America, in the 200 some odd years since it’s beginnning, has emerged as the most economically powerful country on this planet. There’s a multitude of reasons why this is so, but unfortunately one of the reasons is that people work their asses off over here. people’s lives revolve around their jobs 40 hours per week and 50 weeks out of the year. heh, even the 40 hours is an understatement, and statistics show that 40% of americans work over 50 hours per week!! overall, americans work up to 12 weeks more in total hours per year than people in europe.
you really gotta wonder, is it worth it?? what good is it to work like crazy week after week, year after year? i mean, yeah, sure we are better off than small third world countries that have little to no economy whatsoever, but at the same time, it just seems like there’s gotta be a way to find a better balance somehow. online, i found this chart that shows vacation time required by law and average vacation time used broken down by country. as you can see, the amount in the US is pretty sad:
anyways, this group is campaigning to get the vacation laws in this country changed. check it out: http://www.worktolive.info/poen_vaca.html
*v
You know how I feel about this.
What is odd, though, is you always hear about how lazy Americans are. Are we lazy, or are we just too damned tired to do anything after work?
i think we are just lazy. and… out of the billion hours per year that we work… how many of those hours do we actually do work?? 1/2? 1/3?? mybe if they cut the work hours we get in half but we actually worked our asses of during that time, things might work out better…
*v
Hey, I work really hard every single hour I am at work 😉
Yeah, I think we are just lazy, too.