July 23rd, 2011, 7:31 am
QuoteOriginally posted by: Traden4AlphaQuoteOriginally posted by: CuchulainnQuote And maybe Germans will get disgusted with the "lazy" members of the EU, use their resources to ring-fence German banks, and let the rest of the EU collapse.It's nothing to do with laziness. It was cheap lending. The work week in Greece is 41 hours, while in north EU it's 30. But do Greek workers accomplish as much in 41 hours as German workers accomplish in 30? Perhaps "laziness" is the wrong word and I apologize for that. Perhaps the problem is low worker productivity and high pension profligacy (in terms of generous retirement age and wage fractions for Greek pensions).As an economist living in Greece, I can assure you that this 41 hours week is simply an understatement. Its "greek statistics", just the other side of the coin. Such stats come from hours recorded, reported, and paid out to people with employee status. In private sector people work regularly long unpaid overtime, that are never recorded or reported either, either with legal loopholes, eg christian everyone as some sort of manager, or plain employer extortion. The same is valid for self employed people whose population is disproportionate higher than EU average, farmers, fishermen, people working in seasonal jobs, such as in tourism industry. Furthermore, there are people who do second or third jobs, and due to exclusivity clauses, these jobs must be black, consequently hours worked are neither recorded nor reported anywhere. In summary, having witnessed the aforementioned reality, I wouldnt be surprised if the average week hours were higher than 50.As for lower productivity, when the labour cost is cheap compared to EU average, however you estimate it, there is no short supply of labour, even skilled labour, the employer has little incentive to invest in technology. I ve witnessed this on multiple cases and on multiple aspects. Another issue is the low R&D spending, which is more related to the high number of SME in the economy, and secondary to the risk aversion and risk bearing capacity of entrepreneurs.