in terms of opportunities, be it starting salary, end-of-career salaries, and everything in the middle such as promotions, personal growth, etc. - Europe > Canada > US in terms of social support - Europe > Canada > US in terms of work/life balance. And it's interesting to see how things are different and it looks like there IS causation. - People in the US work more - The separation between work and personal life In the US people all have their emails/chats on their personal cellphone, will work on weekends without much reason, will be talking about work with friends more, will show more passion about their company, will show more ambition. In Europe, people seem to take their job more as a secondary things AFTER their life. Their have less coworkers-friends, they talk less about work, show less ambition about a promotion/new job coming. - People seem to try harder at lower scale jobs in the US There is often the excuse of the tips for waiters etc.. but it's the same for customer support and things like that. When you call cust sup in Europe, the service is way worst. People to try as hard to make the extra effort, etc. Overall you really explicitly see and feel that most people just see their current job as an end state, versus in the US people constantly work hard to reach the next step and have more ambition. I'm sure it's in part because there are indeed less opportunities (harder to get promotions, salaries varies less, etc.) and it's harder to move from a class to another compared to the US. That's mostly my feeling, but it seems like it's so obvious... and Canada, really, is in the middle of those 2 extremes.

RandomName2020 10y ago
> it's harder to move from a class to another compared to the US. Not true: social mobility in US is lower than in Europe and Canada.
- pc86 10y ago
  [Citation needed]
  - 10y ago

nether 10y ago

I'm crushing it. The harder I work, the luckier I get. This is why the US has more billion dollar startups. This isn't my first rodeo. 25% more is nothing, try 50%. Eventually, work will set me free.

corobo 10y ago
No matter our differences, our The Apprentice candidates all sound the same
ionised 10y ago
Arbeit Macht Frei

pc86 10y ago

> > The U.S.’s shift from traditional pensions to 401(k) plans makes it harder for Americans to know when it’s safe to retire. Maybe I am misinterpreting but nobody is in a financial position to retire but continues working because of market volatility. Bonds are that volatile, and nobody with half a brain is heavily exposed to stocks if they have a high 6-/low 7-figure 401(k) and are planning on using that money for retirement income.

BeetleB 10y ago

>I find it astonishing how positive Bloomberg tries to spin this: >People earn a wider range of incomes in the U.S., so “workers have an incentive to try harder to move up the job ladder because a promotion is worth more,” said Dora Gicheva I do not view it as a positive spin. I could take the exact same statement and use it to point out the problem in the US. Almost everyone I know in the US, regardless of their current income, is trying to get a promotion, simply because one is available.

jacquesm 10y ago
More often than not it is because a promotion seems to be available, roughly equivalent to a carrot on a stick in front of a donkey.

vlehto 10y ago

Here in Finland there has been recent "boom" of pensioners getting part time jobs. They get something to do and bit of extra money. There is very little stress or risk as they can always fall back on pension. The only weird thing is that this has not happened sooner, as there is very "universal basic income" -like situation going on. It probably has something to do with overall elderly health improvements. And social perception that pensioners should be lightly sedated stay-at-home grandparents. "Pension discouraging people from working" is at least partially load of bullshit.

fweespeech 10y ago
> "Pension discouraging people from working" is at least partially load of bullshit. It discourages the people who need to be stay-at-home grandparents for health reasons from being forced to work. ;) That is always the dog whistle with US articles. The people who work more are being 'rewarded' and the people who don't work as hard or want to retire are 'moochers'.

zeveb 10y ago

> This sounds less like people in Europe are "discouraged" from working, rather than many Americans must work longer because they can't retire. Very few people retire at 20 or 40; I fail to see why in an era where people are starting to expect to live until their 80s they should stop working at 65. Is it not good for us all to have the contributions, knowledge & experience of those over 65 in the workplace? Pension plans (public & private) were built decades ago, based on assumptions which no longer hold true; should they not be revisited?

BadCookie 10y ago
Perhaps it is reasonable to expect a white-collar worker to work past 65, but how about a blue-collar worker or a laborer? Not everyone sits in a chair in front of a computer all day for their job.
- wott 10y ago
  Even for white-collar and computer people, intellectual abilities do degrade over time too. If the task is demanding in that respect and you go below the threshold where it cannot be compensated by experience, performance will drop dramatically to the point of not being able to accomplish the tasks in a reasonable way. Of course the degradation rate and acceleration depend highly on the individual. But you cannot ask everybody to work these jobs after 65 or 70, even though these are white-collar jobs.
  - saiya-jin 10y ago
    Not sure why downvoted - there are people who stay mentally sharp until their 80s or 90s, and everybody keeps talking about them. These are rather exceptions. Most people suffer from slow mental decline, I could see it on my grandparents and their peers. That is, if you are still OK and not crippled physically or mentally by some accident/disease. It seems that for most healthy, after 70 body goes down the drain too. I cannot imagine myself doing same software dev work at this age, all the bullsh*t and pressures that corporate jobs contain would make me leave on my own. My plan is to retire earlier (60-61), not later! Enjoy the world, life and freedom of travel while there is still some strength in the body. I don't get why anybody would want to work more than necessary (unless your job is your hobby, but that is true for very few)

abysmallyideal 10y ago

All the "25% extra work" is doing is continue to widen the wealth gap. Their input into the economy is exploited by politicians, government, big business and banks. That is why Bloomberg, a well known shill piece for the 1%, is spinning it like a positive.

Shivetya 10y ago

Sadly, and i know this does not apply to all at the lower end of the income scale, you would be shocked at how some people spend the money they do get. Just get into the home rental business and you will see a world that really needs some fixing. I am still a believer in that you can move up in society but schools fail to teach people to prioritize their expenditures and to separate needs from desires. It is much easier to stay poor than to stay rich. I am not sure of the European mindset but I do find a lot of new generations never seem to let go of the need to have the latest stuff. I have relatives in the 75+ range and even they are the stereotype of age, even the stove is older than the kids. Yet the younger generations have bought into an ever in debt lifestyle mostly because they never lived through a real depression or war.

gutnor 10y ago

> -This sounds less like people in Europe are "discouraged" from working, rather than many Americans must work longer because they can't retire. It is very difficult to generalise. In Belgium for example you are legally forbidden to work. If you work or earn more than a very small threshold you lose your state pension. But then the pension used to be good for regular employee, so there was not really a need to work for a lot either. Really those analysis are like tea leaves reading. You can build whatever story, but at the end of the day each country is a unique snowflake and another country model cannot just be applied. Take the Belgian model before, so now put an incentive for older generations to work and you realise that another difference with the US is that the unemployment is much higher and you just added additional pressure on the job market. Dig a bit more and you realise that Belgium has a unusually high level of old generation unemployment because of the specific model (early pension) they used to handle the worst of factory closure. So those people have been written off the job market and putting them back in is just resurrecting the initial problem only worse considering you would need to compensate for the years/decades of missing investment in the affected region/sector.

exadeci 10y ago

And if you look at productivity USA is not beaten by European countries that work less

ionised 10y ago
How are you measuring productivity? GDP?