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12-20-2013, 10:35 PM
Hard-Working Italians vs Lazy Germans
The ongoing eco**mic struggles in Europe have a somewhat unfortunate tendency to cause people to resort to somewhat lazy national stereotypes when discussing the issues. I keep hearing that hard-working Germans won’t stand to subsidize lazy Club Med lifestyles. But **te that Italians put in much longer hours hours than Germans (http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=3pO) and the gap is growing:
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/fredgraph7.png
That’s **t because Germans are lazy, it’s because German workers are productive and the gap is growing. When workers get more productive, they consume more goods and services, but they also work less. And most of all, productivity and “hard work” are **t the same thing. Vietnamese rice farmers have abysmal labor productivity, but they’re working very hard. In general, workers in high-productivity **rthern European countries (Netherlands, Denmark, etc.) work less, **t more, than their southerly neighbors.
The post Hard-Working Italians vs Lazy Germans (http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/11/18/371752/hard-working-italians-vs-lazy-germans/) appeared first on ThinkProgress (http://thinkprogress.org).
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/matthewyglesias?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo (http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/matthewyglesias?a=wcFiC_s7zGw:BDKNtdTg2lw:H0mrP-F8Qgo)
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/matthewyglesias/~4/wcFiC_s7zGw
The ongoing eco**mic struggles in Europe have a somewhat unfortunate tendency to cause people to resort to somewhat lazy national stereotypes when discussing the issues. I keep hearing that hard-working Germans won’t stand to subsidize lazy Club Med lifestyles. But **te that Italians put in much longer hours hours than Germans (http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=3pO) and the gap is growing:
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/fredgraph7.png
That’s **t because Germans are lazy, it’s because German workers are productive and the gap is growing. When workers get more productive, they consume more goods and services, but they also work less. And most of all, productivity and “hard work” are **t the same thing. Vietnamese rice farmers have abysmal labor productivity, but they’re working very hard. In general, workers in high-productivity **rthern European countries (Netherlands, Denmark, etc.) work less, **t more, than their southerly neighbors.
The post Hard-Working Italians vs Lazy Germans (http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/11/18/371752/hard-working-italians-vs-lazy-germans/) appeared first on ThinkProgress (http://thinkprogress.org).
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/matthewyglesias?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo (http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/matthewyglesias?a=wcFiC_s7zGw:BDKNtdTg2lw:H0mrP-F8Qgo)
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/matthewyglesias/~4/wcFiC_s7zGw