Depository for off topic / political posts (NO brexit related posts please)

JasonC wrote:

European countries have different views on work vs leisure.

Maybe, but probably not the way you think. The fact is that Greeks worked on average several hundreds of hours more per year than Germans was totally lost on most commentators and especially German tabloids during the Greek debt crisis. So they actually work “harder” than Germans. But working “harder” is no quality on its own (it is very Puritan to see it this way). Scandinavians and Germans actually don’t work that much but have better living standards than the South or the UK.

Work and business is just a means to an end, and money especially as it is just a means to simplify the exchange of goods and services. That seems totally lost on many in the US and UK, perhaps due to the cultural heritage of a form of protestantism which promoted hard work and financial success as serving god.

@Silvaire
Your posts seem especially glaring in this respect because they can be rewritten as money = quality of life. I am fairly certain that is not what you meant to say.

While working “longer” is definitely harder (and i know that people in Greece work hard), the more important thing for an economy is productivity.

Work and business is just a means to an end

It is true that many people – probably most, numerically – don’t like their job and cannot wait for their holiday to Malaga or whatever. And many cannot wait till their retirement (often they die within 3 years but that’s another story). I am sure most of the content of the Brighton to London 7am train hate the waste of their life, and same for a similar train in Germany or anywhere else. But these people chose their lifestyle… they have only themselves to blame.

But the vast majority of people who got their fingers out to really improve their life and successfully started a business or got into some skilled profession do enjoy it. A businessman working say 100hrs/week (as I used to in my 20s when I started) is generally having a good time. I’ve had a great time since I started in 1978… apart from getting involved with some useless “partners” way back.

The fact is that Greeks worked on average several hundreds of hours more per year than Germans was totally lost on most commentators

It would be because central European commentators won’t understand where real quality of life comes from, for people living away from the treadmill.

A Greek working 100hrs/week in his/her olive grove and tending the goats in the sunshine and warmth, having lots of “socials” with others, etc, has a very good quality of life, and isn’t interested in productivity.

Greece became a football for the elite classes, the financial syndicates, the usual central European companies paying bribes (always welcome in Greece, as indeed in most of the earth’s surface area) all over the place, and all the vermin that made fat commissions out of it in the full knowledge that it was a one-off opportunity, facilitated by the Euro.

The whole southern Europe Euro belt was most grateful for the fish but they were never going to join the factory-job-for-life treadmill – a point of extreme frustration further up north

There’s several things wrong with this simplistic view of the world.

Most of the people on commuter trains (“content”) do the best they can do to make ends meet (feed ther family, pay the rent, educate kids) – and not everybody (or only a low percentage) has the talents and/or possibility to start their own business and to become “successful”. And I also do not agree that “Most of the content” hate their lives. I for have a high respect for these people. UK, Germany, Greece, India or the US, Japan, the vast majority of people on this planet are motivated to improve their lives.

The Greek “tending goats in the sunshine” is just a cliché, and it’s also wrong. Yes, they exist, in some remote village on Crete or other islands. The majority of Greeks lives in cities and WANTS to live in cities and don’t care about goats and olives. They want a modern lifestyle, cars, motorcycles and consumer electronics, just like the rest of us does. No place on earth I have seen has a higher density of restaurants and cafes than, let’s say, Heraklion. The interesting: While cafes in Munich are empty during working hours – they’re full in Greece. And there’s five iPhones on every table.

Greece was not forced into the EU but did everything (even forge the numbers) to get into it. Now, when you want to be in a club, then you have to follow at least the most important rules. And these were completely clear. The inability to get their things straight is responsible for the Greek situation, nothing else. And it IS possible to overcome the problems: Look at Ireland, Portugal, others.

I am sure Greece will, in the long run, learn the lesson – or leave the EU. It is the 15th largest economy of the EU, by the way.

Edit:

Agriculture contributes 3.8% of the country’s GDP and employs 12.4% of the country’s labor force.
(Source Wikipedia)

Peter wrote:

But these people chose their lifestyle… they have only themselves to blame.

They do? You mean everyone could be a successful entrepreneur? Let’s turn it around. Like most people on this forum I’m a “successful” person. I’m among the top 5% earners in my country. I have an interesting and free job. I’ve been happily married for 30 years to a woman who earns even more than I do. And I’ve managed the full EASA IR TK.

Did I choose this lifestyle? In all honesty I can’t say I did — and I have though about this a lot, seeing friends who have worked just as hard and are much less well off. The place I am in now is due to my social and genetic background (which I obviously didn’t choose), from getting (by chance) an early interest in computer programming at a time where knowledge of such things was still exclusive and then taking the opportunities as they presented themselves. I have only made perhaps 2 or 3 really hard and potentially life-changing choices (including choices related to my personal life).

Peter wrote:

It would be because central European commentators won’t understand where real quality of life comes from, for people living away from the treadmill.

A Greek working 100hrs/week in his/her olive grove and tending the goats in the sunshine and warmth, having lots of “socials” with others, etc, has a very good quality of life, and isn’t interested in productivity.

Greece became a football for the elite classes, the financial syndicates, the usual central European companies paying bribes (always welcome in Greece, as indeed in most of the earth’s surface area) all over the place, and all the vermin that made fat commissions out of it in the full knowledge that it was a one-off opportunity, facilitated by the Euro.

Well, here I completely agree with you.

Did I choose this lifestyle?

That could be a very theoretical argument but, yes, you did.

In N Europe, a person with marketable skills generally gets a choice between “the treadmill” (my example of the Brighton to London train) and living more “locally” where the pay will be 50 of the London pay and the working environment tends to be a lot less dynamic.

The resulting net pay differs by say 25% (due to travel costs etc) but the quality of life differs massively.

I have job-interviewed many people who work in London and who want to move into the “villages” where I am based. But nearly all of them will never make the move (well not until some major event e.g. a heart issue forces them re re-evaluate their life) because they cannot sustain their present lifestyle (mortgage etc) on 25% less money.

And just about everything else is a lifestyle choice too e.g. whether to have children.

Learning to fly is a choice too. You get a lot of fun but you have a lot less money left for other stuff.

Peter wrote:

That could be a very theoretical argument but, yes, you did.

Of course I did in the trivial sense that I choose to first put my left or my right leg into my trousers when I get dressed. But I did not make a conscious choice between different paths in life. It was not like, “if I choose this path and work hard then I will end up with a lot of money but if I choose this path it will be easy going and less money”.

Alexis wrote:

Greece was not forced into the EU but did everything (even forge the numbers) to get into it. Now, when you want to be in a club, then you have to follow at least the most important rules.

Really, like Germany did?