Posted on 08/20/2006 7:19:26 PM PDT by blam
"many people are now so ambitious or so terrified of losing their jobs that they have to be forced to take their meagre allowance"
I'd rather live here and take my "meagre" allowance than put up with your country's BS. And one more thing telegraph, it's EARNINGS not ALLOWANCE.
oops got that all wrong. *red faced*
ROFL. I hate it when things get lost in translation...in English.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't we considerably more productive than most of Europe? Wonder if those numbers have anything to do with that?
"...aren't we considerably more productive than most of Europe?"
Yep. Most Americans work a full 40 hours per week or more. Many European countries cap the work week at about 30 to 35 hours.
My husband works at a place where they usually force them to take the week between Christmas and New Years off, out of their own vacation time of course, I'm sure a lot of them resented being forced to take the vacation time at the time of management's chosing rather than their own.
I believe that Winston Churchill said that we are two peoples, separated by a common language.
Rather people (young men especially) were working hard, than setting fires to autos, and performing other destructive acts.....WORK is one of the best things in the world for MEN!
Celebrated for it?! Where? In what hemisphere? Most of the MSM (on both sides of the pond) mocked him for it.
LOL. Churchill, brilliant as always.
"England and America are two countries separated by a common language."
George Bernard Shaw
I find a lot of Euro economic data is supsect (even the Germans got caught cooking unemloyment statistics), but the French have a lot of natural advantages in a lot of luxury or top end products (think agriculture, haute couture, perfumes, cosmetics, etc.) and the EU has given them a much larger market in areas where they have a natural or historical monopoly. They have also bent or broken EU policy to their advantage whenever possible (think EU ag subsidies).
Their per-capita GDP is much lower than hours, but that is mainly due to the fact that they work a lot fewer hours than we do ( around 1450 vs. 1950 per year, if I recall) and because of the high unemployment.
If you have a decent job (like most French boomers do) and have some inherited property (like many do) you can live very well in France for someone with a modicum of education and not much ambition.
Innovation, research, investment, and intolerance for corruption. Working ourselves to death isn't how we got here.
More projection of Yankee envy by those on the east side of the pond. And part of the reason they are clueless as to why their per capital GDP is much lower.
"Unbeleivable!"
I can believe it.
My father was a workaholic. He was warned it would kill him. At the age of 90, it finally did. If only he had listened to reason.
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