The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum

=> Re: Thoughts while daydreaming in my hammock

Re: Thoughts while daydreaming in my hammock
Posted by Jeff (Guest) - Friday, August 26 2005, 6:29:16 (CEST)
from 69.14.30.71 - d14-69-71-30.try.wideopenwest.com Commercial - Windows XP - Mozilla
Website:
Website title:

Maggie,
Thank you for sharing this. A few weeks ago I went to a party and several Europeans happened to be present. I was struck with their logic and good sense in these matters.

Two of them, a couple who are a few years older than me, told me about how they have been saving up their money to take a bicycle trip from San Diego to the bottom tip of Chile in South America. I was, of course, shocked, and exclaimed "HOW CAN YOU AFFORD TO DO THAT?"

They responded simply that they have priorities in their life, and they watch what they spend. They don't buy frivolously, they buy their own food and cook instead of going out to eat (unhealthily, I might add), etc. And I think that their lives were richer for it.

And how refreshing it was to meet someone who doesn't exclaim "YOU don't have a TV at ALL?!?!?!" when you tell them that you don't watch tv. Whoooa Europe!

I can't wait to visit Europe.


Maggie wrote:
>When I visit friends in Europe, I see the Europeans do not seek a higher standard of living, They seek what they consider a higher quality of life. Less luxury, but more leisure. There is no objective way to say which is better. But, it's obvious that a diligent worker who loves luxuries will out-produce a not-so-diligent worker who loves leisure. A contest of production between an American worker, who produces one-third more per hour and works one-third more hours than the European, will be no contest.
>
>Between 1970 and 2001, the hours worked annually by the average American worker went from 1,900 to 2,000. Meanwhile, the hours worked annually by the average German worker went from 1,900 to 1,550.
>
>In 1960, the average retirement age of a French worker was 65, now its 59, according to the OECD. For German workers, it went from 65 to 60.5. For Americans it went from 62 to 64.
>
>On top of the disparity in hours worked per year and years worked per career, add the fact that the American worker is also more productive in terms of output per hour of work.
>
>It is fine for the European countries to compete with the United States economically. Isn't competition supposed to be good for the economy in general, guided by Adam Smith's Invisible Hand? But, for this to happen, the European worker is going to have to work a third more hours each year and retire five years later, and I doubt that any European politician can get elected on a platform like that.
>
>
>The Americans are the world’s highest per capita consumers of almost everything. Oil, steel, food, everything! And to keep this "growth is good" lifestyle going, they have to work harder and longer. Whereas, most Europeans have the "why would I want 3 cars, a swimming pool (in Glasgow) or whatever" mentality. Not only that, but it seems that Europeans while having realized that they are all wage slaves try to have a life at the same time.
>
>P.S- I see the almighty Dollar is now worth less than the Euro!! Something we PUSHED for!



---------------------


The full topic:



Content-length: 3487
Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
Accept-charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Accept-encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Connection: keep-alive
Cookie: *hidded*
Host: www.insideassyria.com
Keep-alive: 300
Referer: http://www.insideassyria.com/rkvsf4/rkvsf_core.php?Thoughts_while_daydreaming_in_my_hammock-8Iad.Rhmu.QUOTE
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.9) Gecko/20050711 Firefox/1.0.5



Powered by RedKernel V.S. Forum 1.2.b9