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August 3, 2004 More Income vs. More Leisure
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"Over time, Europeans have used some of the increase in their productivity to expand their leisure rather than their incomes. Americans, by comparison, continue to toil long hours for more income. Who is really better off?"
"By one estimate, the average American worker clocks up to 40% more hours during his lifetime than the average person in Germany, France, or Italy."
"Americans seem more obsessed with keeping up with the Joneses in terms of their consumption of material goods.... Their GDP figures look good, but perhaps at a cost to their overall economic welfare."
These quotes are from an article in The Economist [June 19, 2004]. In spite of being giddily pro-capitalist, and often wildly far-fetched or downright fanciful in its assumptions, The Economist can be a treasure trove of information. [You just have to pay no attention to the conclusions it comes to based on that information.] The point of the article I quoted from was primarily to say that economic growth in Europe is no worse than in the U.S. as long as the same standards of measurement are applied.
[Interestingly, another article only a few weeks later bemoaned the "failure" of having adopted of the 35 hour workweek in France. Apparently, although productivity and profits did not decline in any significant way, there was nevertheless a small blip in "the economy" [which usually means the stock market], therefore, the conclusion went, the 35 hour workweek hurt everybody. Never mind that only large investors are hurt by small declines in stock prices: the mantra is that a strong "economy" is good for all. Excuse me, but the purpose of shortening the workweek is so that people will have to work less: how could it have failed in that respect?]
I think a more interesting conclusion is to consider whether not only individual economic priorities but the ability to achieve basic survival are different in the U.S. than they are in Europe. Many services that are free in Europe have to be paid out of Americans' own pockets, most notably health care, especially for the uninsured but increasingly for everyone else as well. And the fear of losing health care coverage is so urgent that many labor negotiations have to be about employee benefits, setting aside even the issue of higher wages, let alone the possibility of agitating for more free time.
Then there's the fact, according to this article, that European companies are still making money in spite of fewer working hours and strong unions. The American model of supposed prosperity is held up by conservative economists as a standard to aspire to, but it turns out not to even be true for the almighty bottom line. What the American model does successfully, however, is to keep workers in line. The article makes no mention of the fact that American companies have been able to extract such high productivity from their workers through fear and dependence: basic needs are privatized so that people have to make more money in order to provide those needs for themselves and their families, while unions and workers' rights are demonized, and job security is disappearing. That way people are kept busy at work, swimming like mad just to stay afloat.
And of course there's also been a very successful campaign of cultural propaganda: Americans have been persuaded to believe that costly consumer goods and entertainment are necessities. But I'm not sure that's so different in Europe. Prices in Europe are often higher, and credit cards are less prevalent, so it may just not be possible for people to buy as much. According to The Economist article, the average "euro area" European [which does not include Britain] is 30% poorer than the average American "in terms of GDP per person measured at purchasing-power parity."
The very leisure time that is so talked about is itself terribly expensive. I've been watching the Italian news this past week, while I was at my parents' house, and nearly every news story was about the mind-boggling congestion on highways and at airports as seemingly all Italians make their way to vacation destinations for the month of August. If you visit an Italian city in August [that is not a tourist attraction], it is eerily deserted. You walk alone along empty streets, storefronts locked down with metal roll gates, windows on apartment buildings shuttered. All that's missing is the tumbleweed. Wouldn't it make sense to save the money you would spend going on vacation and just stay home, and revel in having the city to yourself? But there are other social pressures at work. Forgoing your holiday time at the beach, countryside, or mountains would make you into a pathetic loser in the eyes of your family and acquaintances, and even your own. One of my issues with Italian culture, at least as I experienced it among my circle of extended relatives, is its rigidity. There's an obsession with propriety: wearing the right clothes, frequenting the proper establishments, following fashion and trends. One of the great things that can be said about life in America, though I'm sure many won't agree with this assessment, is that it is exceedingly easygoing. Nobody really cares if you're an eccentric. They probably don't even notice. People here will go to the grocery store in their fuzzy bedroom slippers and pajama bottoms. If only they would also use some of that unacknowledged freedom of expression to fight for what's important.
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August 2, 2004 The Pedicab as a Symbol of Feudal Society
[asfo_del]
[Sorry for the gap. I've been out of town for a week.]
There was a short article in a recent New Yorker [July 26, 2004] about New York's pedicabs, or bicycle taxis, which are great for the environment, great as a means of reducing consumption of oil, and better for traffic congestion than gasoline-powered taxis, but which are disturbingly servile: another person is physically employing his or her own sweat and muscle to propel the lounging rider through the city's streets. The author, Adam Gopnik, makes an interesting commentary on the pedicab as a visible symbol of a society that is increasingly unequal: "Pedicab drivers ... will tell you flatly that it is the best job they can find. The pedicab may merely suggest rather than entirely embody the new America of puller and pulled, but it is a sharp symbol of a new reality."
He goes on to make an even broader assertion about American society: the absence of outrage and demand for redress in the face of constant abuse. "The puzzling thing for anyone outside America is the conservatism and docility of the American working people. In France, their confreres are off on their five-week paid vacations; in Canada, they have brought a straight-out Socialist party back into a position of influence, because they cling stubbornly to their right to free national health care. In America, though, we are all remarkably inclined to take it on the chin and keep pedalling. The old explanation for this was, essentially, the bicycle messenger compact: in exchange for hard work and long hours, you got to pedal your own bicycle to a better life. But over the past twenty-five years that compact has been dissolving. Maybe we are having more feudal moments because American life is becoming more feudal. An open, mercantile society is a society run on the bargain of future prospects: in exchange for your subservient labor we will provide hope. A feudal society is, simply, run on the bargain of fear: in exchange for your labor and subservience, we will provide security. Is it possible that some Republican delegate might hop in a pedicab this summer and pause to ruminate on an economy in which some are always pulled and more and more are always pulling?"
Interestingly, as either a mercantile or a feudal society, ours provides neither hope nor security, and it never has, unless you count the false hope promised by rhetoric and flag-waving propaganda.
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[Continue to July Archive]