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April 30, 2007
I Want More Vacation!
The Mark Weisbrot column John links to on France's economic situation makes some good points, though it does seem to diminish France's poor economic performance by omitting statistics on such minor matters as, say, GDP growth. That said, it does bring up a point I like to harp on whenever possible.
Another mistake that is commonly made in this debate is to compare France’s income or GDP per person to the U.S., by which France lags: $30,693 for France versus $43,144 for the U.S. (these are adjusted for purchasing power parity). But this is not a fair comparison, because the French do not work nearly as many hours as we do in the United States. Economists do not say that one person is worse off than another if she has less income simply due to working fewer hours.
Right. Yes. Thank you. As a caveat, there's a certain amount of dispute as to whether the French could work more hours if they so chose, but in any case, there's not a 1:1 comparison to be made here. If you make $80,000 and work 65 hours a week, and I make $40,000 and work $35 hours a week, there's a real question as to who is "better off," despite the efforts of economic commentators to define the term as nothing more than a measure of take-home pay.
Which reminds me: I would love it if I had the option of sacrificing some income for more vacation days. If I could choose to make X amount less in order to have proportionately more vacation days, I'd take that bargain in an instant. I'm young, I'm childless, I have friends and family scattered around the nation -- having more time to travel would be worth a lot to me. I'm in Seattle for a conference, for instance, and would much rather I could tack some time onto the end of the trip and actually explore Seattle. But such a deal is never offered. In fact, I've never even heard of such a deal being offered. It's a shame, and one reason I'm a bit unconvinced by the ceaseless bashing of France. I'm more likely to get rich in American, to be sure, but I'm far less likely to have the opportunity to enjoy my wealth.
Speaking of Which: I'm conferencing in Seattle this week, and have asked the Weekenders to pitch in. I'll still be posting, just at slightly reduced frequency, so they're kindly helping out.
April 30, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
Ezra,
Grand debates about EUROPE VERSUS AMERICA usually devolve into this, with conservatives' saying that America is better because of higher income and liberals saying Europe is better because of life/work balance.
It's time we stopped perpetuating this simplistic, grotesque dichotomy and the predictably ideological cleavage that follows. It minimizes the gains that Europe has made along "conservative" criteria at the same time as acceding to the conservative view of the facts of the matter, i.e. Europe = high regulation, generous welfare state, stagnant economy and USA = growing economy, hard-working and fully-employed workers. Reality is far, far different.
Posted by: Marshall | Apr 30, 2007 5:19:28 PM
Ezra, try the music business. Low pay, really bad working hours but things like hanging around a city on business trips, no sweat.
Then again, there's not much of a music industry left so...
And yes, you make an excellent point. The increased hours of work the average American puts in are also part of the producivity scam that been rampant for awhile now.
Posted by: ice weasel | Apr 30, 2007 5:24:41 PM
who needs reality when you got belief
Posted by: akaison | Apr 30, 2007 5:55:46 PM
Really? Working at a nonprofit magazine, they won't give you the option of taking time off without pay? I could see that in a big bureaucratic structure like the gov't or a big corporation, but you really couldn't walk into the editor's office at the Prospect and say "I want to take the first week in June off without pay"?
I suspect you're just too much of a workaholic politicl junkie to actually walk away for long enough to take a real vacation ;)
Posted by: Steve T | Apr 30, 2007 6:17:00 PM
Have you had a chance to do any NW sightseeing yet? Lots of opportunities...Too bad you don't have more time, Vancouver BC is an incredible city. By the way, I have chosen to work 4 days a week, for somewhat diminished pay, for lifestyle reasons. I'm lucky to be in a position to do that; most US workers aren't.
Posted by: beckya57 | Apr 30, 2007 6:17:33 PM
Working at a nonprofit magazine, they won't give you the option of taking time off without pay?
It's not like the magazine would really gain anything, would they? They hardly pay Ezra any money now, so simply paying Ezra nothing wouldn't make much of an impact on their budget, yet Ezra wouldn't be doing any work, so there'd be less writing being done. A bad deal for TAP all around.
The entire point of non-profits is to get young people to do a lot of work for them for practically nothing. Thus, there's little to be gained by the non-profit paying someone nothing in exchange for no work-- little money gained, but lots of labor lost.
Posted by: Constantine | Apr 30, 2007 6:32:49 PM
I could very well be wrong, but I suspect one of the major reasons we rarely get the offer to work fewer hours for less pay in professional environments is because of the insurance industry.
Employers who offer health benefits don't have much flexibility in the benefits they can offer (typically, they'll have a "full time" package for 40 hours a week, and a "part time" package for 30, and nothing else) so in turn they don't pass along flexibility in hours to the workers.
But it seems like it's mostly a cultural problem. We're stuck in a 40-hour mindset (and since it's arbitrary, I'm thankful we're not stuck in a 60- or 80-hour mindset).
Posted by: Cris | Apr 30, 2007 6:40:19 PM
Umm, maybe I'm lucky, but where I work, I can "buy" extra vacation hours. My employer takes my rate of pay, multiplies it by the number of extra vacation hours I'm buying, and divides it by 52(# of pay periods/year). That amount is then added to the portion of my benefits package I pay. I only have the opportunity to buy an extra week of vacation, but it is available.
Posted by: RickyDomingo | Apr 30, 2007 6:55:34 PM
Ezra,
If you're in Seattle and at all a Baseball fan you shoudl try and catch a game at Safeco, really one of the best new parks.
Posted by: Eric | Apr 30, 2007 7:06:11 PM
I was struck by a friend of mine from Britain who said he found the culture here very strange. In Britain, you define yourself by hobbies, travels and the like. If you're at a party, you discuss where you took holiday or how you enjoy bird-watching. Here it's all about your job, because there just isn't much time left over.
I also remember a sermon given a few years ago. In it, she told a great story. There was an American businessman visiting a small Mexican village. He met a fisherman who along with his fellows would go out each day, catch enough fish to feed the family. The American asked him what he did the rest of the day. The fisherman responded: "I eat; I spend siesta with my wife; I play with my children; I play guitar for my friends; I sleep."
The American encourages the fisherman to get a whole fleet of boats and make a huge profit. The fisherman works on it for a while and then asks the American what he can expect to gain.
And the American says that when the fisherman retires he can enjoy his free time and eat, spend siesta with his wife, play with his grandchildren, play guitar for his friends and sleep.
We have some pretty screwed up priorities sometimes.
Posted by: Magenta | Apr 30, 2007 7:55:43 PM
If you want to be the master of your own time, there is only one option. Do a Ph. D. and get a job in of the bigger research universities. The pay is good, benefits, including the pension benefits, are unmatched, and you have to teach no more than three courses a year which comes out to no more than 150 hours a year.
Posted by: gregor | Apr 30, 2007 8:54:06 PM
Gregor,
That sounds nice, but my husband has a Ph.D. and tried that route. True, professors don't teach much, but the hours that they are expected to work on research make it a wash at best. In order to earn a third of what he does now, he had to work at least as many hours. He had actually wanted to be a professor because he thought it would be great to set his own hours and have the summers off. For the guys getting money for research, that's just not true.
I will give you that major research universities have one big advantage over private industry: health benefits. First pregnancy, when my husband was a professor, cost us $50 total. Second, four years later in private industry, cost us $2,500. And the first was an induced delivery that required close monitoring because of cord problems. When I had the second on her own schedule I was surprised that the resident wasn't in the room every five minutes.
The other benefit for us was that he could shift his "light" semester from summer to spring so that he could be home to help with the baby the first time. Despite promises about having a couple of weeks during interviews, though, he had to fight to get three days for the second.
Posted by: Magenta | Apr 30, 2007 9:31:41 PM
The professors who you see working 3 days a week and taking the summers "off" are invariably the least respected and least productive. Being a professor means that any time not teaching needs to be spent doing a lot of research, managing graduate students, applying for grant money, submitting as many original papers to conferences as humanly possible, and writing books.
And yet, had I gotten the faculty job I applied to a couple years ago, I probably would have taken it.
Posted by: Constantine | Apr 30, 2007 9:51:48 PM
Okay, so GDP per person in France is say about $19 per hour in purchasing power and $22 in the U.S. But if you factor in inequality of distribution, say by taking out the top 5% and calculated what the bottom 5% have, the French might actually have more per hour, or even more per year. I should have worked that out first, but that would have taken up an hour of research and calculation for which I wouldn't get my $22.
Posted by: Paula | May 1, 2007 5:18:58 AM
It all comes down to choice really, doesn't it. Personal choice that is.
In parts of Europe, France especially, that choice has been taken for you. It's illegal to work more than 35 hours a week (quite literally, the Govt employs inspectors to check car parks at offices to see who is cheating).
In the US and the UK (still largely so in the UK) you are free to work the hours that you and your employer mutually agree upon.
That in those two places with that choice, people choose to work longer hours, shows rather that the French government is insisting that the French work shorter hours than the want to.
A great advance in freedom and liberty, don't you think?
Posted by: Tim Worstall | May 1, 2007 6:54:11 AM
It all comes down to choice really, doesn't it. Personal choice that is.
Many people would love to "choose" to have a job that gives them 4-6 weeks of vacation per year, but you can't choose such a thing in the US.
In the US and the UK (still largely so in the UK) you are free to work the hours that you and your employer mutually agree upon.
Maybe people have a different experience with jobs than I do, but employers and workers do not "mutually agree" upon anything very often when taking a job. A worker applies for a job, and the employer tells the worker how much the worker will get paid and how many vacation days per year the job will have. Sometimes there's some room for negotiation, but this is the exception, not the rule.
Posted by: Constantine | May 1, 2007 8:25:03 AM
The real opportunity is self employment where you can set your own hours and make what you want. If you are efficient, you can make more money and work less hours.
It's all up to you.
Posted by: Fred Jones | May 1, 2007 9:41:59 AM
In the US and the UK (still largely so in the UK) you are free to work the hours that you and your employer mutually agree upon.
Yes; when I was hired for my current job, I was informed that I would work from 9AM to 5PM, that while I didn't "have" to take overtime I be expected to do so when the circumstances required, but that I needed to get approval for any overtime I wanted to work. Since I was, at the time, unemployed and rapidly running out of money, this was a mutually agreeable arrangement.
(Shorter this post: Bwa? What?)
Posted by: Quarterican | May 1, 2007 9:54:04 AM
I'm in Seattle for a conference, for instance, and would much rather I could tack some time onto the end of the trip and actually explore Seattle. But such a deal is never offered.
Have you ever asked? Most of the places I've worked at have "unofficial" no-pay policies.
Posted by: TW Andrews | May 1, 2007 10:11:08 AM
The real opportunity is self employment where you can set your own hours and make what you want. If you are efficient, you can make more money and work less hours.
It's all up to you.
That would be equally true in France.
Posted by: Magenta | May 1, 2007 10:11:26 AM
The real opportunity is self employment where you can set your own hours and make what you want. If you are efficient, you can make more money and work less hours.
It's all up to you.
And all you have to do is pull $100K of startup capital out of your ass! It's so easy everyone can do it!
May I suggest that anyone who has never personally had the experience of not knowing what you were going to eat next week keep their lack of experience firmly in mind when discussing economic subjects?
Many people would love to "choose" to have a job that gives them 4-6 weeks of vacation per year, but you can't choose such a thing in the US.
Yes, definitely. Even if the vacation were unpaid, or the salary were reduced pro rata (which would only be, what, 10%?)
The problem is that the employer would rather have two people working 60 hours each than three working 40 - less paperwork, less time spent on hiring decisions, less benefits, etc. - and the workers individually can't really say no to this arrangement, unless they have the startup capital to go into business for themselves (which in some industries is a LOT more than $100K).
The only real way of stopping this is for the employees to freely choose to form some kind of organization that can collectively bargain with their employer about their hours, working conditions, etc. - I seem to recall that this is not a new idea - or to freely choose to elect a government that will impose such conditions as legal regulations. (This does raise some freedom vs. democracy issues.)
Without some kind of group action they just get crushed by the oligopsony power of the employers.
Posted by: Chris | May 1, 2007 10:53:24 AM
Chris,
A buddy of mine flipped used cars to pay for college, his apartment and his frat dues, plus a healthy alcohol budget. Self employement is not all about silicon valley start-ups.
Posted by: DM | May 1, 2007 11:45:23 AM
That would be equally true in France.
And China, and India (Sheeeze!)I never said it wasn't, dumbass.
I think your Euro-worshiping is getting in your way. I know it's getting in mine.
Posted by: Fred Jones | May 1, 2007 12:21:58 PM
Another key statistic that never gets looked at is GDP per employable worker.
It makes sense that GDP per capita is higher when the proportion of the population under 16, and over 75 is smaller. I don't know how this figure compares between the US and France.
Posted by: SamChevre | May 1, 2007 12:27:05 PM
Seriously? You've never even heard of being able to take unpaid leave or buying vacation?
And Constantine says, "Many people would love to 'choose' to have a job that gives them 4-6 weeks of vacation per year, but you can't choose such a thing in the US." At my last job, I had 4 weeks of vacation a year. I'll have 4 weeks of vacation a year at my current job in another, uh, 13 months, I believe (on my two year anniversary).
And I've also had jobs where I pretty regularly worked around 35 hours a week. Generally, not so much during a few crunch periods of the year.
I'm sure that there are plenty of areas in the US where these kinds of choices aren't available. But heck, that's part of the choice, right? There are plenty of ways to sacrifice money for other benefits in the US -- starting with "look for a job that facilitates it." I'm not saying that there's no difference between the US and France in this respect at all, and I'm as jealous for the idea of six weeks of vacation starting as anyone, but you guys are massively inflating the differences. You don't have to be on the track of working 60 hour weeks in the US.
Posted by: Michael B Sullivan | May 1, 2007 1:11:11 PM
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