Quick!! Think of ONE thing you use made in Denmark!
The only thing I could think of is cookies...
They high calories, fat, carbs, and sugar put me to sleep. Maybe those Danes are onto something.
Posted on 05/14/2026 10:50:30 AM PDT by anthropocene_x
Sleep is critical to being in good health, regulating how people think and informing everything from mood to physical health. But the country’s lack of sleep is a problem for everyone, even for those lucky Americans who are able to get enough shut-eye. In addition to individual health, insufficient sleep creates a drag on medical spending, workplace productivity, and long-term health outcomes. America’s chronic inability to get enough sleep comes with a real cost attached, one that researchers have put in the hundreds of billions of dollars in annual economic losses.
The other culprit is the thing that makes the American economy so great: the rise and grind ethos that sees Americans work far more hours than counterparts in most developed economies. The American work ethic is coming at a steep cost.
The likely reason isn’t hard to find. U.S. workers log around 1,976 hours a year on the job—roughly 400 more than Germans, and significantly more than the French, Canadians, and British, according to ILO data. Northern European countries that sleep the most also tend to work the least. Denmark, where average weekly hours hover around 26, consistently ranks among the world’s most well-rested populations. The U.S. has no statutory cap on weekly work hours at all—federal law only mandates overtime pay after 40 hours, not a hard stop.
(Excerpt) Read more at fortune.com ...
Ah, yes. Don’t work hard, it’s dangerous. Probably this leads to the obvious solution, namely let the government take over, get some rest, enjoy life.
Most likely because those groups probably are usually employed in shift work with an alternating schedule.
They also fail (maybe I missed it) to mention that some of our most critical professions such as medicine, law enforcement, fire services, and the like are also subject to jobs which take a toll on sleep patterns. Those workers are not immune to the problems associated with lack of enough sleep. Somehow it is just assumed they will be shielded from it because of higher pay and better education.
Working in shifts isn’t easy on the system, as I leared from my days on the MPDC. I agree with you that shift work affects sleep patterns. Don’t know about the proclivity of certain groups to particular fields of employment.
Quick!! Think of ONE thing you use made in Denmark!
The only thing I could think of is cookies...
They high calories, fat, carbs, and sugar put me to sleep. Maybe those Danes are onto something.
Our very liberal 39 year old daughter bemoans hard work and always says how great Canada and Europe are. She studied for a year in Sweden in college and got her Masters Degree at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver (fully paid, too). The funny thing is she’s one of the hardest working people you’d ever want to know. She’s worked for a lot of small proprietor-owned companies and every time she moves on, she consults back to the company she just left for a year or two. So she makes really good money on the consulting gigs and new jobs.
I’ve seen this pattern elsewhere, where the hardest working, most accomplished and most successful yearn for European or Canadian “work ethic.”
Like many people in her cohort, her biggest dream 20 years ago was to work for the government. I told her many times how she would not like the places, the lack of measurable output, or her largely lazy coworkers. I smile to think she actually listened to Dear Old Dad.
During one business trip, the servers running HP-UX had received a mandatory upgrade. A change to the kernel code required that any script begin with "#!/path/to/the/interpreter" as the first line. Sitting on my desk was the required Oracle database installation CDROM. Every single script lacked the required new first line. It was a horror show. It would be weeks before Oracle would fix that issue. It took me 5 hours to find all the scripts, correct them and create a new installation CDROM. Most of that was after midnight local time.
Sounds more like Asian work ethic.
“but wake up at...all my old wake up times.”
It’s crazy how those patterns become biologically embedded. Any night where I get a reasonable 6-8 hours of sleep, and don’t have to set an alarm, I’ll wake up naturally within 1-2 minutes of the normal time.
Gotta admire your endurance working those shifts. Lots of kids today find it difficult to work a regular 8 hour shift during daylight hours.
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