An Evanescent Paradise

Take a look at this chart... It shows the average years spent in retirement... the recent French strike protested the increase in the retirement age, from 60 to 62, but we see that the French can expect more retirement time than most people.  Notice also that France is second in terms of government spending on pensions:

Granted, the French aren't really protesting a decrease in their retirement years-  the youth are concerned that if people don't retire, new jobs won't open up, and the high unemployment will be perpetuated...  You can also see the U.S. there on the bottom.  For people age 55-64, only 38% of Frenchmen are working, while 62% of Americans of the same age are still kickin' it.  But retirement is only one example of the gulf between Europe and the U.S.: the whole approach to life, money, and work is different.

"It is time to stop pretending," writes Robert Kagan, "that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world."...  For example, "as tourists throng the streets and summer temperatures hit their peak, Paris’ most popular ice-cream parlor is closed for a whole six weeks" while the owners take their vacation.  Can you imagine?  To any American businessman this is total idiocy!

"The average American produces 43% more than the average Frenchman... citizens of America's poorest state, Mississippi, have a higher GDP than Italians; and Alabamans beat the Germans, French and Belgians...  Why?  In productivity, or output per hour, Americans have only a tiny edge over Europeans, but the average American works 400 more hours per year than a German and 300 hours more than a Frenchman."

But before you go begrudging them their 2 months vacation, 35-hr max work week, and dozen public holidays, consider the cost of putting pleasure before profit:

-- just because they have a vacation, doesn't mean they have the money to take advantage of it.  The increased leisure time in France correlates to more time spent in front of the TV, not on the Riviera. 

--the infrastructure of less work/more leisure can't support itself.  Other European countries have turned the tide and are cutting their leisurely benefits.  However, no French politician is going to try to take away what the French now view as entitlement.. It's a downhill train. 
 

I hope you don't mind the didactic post today.  I was even tempted to craft it into a college-worthy essay to make it more coherent for you, but there are lots of interesting articles on the subject, so why re-do what others have already been done so well?  Here is one that links the decline of work in Northern Europe to the decline in religion, (the "secularized sloth" has "finally slain the Protestant work ethic.."):

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/08/weekinreview/the-world-why-america-outpaces-europe-clue-the-god-factor.html?pagewanted=3

I'll leave you with this:

 "Europeans have traded leisure for wealth.  The only problem with this formula is that Europe has tried to have its gâteau and eat it too.  Creating wealth, if only to redistribute it, ultimately requires hard work.  But Europe's welfare state, and its incentives for leisure have continued to grow. (Never mind that America has subsidized Europe's domestic benefits for decades by bearing the lion's share of its defense costs).  Europe [is portrayed] as warmer, fuzzier, fairer, more intellectual, more healthy and less stressful than America.  Perhaps so.  But if Europe is a paradise, it is an evanescent one."