Slackers . . . well, I know you're joking here, but let's not make value judgments by using such a negative word. Maybe they just enjoy their free time. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, Americans might be happier if they were willing to make the same trade off between money and leisure. But we're all addicted to work and consumption here . . . it's what makes us rich and dull.

Or in some cases not even rich, Purple.  They have to work all those hours just to be able to survive and pray their job doesn't get "outsourced" to Asia...

I think it is silly to compare what is happening in other countries to what we do here.  Everybody's circumstances are different.  And with the way we are getting our asses kicked in this new "global" economy American workers will be expected to do even more for that much less...or the company might need to relocate abroad to stay competitive.

Why should we care if the French can live with less work?  Well, if they are not as productive as we are, they cannot be good trading partners and purchase more goods made by us.  Socialist slackers, killing the American dream. 

What utter nonsense.  I'd be quite content earning a living by working 4 hours a day, and pursuing a life of learning, exploring, recreation, family, hunting, fishing, gardening, etc. during my other 12 waking hours and not wasting it on the things that my other 4 hours of work buys me.  If the 20/80 principle applies to most people, we get about 80% of our productive work done in 20% of our work time and 20%of our work done in 80% of our work time.  If people had more control of their work environments they would find very creative means to get a hell of a lot more done in less time.  Unfortunately such people tend to get rewarded by having more work and more responsibilities piled on them in the drive to downsize.  

We need to do much more soul searching about ourselves and the direction we are headed in the US instead of gloating over how we compare with the French.  We better be doing more listening to our world neighbors instead of criticizing them for not conforming to our screwed up sense of progress.   

Just to be clear, speaking personally I think the French way of doing things is kind of crappy. I didn't take my full vacation time in 2004, wasn't allowed to roll over all my accrued days, and therefore was forced to take five vacation days in December lest they vanish into nothingness. I didn't have a very good time, and would happily have traded that week off for an extra 400 bucks or whatever. Nevertheless, this is really just a matter of taste, there's no reason to get up in arms about the French deciding they'd rather "work to live" than "live to work." Me, I like the American way, but to each is own.

It reminds me of a joke comedian Greg Proops told about his experiences in Europe -- mostly Italy, Spain and France... (the following is a paraphrasing...

They take eight weeks of vacation a year, go in late to work, leave early, take long wine-sodden lunches... and everybody looks FABULOUS!!!!

This is yet another reason why we need national health care. The problem is that with fixed costs like health care and pensions applying to all employees, employers find it much cheaper to pay a smaller number of workers for longer hours. Perhaps the French, with their services and such have, by removing this overtime incentive, allowed a more natural level of work/leisure to emerge. In any case, it's a great issue and something I think may be ripe for more attention. See e.g. Brad Delong's recent post on women in academia, or various articles by Juliet Schor.

Good point . . . we'll soon be a society of rich CEOs and poor everyone else.

And I think this goes along with a good point Matt made.  I think it would be a good thing to offer people a chance for more time off for vacations and leisure activities...if the employee wants it.  Matt complained that he was forced to take vacation time or lose it, preferring compensation instead.  I can't begrudge his point of view, it really should be about happy employees.  Because happy employees tend to be more productive employees.  I think even with additional time off the workforce will be just as productive when they are working.

I wondered the same thing...

You imply that the French work less out of national choice but that seems less than clear. If people are out of work, they work zero hours and that's a drag on the average. Put another way, I'm sure the US value of hours worked per week per working age person fell sharply during the 1930s. French unemployment is higher than American which is not likely a matter of choice- personal or national- either.

What a number of you folks, Matt included, seem to miss is that you have the choice to do whatever the hell you want with your vacation time. Matt, there was nothing stopping you from using your vacation time to continue writing. You could use the time to volunteer for a good cause, catch up on vital reading, work on projects you don't have time for in the day-to-day grind, or anything else you want, because you're already getting paid for the time. Nothing's stopping you from "working".

If, on the other hand, you were doing physical labor like a lot of people do here and in France, you might just use the time to relax, travel, and spend time with your families.

Personally, I have no desire to adopt the French set of social priorities. I like my stuff, and I like working hard.

Well, bully for you... but for a Jewish kid with a Latin Catholic name, I'm really dissapointed by how much you seem to have bought into the Protestant Work Ethic myth.

I would submit that this is one of the single most destructive myths in our culture. Long hours do not necessarily translate into cultural productivity, and they most certainly do not guarantee personal growth, happiness, or wisdom. Leaving aside consideration of those forced work long hours just to survive (a severe problem in itself), many Americans work extra because of the fear stoked by an unconcious belief in social Darwinism, red in tooth and claw. (Ironic, isn't it, how many of these same people find scientific Darwinism to be anathema.) The result? Alienation from ones meaningful work, an absence of meaning that feeds perfectly into the social control aims of the power elites. Empty consumerism, on the one hand, and  religious fundamentalism, on the other, become the perfect solutions to the emptiness that results.

Let's be clear: the word "work" is ambiguous. I'm a teacher and a scientist, and I work almost every single day, rarely taking even one day completely off. But I'm lucky. My my work is a labor of love, a passion, and obsession, a form of mental masturbation, a calling, a way of life, an occult practice--whatever the hell you want to call it, I'm into it. This is what work is like for artisans, craftspeople, culture workers, professionals, and entrepreneurs, those who work for themselves and those they care about, about what they care about.

But please let's not confuse this use of the word "work", which is what I would hope you're talking about here, Matt, when you flash your work ethic credentials, with working for the Man. And as someone who spends a lot of time in Italy, I can tell you that in terms of creative productivity, I not only fuck off much more in Europe, but I also get a lot more done . What I work on with all the extra hours on the job in the US is bureaucratic busy work, chasing paper, effort expended on the all around rat race, getting money money MONEY. Maybe I'm more "productive" in the US--but it's almost all extra productivity that is done to please the Man. Not me. Not my craft. Not truth. Not beauty. Not my family. Not those I love.

And I wonder if we take out the top 2-3% on the income scale what the average American worker makes?  I know there are rich people in France but our rich are incomprehensibly rich.

In france people work about 35/40 hours a week.
About 20% of people work hard in France (60 hours a week or more) managers, doctors, shopkeepers, farmers.
The rest employees, workers, techniciens, civil servants don't work hard and don't want to work more.
Except people who are very bad paid and part-time like some women working in services

We have 5 weeks of holidays that's the law, but many have 6 or 7 weeks of holidays.

I think that in USA beeing poor is harder, money look much more important maybe because of Calvinism ? (though Calvin was French).
In france health is not expensive, University are free, money is only a problem if you are
- out of work for a long time (more than 2 years) because if it's the case you have no more money (only 300$ a month form the state), if you are jobless for a shorter time you have 70% of you last wages during 1 or 2 year.
- living in Paris and poor because housing is very expensive.

Remember that work is only a value in a small part of the world.
I don't think it's a value in Latin America, Moslem World, Africa, Russia, mediteranean country .
In africa people work very few (especially men).
Work as a value it's only form 19th century in north west europe.

I have serious reservations about taking per capita GDP, even with the PPP adjustment, as a measure of economic well-being.

First of all, whether one tries to measure income indirectly via production, or some other way, per capita comparisons fail to take into account country-by-country differences in wealth distribution.  How do French and American median incomes compare, for example, as opposed to mean income?

But also, by focussing on production as a measure of wealth, one fixates excessively on the creation of new value rather than the value that flows from the enjoyment of existing wealth.  By standard measures, looking at production and income alone, an heir who produces nothing during a given year, and pulls down only a little income from divedends and interest, etc., counts as "poor", even if he is making wanton use of the wealth that was piled by his ancestors.

If a Frenchman owns a summer home in the country or at the beach that has been in the family for generations, and takes a 6-week summer vacation to enjoy it, surely he is deriving a great deal of value.  But it is value that doesn't appear to be reflected in in the standard  indicators, since the wealth was partly consumed, but not produced that year.  GDP looks at the transitory economy, the value that is produced, and then played with or gobbled up, in a relatively short period of time.  Values that flow form long-term public and private investiments, and from the continuing benefits of a heritage, where this flow is not accompanied by a measurable economic transaction, are ignored.

Extending this theme, I think most fair-minded people would  agree that France has abundant public and cultural riches that are the work of centuries, and contribute every day to the well-being of its people.  Each Frenchman is an heir, so to speak, to a tremendous material and cultural estate, and enjoys its existence without the need for new production.  Because of this, it is not just the extra leisure "time" that is valuable, but what can be done in that time.

PPP calculations also have a difficult time with comparisons that reflect difficult to quantify interpersonal and cross-cultural differences in valuations, and with differences in quality.  To take obvious examples, do PPP adjustments put French cheese and American cheeses in the same place in the "commodities" basket?

The decline of voluntarism, and socializing (e.g., bowling leagues) is probably a victim of the two career household.  When both adults get off work they then have to accomplish many of the chores that used to be taken care of by the housemaker.  That doesn't leave nearly as much time available for socializing outside the house, volunteering, political activism, etc. 

 And the quality of life once afforded by having a second career is probably gone as well: when most households have two incomes then the price of things (e.g., housing, cars, etc.) just goes up thus offseting the increase in household income.  Then everyone needs two incomes to make ends meet!

Bertrand Russell wrote a whole book in praise of idleness. He wasn't French but he definitely had the right idea. 

It seems vaguely un American to work less than 40, and you aren't considered "full time" in some circles unless you put in 50 or more hours a week.

I've often thought I'd like to drop down to 32 hours, but my wife won't have any of it. She's convinced I would just sit around the house commenting on politics all day. My parents, and especially my in-laws, are almost shocked at the notion!

And she's right. Of course if you ask me would I rather get paid or play GTA San Andreas all day, the answer is...yes. I'd like more time to do...almost anything.

`

Actually, I screwed up in comparing GOOG's quarterly revenues with GM's annual revenues - GOOG employees are phenomenally "productive", much more so than any software company on the planet, because of their domination of online ad revenues. So GOOG's "productivity" is more like ~$1,000,000 per employee, not $300,000, which IIRC is about what one would find at Oracle and most makers of corporate software.

Still, note that after GM does its next whack of heads that that dinosaur will have "productivity" of about $790,000 per employee (ca $193m in revenues vs ca 250,000 employees, post-downsizing). Again, this is far higher than the revenue per employee one would find at any major B2B software provider. Even Microsoft the Monopolist has lower revenue per employee than GM.

Does it really make sense to argue that GM is "productive"?

Bonjour from la belle France -- my husband and I bought a place here four years ago and love it so much we decided to move here this year permanently.

The French in the countryside are much, much less materialistic than we Americans . . . and it's quite refreshing to be judged on who you are as a person rather than what "stuff" you have or how much money you make.

I wish that all the Friedman types would clean up their own backyards before they attack France.  It's jealosy plain and simple . . . notice that Friedman is vacationing here . . . and not in Iowa.

I'm glad that Matt likes working hard, and I'm sure that he likes what he does.

I'd like to work hard, too, at whatever makes me happy.

The problem is when people work harder and longer than they want to at a job they don't like and then don't even get to brag about all the stuff they have.  You know: shelter, education, health care for their families when they need it, and that all-important retirement fund to look forward to when the career is over and it's time to spend one's days looking after the grandkids, traveling, and reflecting on what Adler called 'a life well spent'.

These things, especially the part after 'you know', are not necessarily the reward for working hard in the US.  In fact, if you take a look at the past thirty years, families are working harder for less real pay (and therefore, standard of living) than they used to have to do.

It's not just that the French aren't working as hard as we do, we didn't used to have to work so hard, either.

Class war is well under way, and the middle class is losing.

Friedman's mind inhabits the world of the totalitarian. Absent from his vocabulary are the words "choice," "tastes," "preferences." There's only one way to live one's life, which miraculously happens to coincide with the way he lives his own. Working hard or not so hard is not an option; building a strong safety net to keep society together, that's not an option.  Helping small farms survive to keep the whole country from turning into a giant parking lot, who's kidding whom?

Remember Friedman "golden straitjacket" (his coinage)?  For someone willing to send his compatriots to go and die for freedom, it's amazing how little he understands about freedom.

 Let the French do what they please. That's "their" freedom.

Of course, most Americans, even if they had a choice, couldn't work shorter hours because of that top 2 or 3 percent of the population who suck up such a huge proportion of the wealth, leaving the rest of us with barely adequate incomes, even at the long hours we work.  Separately, I would urge everyone to take a look at economist J. Bradford DeLong's semi-daily website where he quotes another economist responding to Thomas Friedman's latest paean to the Anglo-American economic model.  In a column this past week, Friedman once again chastises the French and Germans for their supposed sloth and then launches into a drearily typical once-over-lightly screed. This time it's about how Ireland, embracing the hard-nosed Anglo-American ethos, has pulled itself up from the lower ranks of EU economies to become the most prosperous in the union. Trouble is, as the item on DeLong's site notes, the Irish model bears little resemblance to those of Britain or the U.S.  Rather, it is much more along (horrors!) Scandinavian lines. 

My father was almost never home when I was growing up.  I saw him one weekend in four - and one week vacation.  He worked evening shift, was paid verywell, but I never saw him. I wish he worked 36 hours and had two months vacation.  

I know what you're talking about. I'm determined to avoid the absent father syndrome that I witnessed as the son of a workaholic. But the iron law here is that you can't have it both ways: the only way your father could have worked "36 hours [with] two months vacation" would have been as a member of an absurdly privileged guild of some sort that protected its members through very high barriers to entry, barriers that would likely have caused great disadvantages to certain groups. Much of the overwork and hardship we encounter today is simply the price of competing in a) a global economy and b) a  much greater equal opportunity society in which women and minorities and immigrants compete for jobs like the one your (I'm betting) white father held.

In France, the way this works is that older workers screw the young; industrial and farm workers suck up capital and resources that would be far more usefully allocated to high-growth new firms; and the social protection funds-- pension and health, esp-- are very quickly going bankrupt. Bottom line: the old screw the young. That's not the right solution.

In short stays overseas I've made many more dear friends than I have here.

Color me skeptical that one can make "many dear friends" out of people-- anywhere, in any culture-- in a short period of time. Let alone "many" dear friends.

People in Europe have time to talk, to share a drink, to socialize. Americans seem to always be running off somewhere.

Agree totally. Too many firms and bosses make work that adds no value. As a nation we could probably cut our hours back by at least 90 minutes a day on average and suffer no hit to our GDP.
 
Work, kids, shopping never seem to end--even recreation seems to be a chore. . . .

Curious: how many of your european dear friends have kids? I bet that the clearly easier Euro lifestyle has a great deal to do with that demographically-shrinking continent's almost universal loathing of bearing and raising kids. They're incredibly inconvenient, aren't they? A shame that GDP growth, stability of pensions, national prowess should depend so heavily on the little bastards.

and then there are the cell phones and Blackberries and laptops that keep us on call all the time

Here's a solution: after work, turn them off. Get your work done before you leave the office. Work hard when you're on, and when you're off, tolerate no exceptions. Your weekend is your own time, period. 

Sorry Thibaud, but you seem to be misinformed. US productivity growth has been quite robust over the last decade or so, driven by investments in information technology, so there is no "disadvantage" in measuring productivity for a technology-driven economy. You seem to think that US productivity is underestimated relative to Europe; but, if anything, it is probably overestimated due to things like working off the clock that is not tolerated over there.

Also, Europe is not so technologically backward as you seem to think, and this is especially true of the Scandinavian countries, which if anything have more generous welfare states and nearly equivalent labor protections to countries like Germany or France.

Also, are you sure you want to argue for US health care and pension systems over European ones? Ours are in worse shape than theirs, and the private sector parts of those systems are in the worst shape of all. What group has the most secure health insurance with the lowest administrative costs in the US? The elderly. Ditto for pensions.

I would hesitate to say that the Franco-German model provides their citizens with a more pro-family way of life or a better education. As far as family goes, the stangating population speaks for itself. Western Europeans certainly aren't using their government largesse to raise families. They are using it to relax, sit in cafes drinking fancy wine and going on vacation. Which is fine in the short term but they are completely screwing the younger generation. The figure that 25% of French under 30 are unemployed is telling - the indolence of the middle -aged and older generations is stagnaiting their economy and bakrupting their welfare state, the same thing that happened to the soviet union, just on a much less catastrophic scale. Their children (if they even have children) are going to be out of jobs and are going to face a much higher unemployment rate if they don't change and change fast. The government can only dish out it's benefits to so many people for so long until it runs out of money. Granted the US also has a deficit problem, but that money is not being spent on people who, to be blunt, are not contributing anything to the economy. A huge amount of it is being spent on the miliary and thus technological innovation. I think the internet, which was developed by the US military and almost totally responsible for the economic boom of the 90's, is a perfect example of this. Granted I am as upset as the next person about the war in Iraq, but the contribution of that big "evil" military industrial complex to the world's economy cannot be understated.

I would also hesistate to get excited about their free education system. I remember I saw a study recently (i believe it was conducted by the EU's ministry of education or equivalent, I can check if anyone's interested) that ranked the top 100 universities in the world, and in the top 25 where only 2 non-american universities - Oxford and Cambridge. European Universities are horrifically overcrowded and 100% lecture based, giving their students a far inferior education in my mind.  Changing universities if one is discontent with their major, social setting etc,, and later in life changing jobs, is extremely difficult because their education system's absurd reliance on standardized testing forces people to decide what they want to do for the rest of their life when they are only 15 years old.  And as far as language goes, it's a cheap shot to tout the average european's knowledge of foreign languages as evidence of a superior education system. If New Jersey, Pennysylvania and New York all spoke different tongues, you can be sure as heck they'd all know each other's languages regardless of their education system. It also doesn't help when your native tongue is the dominant one in the world, and everyone (i think anyone who has lived abroad and tried to learn the native language in the process can relate to this), upon hearing your american accent, tries to force you into becoming their new english tutor. If you look at the statistics, australians, canadians, irish, english and any other people whose native tongue is english all also very rarely speak a foreign language, it has nothing to do with their education systems and everything to do with practicality. For an american, unless you want to work for the CIA or the state department, it makes little economic sense to devote the time to learning a foreign language you are very unlikely to ever use in any setting, professional or social. Furthermore, many European firms conduct all business in English, and it is without even a close contender the world's most studied language. I speak Russian fluently thanks to studying abroad there in college, but only because I was interested in learning it, not because I am stupid enough to think I need to know it to make a decent living. In other words, a French or German or anyone else who learns english does it more often than not out of necessity, not because of  superior education system. An American's necessity to know a foreign language, other than Spanish in some areas, is negligable. But perhaps in a few generations, my grandkids will all be scrambling to learn mandarin :)

the wealthier we try to become, the poorer we seem to get.  The French, meanwhile, are enjoying their vacations

Not really. Have you spent much time in France or with the French during the past few years? Most of the French are either miserable or angry at what they perceive as their country's long-term decline, weakening security and social protection, increased crime and social discontent, corrupt and incompetent political elites, and decreased influence in Europe and abroad.

Check out the best seller lists for the past few years and you'll see this spasm of declinism in very specific form. A few years ago a virulent jew-baiting racist got more votes than the Socialist prime minister, knocking him out of the presidential race. More evidence: the recent No vote (in which more than a third voted with either violent right-wing racists or unreconstructed Stalinists) was yet another symptom of a deeply troubled and unhappy country, one that, in its increasing political fragmentation, teror of Asian competition, economic stagnation and social malaise, seems more and more to resemble the stagnant and self-doubting US of the 1970s. BTW, the mood's not much different in Italy today.

Again, to be clear, there's much in the French model we should emulate, esp about work-life balance. But realize that the French pay a very high cost for their slacker lifestyle, one that is now coming home to roost in all the problems I described above. The point is simply that those old Michelob ads were wrong: you can't have it all. If you want cushy hours and extensive protection, your children will pay dearly for it. And you might as well.

Far as I can tell they probably make up the difference by working in their little gardens, growing flowers and other crap; not for money of course, for fun. Although sunbathing, picnicing and eating 5-7course meals take time too.

Except that France has the highest birth rate in Europe and, with about 2 kids per woman, the same (sustainable) rate as the US...

Have you spent much time in France or with the French during the past few years?

I have, and generally don't share your point of view.

The grumpiness is indeed there, mostly people are fed up with the chirac years, and his inefficiency. See last regional elections.

The "decline of france" thing i see discussed mainly in the u.s. media. There was a brief fad here, mostly limited to court writers relaying the then newly reelected team's spin (this unpopular law... or decline!). Nihil novi, etc.

For the asian competition, as far as i can see, uncertainies on how to deal with it are not limited to france.

Overall the causes for discontent are not very controversial here : unemployment, the zombi in the Elysée palace, and a few others things. For the friedmans in the u.s. media magic is the explanation : the sinner against the holy pain of work will, erm, come home to roost, which explains all the rest.

I'm a bit puzzled by the term "slacker" too. People don't lay down and wait for the time to pass during these not-worked hours. These are employed to activities that are fruitful too, if not billable. And if there is workaholism in the u.s., how is working less than that "slacking"?

yabonn

True that France has a higher birthrate than suicidal Europe overall, but France's birth rate IIUC is nonetheless under 2 per woman, ie it's not at replacement level. And the birthrate is high mainly because of extraordinarily high birthrates for one subgroup, the maghrebins. OTOH, to France's credit, the state provides generous bonuses to families that bear children. All in all, they're better than most in Europe, but that's not saying much. At least they recognize the problem.

Why would Tom Friedman and other "free-market" economists come down so hard on France?  To me the answer is simple, France, symbolically representing a European ethos, embodies alternative forms of capitalism and community, forms which are, no matter what one may say, more humane and, in spite of what Friedman or others remark, more sustainable because they look more at the long-term.

France is not without its problems: high unemployment, too many immigrant ghettos, a vocal extreme right wing.  Yet, in the end, the French feel more secure about their own identities, jobs and families than we do.  Perhaps this is because they do not, on the whole, define themselves primarily through their work.  There are many, many French people who toil everyday, executives that are stressed and underpaid; yet, in the end, many of these people come home to a fairly stable family life because that family is backed up by a larger local and national community.  Inexpenscive child care, health insurance, and vacation are, as one of the above writers points out, family values in the strictest sense and in the extended community sense. 

Because of a sense of self and community, French people are also less likely to need to put their beleifs "out there" in the form of t-shirts and bumper stickers.  This is also due to the residue of a class system where the way one dresses and speaks immediately relates one to a political point of view. (That is not to say that one can define everyone by the way they dress and talk, but, generally speaking, if you walk down the street the "bourgeois" family and the proletariat family--and their values--are aften visible.  Europeans already have codes for social understanding.  This is also related to community.)

These days, almost all of my friends come back from France saying "wow! Everbody was so polite! I'm so surprised."  French people are not as rude and egotistical as some would like us to believe.  However,  they definitely can be pugnacious and are not ashamed to make other wait in line as they resolve a dispute or as they curse an employee about one thing or another.  Again, this is about definition of self a the security to say what one beleives without risk to one's standing.  In an increasingly service-oriented economy, can we American risk being jerks once in a while?  Certainly not at work.  What this means is that we are willing to support arrogant, sadistic working conditions because we are afraid for our jobs and yet unwilling to say what we thing because this very situation puts our being into jeopardy (culturally and economically). 

What France does is question Tom Friedman's corporate mind.  France still represents--but no longer is--a bastion of the public enterprise: Renault, Air France, Dassault, Elf, Edf, GDF...  As I look at these corporations now, most of which have been privatized to a large extent, I wonder why they are doing so well?  Renault-Nissan is one of the most profitable car companies in the world.  Air France is doing relatively well...  I beleive this is because France has so far balanced the public good with the private.  

Of course, all that is at risk now.  Just ask French people why they voted 'no' to a European constitution written by corporate interests.  The Americanization--which is actually the corporatization--of France is happening, though, and this is happening largely through the media.  I'm reminded of a program I saw last year called "Capital."  It is a pro-corporate show on the M6 channel (I think).  There was