Wahaha! Back to Reality!

We work too much compared to Europe

Ahhh, back on the job at last. Canada ought to cancel the May long weekend. These words may sound like the rant of a deranged workaholic, but they actually do a pretty good job of describing our society's values when compared with those in many other wealthy countries. The average Canadian worked 1,751 hours in 2004. That's about 300 hours - or 43 seven-hour days - more than the Dutch, Germans, French or Danes. European societies are at one end of the spectrum while Canada, the US, Australia and Japan are at the other. Magnus Schonning offers an interesting perspective. The 38-year-old Swede has been working at his country's embassy in Ottawa for four years. He gets 42 days of vacation annually, which includes a 10-day bonus for working abroad. "I can't take it all," Schonning said. As a father of two children, he also gets as much as a year off, at 80% pay, per youngster. Though the mother and father decide how to divvy up the time, dad must take at least two months off work per child. "We work to live, and not live to work, Schonning explained. Sweden's very high productivity levels - it boasts the highest ratio of industrial robots in the world - allow the society to value leisure time, he said. Based on total economic output, adjusted by population and purchasing power, Canada's gross domestic product is very similar to that of many European countries, and below some.

Most Canadian provinces require employers to provide only two weeks of vacation per year. Canada could easily add another week to the minimum holiday times and the economy would not collapse, said Ron Burke, professor of organizational behaviour at York University's Schulich School of Business. "Canadians could actually work fewer hours and it wouldn't make much of a dent in our GDP. And you'd have healthier workers." Long working hours not only fail to promote efficiency, but may also increase the likelihood of people making mistakes, Burke said. Long workdays "may be in the short-term interest of a shareholder or company president, but it is definitely not in the long-term interest of most Canadians." For Canadian society in general, the last big cut in working hours came 50 years ago, when Canada cut the work week to five days from six, Andrew Jackson, an economist with the Canadian Labour Congress said. Back then, the business community warned the economy would collapse as a result, and the same bogus arguments are being made today, Jackson said. "Economists have found that every significant step that was taken to reduce working time was accompanied by a sharp increase in productivity."
(Toronto Star 060523)

Does that mean we can move to a four-day work week now...please? I wish I was European...

Can US engineer soft landing?

The man who helped create one of the largest housing booms in America history, as well as the man who replaced him, say the party is now officially over. Alan Greenspan, the former US Federal Reserve chairman, and Ben Bernanke, the current Fed chair, both said last week the long-running housing price run-up fueled largely by low interest rates has ended. "This has been quite an extraordinary boom," Greenspan said in his first remarks since retiring after 18 years at the helm of the world's most powerful central bank. "Home sales are off, applications are off, everything is going in the same direction," he said at the Bond Market Association's 30th anniversary celebration in New York. "The boom is over, and you can say that with a fairly strong degree of confidence." Those comments were echoed by Bernanke. "We're seeing slowing in sales, slowing in starts," Bernanke said in Chicago. "There also seem to be signs that prices are not rising as quickly as they have been for the past few years." Both men, who have very similar styles, appear to be trying to signal to US consumers that they should soon get used to lower or flat prices for housing. The huge run-up in prices was largely spurred by moves by Greenspan, who lowered the key overnight lending rate to 1%, a four-decade low, after the stock market collapsed several years ago. The debate now, however, is whether Bernanke, with the help of Greenspan, can manage a soft landing for the housing market, which represents about 20% of US economic activity. Bernanke insists there will be gentle landing for the housing market as prices ease in some of the hottest markets such as California. He described the changing market as "moderate" and "orderly."
(National Post 060523)

The question is whether the bubble is going to explode or simply deflate. Let's hope it's the latter. I don't trust the Federal Reserve or the Bank of Canada to do anything responsible anyways. They are simply cronies of big money and big government as well.