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Many have reached US levels of economic output per hour. The key difference is that while Europeans have opted for better work-life balance, Americans are incre

Many have reached US levels of economic output per hour. The key difference is that while Europeans have opted for better work-life balance, Americans are increasingly worked to the bone. There seems to be no end to stories about people working 3 job, never having vacation, sometimes not even weekends. The other challenge is that many other countries are more aggressive about keeping resource usage to a minimal. Compare e.g. usage or resources, water, land and energy per dollar of GDP and the US is really high. European countries, Korea and Japan may not have as high GDP but is often on a far more sustainable path.

smegma2 5y ago
Japan has better WLB than the US? Are you sure? This sounds very anecdotal. > Americans are increasingly worked to the bone. There seems to be no end to stories about people working 3 job, never having vacation, sometimes not even weekends. My counter: I don't know a single person working like this
- bluGill 5y ago
  I've heard a few like that. They are in the early years of founding a business, their day job is unpaid, the 2nd job is so they can eat, and theweekend job is more money to invest in the main one. The plan is in a few years the first job makes money and they quit the others. Or sometimes someone who is laid off in a downturn and works like that for a year while waiting for things to improve so they can return to their previous high spending lifestyle with lots of vacation to enjoy the toys they are now just able to make payments on.
  - lupire 5y ago
    "Early years of founding a business" is not a substitantial part of the population.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      Exactly. Most people only work one job. You hear stories, they are true, but they are the exception. Or they are about a problem unrelated to poverty. (Child support is a big one, courts are sexist in many cases)
  - arvinsim 5y ago
    Do you think it is because they need it? Or is it because hustle culture has become so normalized that people could not conceive of the alternatives?
    - bluGill 5y ago
      I am not passing judgement on people's life choices. I'm just observing what I see them do.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    Jesus christ, it's like large parts of HN don't even realize people exist outside of their affluent west coast bubble.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      I know some poor people. They live in poor neighborhoods, and have little. However the vast majority are not working two jobs. Or maybe it doesn't occur to you that in the middle of the country it is possible to afford a (small!) apartment on minimum wage jobs. We hear stories about how high the cost of living is in CA, but it isn't that bad here.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  There’s two americas. You have the people upset that their big tech employer won’t do their laundry anymore. Then you have the underclass of people who can lose everything if they get hurt or show up late for work a few times.
seibelj 5y ago
I’ve met quite a few executives at US companies who emigrated from Europe. At the high end, America kicks the shit out of Europe in every regard. The high end people create the new companies, and thus America has far more equity value than Europe, and new innovative companies, and cutting edge research, etc. etc. Europe might be better for the average person but the hyper successful generally opt to leave.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  We don't need the hyper-successful, certainly not the way you're defining them. In a society of 350 millions people that is vaguely capitalistic, there will always be people who "win big". The "high end" people are just the living manifestation of serendipidity. If it wasn't Bezos, it would have been someone else. Also, "the high-end people create the new companies" is almost complete BS. The mythology of the exceptional individual that dominates the USA promotes this story, but the reality is that successful companies are the result of the collaborative, cooperative efforts of many different people (many of them not "high-end"). A company like Amazon was created by a constellation of people with very different backgrounds, socio-economic status and intent.
  - seibelj 5y ago
    Disagree entirely. Yes, a company is an assemblage of people. No, the guy working the warehouse couldn’t have built Amazon. Bezos is special talent.
    - giantrobot 5y ago
      > Bezos is special talent. Having family wealthy enough to invest in his early business is a kind of talent I guess. As is being in the right place at the right time. If Bezos lost all of his money tomorrow he could never make it a second time.
      - seibelj 5y ago
        Plenty of people can get investment. There is only one Amazon. If things are so easy, go do it yourself. Starting a company and growing it to the size of Amazon is extremely difficult. It doesn’t happen by luck or happenstance. It takes highly skilled management in addition to market timing. Luck isn’t what makes people successful. Hard working people put themselves out there and increase the opportunities for lucky events, but without the hard work and effort the luck wouldn’t be able to happen. Looking at successful people and pointing out some advantage they have is just a coping mechanism. Assuming you don’t have some disability, no one is stopping you from succeeding except yourself.
systemvoltage 5y ago
I'd honestly prefer the hard working ethic of Americans over lassie-faire hierarchical orthodoxy in EU. No one works to the bone, hard work is also rewarded. They choose to do it. The ease of business is amazing.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  I lived in the USA for 32 years, after growing up in the UK for 24. I don't see a "hard working ethic" in the USA. What I do see is a relentless, frequently unrealistic optimism that both diverts people from taking coherent political change seriously and also empowers them to believe that their lives will be better tomorrow than today. Lots of people in the USA work to the bone. Maybe you don't work with them, or see them when and where they work, but many books and articles have been written by people who've been deep inside this phenomenon. "Nickel & Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich is a great example. Yes, entrepeneurialism is easy here, and that's a good thing. However, I refuse to believe that this requires the rest of the system to remain as it is, or that by itself it justifies the suffering of the majority of people who do not "make it". I should perhaps note that I did "make it" here in the USA. I have tried hard to to allow that to blind me to the fact that it was mostly luck, nor to the immense, unnecessary suffering that our economic and political system imposes on millions of people (even just within the country).
  - grog454 5y ago
    What is the difference between a "hard working ethic" and "work[ing] to the bone"?
    - I-M-S 5y ago
      One is a choice the other is not
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    > What I do see is a relentless, frequently unrealistic optimism that both diverts people from taking coherent political change seriously and also empowers them to believe that their lives will be better tomorrow than today. I disagree with your premises. I love the way things are. I do not agree with current progressive agenda, I stand by the old liberal values. > I should perhaps note that I did "make it" here in the USA. Sorry about your situation. I am an immigrant that came from a place I never want to go back, this land has given everything I asked for in return of honest, good day's work. Most importantly, I enjoy the freedoms that other nations do not grant.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
Is GDP per capita appropriate metric? Japan has higher median salaries than US does. How much of thay GDP is down to US being a global center of finance and location of corporate HQ of most gl9bal firms, pulling in wealth from across the world? Also how much of that GDP remains if you remove the top 0.1% of richest people? You may argue those things shouls not be remoced from GDP, but if we are discussing working life on an average person, this GDP number might not be reflective of it
- chii 5y ago
  > Also how much of that GDP remains if you remove the top 0.1% of richest people? those richest people don't personally contribute that much to GDP (their companies they own do). Removing them would make not much difference - their spending might be 10x or may be even 100x the average person, but there's so few of them that barely worth mentioning. It's not like they eat more food than normal people, nor wear out cars more than normal people. A few yachts and fancy cars notwithstanding, GDP is a measure of output, not wealth accumulation.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    Fair enough, but how is this discrepancy between wages and GDP explainable?
    - chii 5y ago
      Wages are the minimum people accept for their labour. GDP is a measure of productivity, which can increase with investment in plant and equipment (and tech via R&D). If a worker is more efficient, but every worker is also made more efficient (because of the equipment or tech), then their bargaining power doesn't grow with their productivity increase! The exceptions are where their individual output is higher - aka, skill. Tech workers getting higher wages is evidence of this. At some point, the number of tech workers would saturate as it is such a lucrative profession compared to many others - it's just the 2000 dot-com pop caused a huge drop in enrollments in universities and the lack of graduates is still felt today imho. Meanwhile, a services industry worker still outputs the same amount of "work" as they've done before in yester-century (not much tech can improve their output). The pay for them have not really grown, because there's no room to grow. Only mandates like minimum wage increases cause it to grow, and those hardly come by.

smegma2 5y ago

Japan has better WLB than the US? Are you sure? This sounds very anecdotal. > Americans are increasingly worked to the bone. There seems to be no end to stories about people working 3 job, never having vacation, sometimes not even weekends. My counter: I don't know a single person working like this

bluGill 5y ago
I've heard a few like that. They are in the early years of founding a business, their day job is unpaid, the 2nd job is so they can eat, and theweekend job is more money to invest in the main one. The plan is in a few years the first job makes money and they quit the others. Or sometimes someone who is laid off in a downturn and works like that for a year while waiting for things to improve so they can return to their previous high spending lifestyle with lots of vacation to enjoy the toys they are now just able to make payments on.
- lupire 5y ago
  "Early years of founding a business" is not a substitantial part of the population.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    Exactly. Most people only work one job. You hear stories, they are true, but they are the exception. Or they are about a problem unrelated to poverty. (Child support is a big one, courts are sexist in many cases)
- arvinsim 5y ago
  Do you think it is because they need it? Or is it because hustle culture has become so normalized that people could not conceive of the alternatives?
  - bluGill 5y ago
    I am not passing judgement on people's life choices. I'm just observing what I see them do.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  Jesus christ, it's like large parts of HN don't even realize people exist outside of their affluent west coast bubble.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    I know some poor people. They live in poor neighborhoods, and have little. However the vast majority are not working two jobs. Or maybe it doesn't occur to you that in the middle of the country it is possible to afford a (small!) apartment on minimum wage jobs. We hear stories about how high the cost of living is in CA, but it isn't that bad here.
Spooky23 5y ago
There’s two americas. You have the people upset that their big tech employer won’t do their laundry anymore. Then you have the underclass of people who can lose everything if they get hurt or show up late for work a few times.

seibelj 5y ago

I’ve met quite a few executives at US companies who emigrated from Europe. At the high end, America kicks the shit out of Europe in every regard. The high end people create the new companies, and thus America has far more equity value than Europe, and new innovative companies, and cutting edge research, etc. etc. Europe might be better for the average person but the hyper successful generally opt to leave.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
We don't need the hyper-successful, certainly not the way you're defining them. In a society of 350 millions people that is vaguely capitalistic, there will always be people who "win big". The "high end" people are just the living manifestation of serendipidity. If it wasn't Bezos, it would have been someone else. Also, "the high-end people create the new companies" is almost complete BS. The mythology of the exceptional individual that dominates the USA promotes this story, but the reality is that successful companies are the result of the collaborative, cooperative efforts of many different people (many of them not "high-end"). A company like Amazon was created by a constellation of people with very different backgrounds, socio-economic status and intent.
- seibelj 5y ago
  Disagree entirely. Yes, a company is an assemblage of people. No, the guy working the warehouse couldn’t have built Amazon. Bezos is special talent.
  - giantrobot 5y ago
    > Bezos is special talent. Having family wealthy enough to invest in his early business is a kind of talent I guess. As is being in the right place at the right time. If Bezos lost all of his money tomorrow he could never make it a second time.
    - seibelj 5y ago
      Plenty of people can get investment. There is only one Amazon. If things are so easy, go do it yourself. Starting a company and growing it to the size of Amazon is extremely difficult. It doesn’t happen by luck or happenstance. It takes highly skilled management in addition to market timing. Luck isn’t what makes people successful. Hard working people put themselves out there and increase the opportunities for lucky events, but without the hard work and effort the luck wouldn’t be able to happen. Looking at successful people and pointing out some advantage they have is just a coping mechanism. Assuming you don’t have some disability, no one is stopping you from succeeding except yourself.

systemvoltage 5y ago

I'd honestly prefer the hard working ethic of Americans over lassie-faire hierarchical orthodoxy in EU. No one works to the bone, hard work is also rewarded. They choose to do it. The ease of business is amazing.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
I lived in the USA for 32 years, after growing up in the UK for 24. I don't see a "hard working ethic" in the USA. What I do see is a relentless, frequently unrealistic optimism that both diverts people from taking coherent political change seriously and also empowers them to believe that their lives will be better tomorrow than today. Lots of people in the USA work to the bone. Maybe you don't work with them, or see them when and where they work, but many books and articles have been written by people who've been deep inside this phenomenon. "Nickel & Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich is a great example. Yes, entrepeneurialism is easy here, and that's a good thing. However, I refuse to believe that this requires the rest of the system to remain as it is, or that by itself it justifies the suffering of the majority of people who do not "make it". I should perhaps note that I did "make it" here in the USA. I have tried hard to to allow that to blind me to the fact that it was mostly luck, nor to the immense, unnecessary suffering that our economic and political system imposes on millions of people (even just within the country).
- grog454 5y ago
  What is the difference between a "hard working ethic" and "work[ing] to the bone"?
  - I-M-S 5y ago
    One is a choice the other is not
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  > What I do see is a relentless, frequently unrealistic optimism that both diverts people from taking coherent political change seriously and also empowers them to believe that their lives will be better tomorrow than today. I disagree with your premises. I love the way things are. I do not agree with current progressive agenda, I stand by the old liberal values. > I should perhaps note that I did "make it" here in the USA. Sorry about your situation. I am an immigrant that came from a place I never want to go back, this land has given everything I asked for in return of honest, good day's work. Most importantly, I enjoy the freedoms that other nations do not grant.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

Is GDP per capita appropriate metric? Japan has higher median salaries than US does. How much of thay GDP is down to US being a global center of finance and location of corporate HQ of most gl9bal firms, pulling in wealth from across the world? Also how much of that GDP remains if you remove the top 0.1% of richest people? You may argue those things shouls not be remoced from GDP, but if we are discussing working life on an average person, this GDP number might not be reflective of it

chii 5y ago
> Also how much of that GDP remains if you remove the top 0.1% of richest people? those richest people don't personally contribute that much to GDP (their companies they own do). Removing them would make not much difference - their spending might be 10x or may be even 100x the average person, but there's so few of them that barely worth mentioning. It's not like they eat more food than normal people, nor wear out cars more than normal people. A few yachts and fancy cars notwithstanding, GDP is a measure of output, not wealth accumulation.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  Fair enough, but how is this discrepancy between wages and GDP explainable?
  - chii 5y ago
    Wages are the minimum people accept for their labour. GDP is a measure of productivity, which can increase with investment in plant and equipment (and tech via R&D). If a worker is more efficient, but every worker is also made more efficient (because of the equipment or tech), then their bargaining power doesn't grow with their productivity increase! The exceptions are where their individual output is higher - aka, skill. Tech workers getting higher wages is evidence of this. At some point, the number of tech workers would saturate as it is such a lucrative profession compared to many others - it's just the 2000 dot-com pop caused a huge drop in enrollments in universities and the lack of graduates is still felt today imho. Meanwhile, a services industry worker still outputs the same amount of "work" as they've done before in yester-century (not much tech can improve their output). The pay for them have not really grown, because there's no room to grow. Only mandates like minimum wage increases cause it to grow, and those hardly come by.