Wednesday, July 21, 2010

In God we Trust vs. In Loco Parentis

Ah, those continental sophisticates.

So intelligent, in fact, that they believe that their employers “give” them vacation and benefits, as though the resources used to fund them fell from outer space. They don’t, you dimwitted sucknozzle, they just pay you less, and pretend to be generous with what they didn’t give you in the first place.

Further, to reinforce the delusions that they frequently beat off to when they’re otherwise far less likely to be be employed to begin with:

What’s more striking is that serious analysts rarely talk about “laziness”. The reason is simple: European laziness may seem an alluring explanation for the observed differences, but the statistics tell a different story. The fact that Europeans work less isn’t due to laziness, but to a voluntary trade-off, says Andrew Moravcsik, a political scientist at Princeton and Newsweek contributor. The unemployment levels distort the figures: the US has known lower unemployment than Europe for the past ten years and a smaller non-working population. So it’s logical that the “average European” should put in fewer hours.

According to Moravcsik, Europeans are fully capable of working more, but they opt to spend more time at leisure than at making money. Economists say that trade-off gets more prevalent as a society gets richer. Americans, however, are the exception to the rule. The US, he continues, is the only developed, industrialised country in which working hours have increased enormously.
It’s not a trade, it’s a “take it or leave it” sh*t sandwich. “Getting more hours” when employed by someone else is something you see a lot more drooling over in EUtopia than in the US. In fact, in the US, you see a lot more people who know full well that they can take all of the leisure time that they like, because in normal times you actually CAN find a job after taking “a pause that refreshes” without waiting the European averages which range from 6 to 18 months for another job, even in boom times.

But let’s not be too harsh. There are a few people who DO get it:
The German press has been focussing recently on a group of “eternally unemployed” who for decades have been living off the state, reports Gazeta Wyborcza. Some, the Warsaw daily notes, receive up to €1,085 per month which is enough for food and accommodation, and still leaving some for leisure and entertainment, or even a short vacation on the Baltic coast. The last time Arno Dübel, 54, had a job was twenty seven years ago. Every month he receives a cheque for 359 EUR and the state also pays rent for his two-room flat in Hamburg. According to him, being unemployed has nothing but advantages: he doesn’t have to follow anyone’s orders, doesn’t get stressed, doesn’t have to get up early. So what does he do during the day? Shopping at Lidl, walking the dog, watching some TV. “Working is a beautiful thing when others do it. I’m no good for it,” says Mr Dübel with disarming honesty. No wonder Bild tabloid has called him Germany’s “cheekiest” jobless person. There are many more like him in Germany, points out the Warsaw daily.
Send that man a flotilla! He’s having a humanitarian crisis !!!

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