We Americans have a lot of free time, about five hours a day, representing a gain of one hour over the last forty years, and four hours since the late 1800s. Sure, Americans are among the hardest working people in the world, but we spend only 20% of our time at work.

According to a 2008 ranking by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, South Koreans work the longest hours per year – 2,357 hours per year on average. I have previously noted the huge success of Kia and Hyundai in the U.S. market. I have gotten them from Hertz on occasion and have enjoyed all their sizes, shapes, models and iterations.

A couple of months ago, by the way, Toyota passed GM as the largest car company in the world. No surprise there. But now the South Koreans are starting to give Detroit fits. Kias and Hyundais are actually really good cars . . . and now we know that they are designed and constructed by very hard-working people.

Parenthetically, if you ever needed an easily encapsulation of the difference between some sort of fascist / dictatorial communist system and a capitalist republic, take a very quick look at North and South Korea . Only Large-scale international food aid deliveries have allowed the people of North Korea to escape widespread starvation since famine in 1995, and the population continues to suffer – for no damned reason at all other than government isolation, arrogance and insular policies - from prolonged malnutrition and poor living conditions.

GDP per capita in North Korea is $1,800. Thirty-seven percent of the people work in agriculture and there is a ratio of one telephone for every twenty people. GDP per capita in South Korea is $27,100 and it has a real national economic growth rate of over 4% per annum, while North Korea actually has a negative economic growth rate and, folks, believe me, that is very hard to do without outright civil unrest and criminal behavior of the kind we see, more or less continually, out of sub-Saharan Africa. South Korea has 1.5 telephones for every citizen in the country (versus the previously cited 1-to-20 for N.K.) and, while I admire farmers very much and know that they render a valuable service, more advanced nations rely less upon farming for jobs and economic vitality. Versus N.K’s 37% of people employed in agriculture, S.K. has 3% of its people engaged in agriculture.

Okay, as far as the hardest working nations is concerned, I was surprised that Greece comes second, with 2,052 hours worked on average each year, and just behind are the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. If you have traveled Western Europe , you’ve seen Czechs, Hungarians and Poles working all over, taking the lowest skilled, entry-level jobs.

Particularly in Great Britain , since the economic turndown, there has been much resistance and resentment against all of the Poles taking the service jobs, waiters, waitresses, janitorial positions, while nationals are out of work. More evidence that as time passes, labor becomes a more and more fungible commodity. That’s why some economist believe that wage pressure in on Americans basically forever.

In the study of hardest working nations, the U.S. came in at Number Nine out of thirty-two nations studied. The U.S. had an average of 1,797 hours worked on average each year. Taken on a 365 day year, that is 4.9 hours per day. If you worked five days a week for fifty weeks per year, taking two weeks out for holidays, vacation, sickness and “personal days” (whatever the heck those are . . . why don’t they just call them “vacation”), that’s 250 days of work per year, amounting to 7.2 hours of work per day for Americans. That’s a pretty good effort, actually, certainly as far as the rest of the world is concerned. But we still have and cherish quite a bit of free time.

Out of the 32 nations studied, the Dutch are, relatively speaking, the “laziest”, coming in at 1,391 hours of work per year and the United Kingdom is #20 on the list of hardest working countries. Italy might be another surprise, in that they measure at #8 on the list, just above Americans.

In the U.S. we average 10 days of vacation per year. How ‘bout the U.K. at twenty days of vacation and the French at an average of five weeks of annual vacation? I’m still not surprised that if it weren’t for us and the Brits, the French would be saying Guten Morgen and Guten Nacht at the opening and close of each day.

Greece, Italy and Mexico come in on the list of hard-working countries at #2, #8, and #7, respectively, apparently because of the large numbers of self-employed in those countries. The International Labor Organization reports that under half of the world’s workers get a regular salary. That encourages the long hours that are worked in much of the world. What a surprise: you get paid according to the hours you work, your effort, your personal productivity.

Another reason for the difference between “hard working” countries and “lazy” countries is taxation, in particular tax rates. It has been empirically proven time and time again that increases in marginal tax rates actually depress total hours worked. That is, the higher the tax rate at the margin, the less people want to work. I am not 100% an Arthur Laffer apostle, but considering these numbers, he makes some sense.

Lots of my contemporaries and younger folks consider Europeans lazier than Americans, but that’s not always been so. Until the mid-1980s, Europeans worked harder than Americans. But, as European tax rates increased, the will to work apparently decreased accordingly. Until the Maggie Thatchers of the world emerged - and became respected - countries like England , Ireland , France and Portugal worked less and less, arguably in response to higher and higher tax rates. Small wonder that every member of the Rolling Stones moved his legal residence out of the U.K. The old confiscatory 90%+ marginal tax rate on U.K. income does not work well for a rock star . . . or an industrialist.

One commentator wrote about South Korea , “This is an authoritarian corporate culture . . . it’s very bad form to leave the office before the boss does, so people will stay in the office and not leave until the boss leaves.” Deja vu all over again! The identical story was told to me a few years back by a Goldman Sachs partner, who noted, “Here, the highest ranking person leaves first and if he is working until midnight, everyone works until midnight. Lower ranking employees might work until midnight anyway, but you can be sure that no one EVER leaves until all of his higher ranking officers have all left the office.”

By the way, the U.S. GDP per capita is $45,800. Sub-Saharan Africa nations, by comparison: Sierra Leone $675; Rwanda, $870; Mozambique, $800; Liberia, $500; Eritrea, $540; Burundi, $340; Niger, $630; Uganda, $940.

Are you not thankful for your blessings?

This entry was posted 2 years, 8 months ago on Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 4:37 pm and is filed under Articles, Jun 07, 2009.

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