Why America Outpaces Europe (Clue: The God Factor)

[Cain]

Saw this in the _NYT_ today: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/08/weekinreview/08FERG.html (registration required)

OXFORD, England — It was almost a century ago that the German sociologist Max Weber published his influential essay "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism." In it, Weber argued that modern capitalism was "born from the spirit of Christian asceticism" in its specifically Protestant form — in other words, there was a link between the self-denying ethos of the Protestant sects and the behavior patterns associated with capitalism, above all hard work.

Many scholars have built careers out of criticizing Weber's thesis. Yet the experience of Western Europe in the past quarter-century offers an unexpected confirmation of it. To put it bluntly, we are witnessing the decline and fall of the Protestant work ethic in Europe. This represents the stunning triumph of secularization in Western Europe — the simultaneous decline of both Protestantism and its unique work ethic.

...

But what the productivity numbers don't reveal is the dramatic divergence over two decades between the amount of time Americans work and the amount of time Western Europeans work. By American standards, Western Europeans are astonishingly idle.
According to a recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the average working American spends 1,976 hours a year on the job. The average German works just 1,535 — 22 percent less. The Dutch and Norwegians put in even fewer hours. Even the British do 10 percent less work than their trans-Atlantic cousins. Between 1979 and 1999, the average American working year lengthened by 50 hours, or nearly 3 percent. But the average German working year shrank by 12 percent.

Yet even these figures understate the extent of European idleness, because a larger proportion of Americans work. Between 1973 and 1998 the percentage of the American population in employment rose from 41 percent to 49 percent. But in Germany and France the percentage fell, ending up at 44 and 39 percent. Unemployment rates in most Northern European countries are also markedly higher than in the United States.

What clinches the Weber thesis is that Northern Europe's declines in working hours coincide almost exactly with steep declines in religious observance. In the Netherlands, Britain, Germany, Sweden and Denmark, less than 10 percent of the population now attend church at least once a month, a dramatic decline since the 1960's. (Only in Catholic Italy and Ireland do more than a third of the population go to church on a monthly basis.) In the recent Gallup Millennium Survey of religious attitudes, 49 percent of Danes, 52 percent of Norwegians and 55 percent of Swedes said God did not matter to them. In North America, by comparison, 82 percent of respondents said God was "very important."

...

According to Gallup, 48 percent of Western Europeans almost never go to church, but the figure for Eastern Europe is just a bit less, at 44 percent. Meanwhile, 64 percent of Czechs regard God as not mattering at all — a higher rate than even in Sweden. In this respect the difference between "old" and "new" Europe may turn out to be less than many Americans now believe. Enlargement of the European Union may simply confirm the eastward spread of the leisure preference in an increasingly work-shy and Godless European continent.

Niall Ferguson is a professor of financial history at the Stern School of Business, New York University, and a senior research fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. He is the author of "Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power.

Personally, I've always been rather skeptical of the whole "Protestant Work Ethic" baloney. Oh, sure, it essentially says, we're rich because we get religion. All those primitive third-world countries with their pagan gods... it's no wonder why they're poor. (I think the Nobel Prize Winning economist Robert Solow identified this as one of six necessary factors to industrialization.)

Earlier I posted an article about the insane number of hours Americans work.

[JamesM]

What clinches the Weber thesis is that Northern Europe's declines in working hours coincide almost exactly with steep declines in religious observance.

Come on Prof, try not to make this round of "spot the gross abuse of statistics" too easy for us, would you?

[corplinx]

soooo, what do you call an atheist who believes in capitalism?

.
.
.
.
.
.

An economics major!

[corplinx]

And lets not forget that christians were behind some of the early socialism movements that have resulted in the poor productivity we see now in hard socialist countries.

[Malachi151]

Oh, make me puke.

How do these *********** morons get jobs writing for a living?

Why is America "more successful"?

Let's see, federal system, compared to many separate countries.

More resources.

More immigrants and cheap labor.

Lower population density = more resources per person.

A cult of competition. Americans work longer hours, etc.

Americas international foreign relations and control of foreign resources. I mean hell let's just compare Americans foreign action over the past 50 years with Europes. That is a huge difference. Americna companies have been much more highly invovled globally and have been more invlved in controling foreign governments and economies.

Then we have the fact that the dollar makes up about 4/5 of the international currency reservee giving America a huge advantage over every country on earth.

I mean the list goes on and on. It may have something to do with religion, but its certianly one of factor out of hundreds.

Secondly so what? Does that make it right?

Let's look at the together side effects of America's work ethic.

Less time to spend with kids.
Poorer education.
Higher level of stress and mental disorder in America compared to Europe.
More violent society.
The rich getting much richer off the hard self-sacraficing work of the middle classes who work under compensanted while the rich take advantage of them.

The average European I believe starts work with 6 weeks vacation and they have a 35 hour work week.

What does that amount to? More time to spend with family and enjoy life. Yeah, how horrible.

[corplinx]

In america workers have the right to organize and collectively bargain. However, then the government steps in and regulates labor it creates apathy. Why organize when you can lobby the government? Its liberty versus paternalism.

In europe, that battle was lost long ago. The government's of france and germany have become labor unions. The end result is poor productivity and substandard products. Payroll taxes that pay employee beneifts are stifling. The worst part is, if you try to scale back government regulation its demogogued as "social regression!" I feel france may be a lost cause but germany can still salvage itself.

[DanishDynamite]

Malachi151:The average European I believe starts work with 6 week vacation and they have a 35 hour work week. I don't know what the average is for Europe, but in Denmark it is 5 weeks and 3 days vacation and a 37 hour work week. What is it in the US?

[DanishDynamite]

corplinx:In america workers have the right to organize and collectively bargain. However, then the government steps in and regulates labor it creates apathy. Why organize when you can lobby the government? Its liberty versus paternalism.Not sure I follow. Could you expand on why labor shouldn't organize?
In europe, that battle was lost long ago. The government's of france and germany have become labor unions. The end result is poor productivity and substandard products. Payroll taxes that pay employee beneifts are stifling. The worst part is, if you try to scale back government regulation its demogogued as "social regression!" I feel france may be a lost cause but germany can still salvage itself. While I would agree that there is too much socialism in Denmark and in at least some other European countries, I'd like to see some data on firstly the prevalence of substandard products in Europe and secondly (if the first can be shown), the relation to socialism.

In regard to the topic at hand, according to OECD (http://www1.oecd.org/publications/e-book/92-2001-04-1-2987/PDF%5CD1.pdf) a number of European countries have a higher GDP per hour worked than the US. They just have a significantly lower number of hours worked per capita (as mentioned by Cain and Malachi151).

[Malachi151]

Originally posted by DanishDynamite
Malachi151: I don't know what the average is for Europe, but in Denmark it is 5 weeks and 3 days vacation and a 37 hour work week. What is it in the US?

Start with 1 or 2 weeks vacation and 40 hour work week, but really most end up working more then 40 hours a week.

Plus in Denmark you CAN'T go over 37 hours can you, or the company pays a fine right? Here there is no fine its very common to work over time or to be salary and work 60 hours a week. I remember for about 2 or 3 months one time a work when we had deadlines to meet working from 8:00 AM to about 11:00 pm. They did give us some small bonuses though, but it was moslty in "performace shares" which have ended up being worthless.

[Malachi151]

Originally posted by DanishDynamite
corplinx:Not sure I follow. Could you expand on why labor shouldn't organize?
While I would agree that there is too much socialism in Denmark and in at least some other European countries, I'd like to see some data on firstly the prevalence of substandard products in Europe and secondly (if the first can be shown), the relation to socialism.

In regard to the topic at hand, according to OECD (http://www1.oecd.org/publications/e-book/92-2001-04-1-2987/PDF%5CD1.pdf) a number of European countries have a higher GDP per hour worked than the US. They just have a significantly lower number of hours worked per capita (as mentioned by Cain and Malachi151).

Yes, I remember an article about how Americans worked longer hours but got less done than in Europe and Japan. Also, Japan is mostly atheist, what about their work ethic? :p

[corplinx]

Originally posted by DanishDynamite
corplinx:Not sure I follow. Could you expand on why labor shouldn't organize?


I didn't say it shouldn't. I said the government shouldn't be used a labor union.

[DanishDynamite]

Malachi151:Start with 1 or 2 weeks vacation and 40 hour work week, but really most end up working more then 40 hours a week.:eek:

God bless Europe. ;)
Plus in Denmark you CAN'T go over 37 hours can you, or the company pays a fine right? Here there is no fine its very common to work over time or to be salary and work 60 hours a week. I remember for about 2 or 3 months one time a work when we had deadlines to meet working from 8:00 AM to about 11:00 pm. They did give us some small bonuses though, but it was moslty in "performace shares" which have ended up being worthless. No, the company doesn't pay a fine. They do, of course, have to pay for the overtime, unless the contract between the employee and the employer states otherwise. The latter situation is often the case for employees who have reached a certain level of income (and responsibility).

[DanishDynamite]

Originally posted by corplinx


I didn't say it shouldn't. I said the government shouldn't be used a labor union. Well, you also said:

"Why organize when you can lobby the government? Its liberty versus paternalism."

This was the bit I didn't understand.

[Elind]

"What clinches the Weber thesis is that Northern Europe's declines in working hours coincide almost exactly with steep declines in religious observance."

It also coincides with their lack of interest in the O'Reilly Factor, and possibly with not drinking enough light beer.

[Malachi151]

Originally posted by Elind
"What clinches the Weber thesis is that Northern Europe's declines in working hours coincide almost exactly with steep declines in religious observance."

It also coincides with their lack of interest in the O'Reilly Factor, and possibly with not drinking enough light beer.

Really, I mean I don't understnad how this made print. Oh wait, yes, the its LIBERAL MEDIA :p

Yeah, that really "clinches" it. I'm going to e-mail this writer and put a foot in his arse :D

[Zep]

The original commentary refers only to countries in NORTHERN EUROPE! Maybe my geography is out of date, but the last time I looked, the USA wasn't in northern Europe... So why is this at all relevant???

Zep

[Malachi151]

This is the e-mail I wrote to him. I think it was a little harsh, oh well ;)

Could you be any more clueless? Not exactly the best way to open a letter, but seriously, how do people like you get jobs as professional writers?

Let's go over some facts, which seem to have eluded you.

America has many more natural resources than Europe does. America has a federal system, which is a huge advantage over the separate European nations, one which they are currently working to correct. The dollar makes up about 2/3 of the all the international reserve currencies and about 4/5 of all foreign trade exchanges, something that puts the US at a huge advantage economically over every country in the world. The US is more open to immigration, which provides more cheap labor and also more skilled labor, while is has the effect of hurting the rest of the world.

The US is the new imperialist. After WWII the European nations gave up their empires for the most part, at that same time America has gone around the world grabbing up the colonies that they left behind. Vietnam, Nigeria, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Chile, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Nixon's engagement of China, etc. That's where our economic advantage comes from. Pull your head out of the dark and take a look at the real world.

What do you think the war in Iraq is all about eh? Its about the economic conflict between the EU and the USA in completion over the resources of the Middle East. Don't be a fool.

Here are some links to information that I have put together on this subject:

http://www.rationalrevolution.net

http://malachi151.tripod.com/development_of_america.htm

And as for Americans "working more", I've also seen studies that show that Europeans get more work done per unit time. I think the article was titled something like "Americans working more, doing less".

And what good is all this work anyway? Why are our American families so stressed? Its really because of all this work. More time off of work means more time to live life and spend with family. America also has more violence, more crime, and more poverty than Europe too, yippie. Working long hours is not all that's is cracked up to be. I work 40 hours a week, have my own business outside of that, and write, and remodel homes over about a 2 year period of time to resell them to make money as I live in them. In all that I'm still not making any amazing amount of money. So whoop-de-do, we work a lot, wow. I think developing a system where people didn't have to work so much is a better idea in the first place, maybe then we wouldn't have so many "family values" problems.

And, yes, I'm an atheist, my father is an agnostic, and my grandfather was an agnostic (on both sides). I'm a software developer, by dad is a dentist, my grandfather was a pharmacist and businessman, my other grandfather is a lawyer and was a judge. We all work hard and it has nothing at all to do with church.

[JAR]

The work ethic in America is one of the things that makes me feel like I'm lying when I say "I'm an American."

I'm an extremely lazy person. When I was growing up, I had that "hard work is worth it" propaganda shoved down my throat by my father, boy scout leaders, and teachers at school. The propaganda was too no avail.

[DialecticMaterialist]

This entire article is so bad as to be almost childish.

The whole gist of it: America is hard working, Europe is lazy, an extremely controversial claim is assumed.

Also is the author claiming the US is ahead of all europe combined? If so, I'd really like to see some evidence for this. As I highly doubt it.

The fact is the US is much bigger then all of Europe and gets much of its wealth from a few key states, the so-called "lazy" liberal states in fact produce the most wealth.

The fact is a bigger country is of course going to out produce a smaller country. Unless there is some huge disadvantage in terms of technology or political organization and such, the bigger/more populated nation will produce more.

Thus a comparison of the US with any single European nation is a bit unfair, that's like comparing China to California.

Secondly many non-Xian nations are doing very well now, Japan and China for example. If they were states in the US, they'd be the top states.

Also many religious nations which likewsie espouse a work ethic are likewise dirt poor: India, Iran, etc.

Muslims believe Allah like hard workers. Hindu's believe in following through with their Dharma. India btw, isn't really dirt poor, but poor compared to say, the US, China and Japan.

All in all, the premises of the article are questionable and it's conclusion is premature, to say the least.

[EdipisReks]

Originally posted by JAR
The work ethic in America is one of the things that makes me feel like I'm lying when I say "I'm an American."

I'm an extremely lazy person. When I was growing up, I had that "hard work is worth it" propaganda shoved down my throat by my father, boy scout leaders, and teachers at school. The propaganda was too no avail.

can i join the club? i find nothing more satisfactory than doing nothing. i don't know how i managed to become an eagle scout, and i don't know how i will manage in grad school.

[JAR]

Originally posted by EdipisReks
can i join the club? i find nothing more satisfactory than doing nothing. i don't know how i managed to become an eagle scout, and i don't know how i will manage in grad school.
Yeah. My highest rank in boy scouts was Star. My older brother reached eagle. Like me, he got bad grades in high school. I remember as I progressed through boy scouts, the age at which scouts were achieving eagle kept getting younger and younger.

When I first became a boy scout, among the scouts of my troop eagle scout was this rarely attainable thing that only the very oldest scouts achieved. After a while, there was this scout in my former troop(my troop split into two and I switched to the new one) who got eagle before he was out of middle school.

I wasn't a boy scout because I wanted to be one. I was a boy scout because my father felt I needed to be one to become a responsible hardworking person.

[Malachi151]

Originally posted by DialecticMaterialist
Also is the author claiming the US is ahead of all europe combined? If so, I'd really like to see some evidence for this. As I highly doubt it.



Here is an idea:

http://www.eurunion.org/profile/EUUSStats.htm

I think that land area, especially considerin the land that the US has is awsome, and population density are key factors. The US's low pop density and definately a huge factor in GDP per capita. The fewer people you have sharing more resources the better that each person can get a share.

[DialecticMaterialist]

Interesting and good point.Though I doubt the US has less unemployment then Europe, less we include some very bad areas of East Europe like Yogoslavia(which I believe is unfair.)

However higher population desnities may help too. New York and California I believe produce more overall wealth then any other state, and they are also two of the most heavily populated. Likewise I believe Texas is about the size of England or France, with alower population density but has less overall wealth then those countries as a whole.

[heath]

2nd hand anecdote re work ethic and hours worked:

An American colleague of mine that has worked in London for the last 5 years and in the US for the 10 years before that (since he graduated university) tells me that in the US people tend to be a lot more rush-rush and appearing to be very busy but get no more done that their more laid back UK (or VERY laid back Aussie :p ) counterparts.

A case of needing to work smarter rather than harder.

[Malachi151]

Originally posted by DialecticMaterialist
Interesting and good point.Though I doubt the US has less unemployment then Europe, less we include some very bad areas of East Europe like Yogoslavia(which I believe is unfair.)

However higher population desnities may help too. New York and California I believe produce more overall wealth then any other state, and they are also two of the most heavily populated. Likewise I believe Texas is about the size of England or France, with alower population density but has less overall wealth then those countries as a whole.

True, but its impossible to compare US states to European countries really. I mean resources are pretty much openly shared among states. Did you go to that link? It shows US unemployment lower than EU or Japan, but again, each country reports unemployment differently as well. I have no problem believe that unemployment is lower in the US.

The US has a great economy, and I won't bash the US economy or the fact that it is relatively well mamaged to do what it is that its "managers" want it to do, which is create a huge amount for wealth for the very few.

But, when you look at all the factors you see dozens of reasosn why the US economy is so dominate, and work ethic is not chief among those.

Work ethic is good, but if you have 5 countries with the same work ethic and one has other advantages as well then obviously work ethic is not the factor that makes the difference, its the other issues. Obviously you can have a country with other advantages and a poor work ethic and still be behind, but that's hardly the case with Japan or Europe.

With the low population density in America its much easlier for people and companies to own resources or land, even shop space. That helps. Yes the most dense places are where a lot of wealth is, but since we have a federal system it doesn't really matter that California is dense, companies and people located in Cali benefit from resources which they may own or exploit all over the country, and the fact that other people can exploit those resources easily makes for a stronger consumer base, even though many financial headquarters may be located in cities, their consumer base is all over the country.

[Mike B.]

Are there comparable statistics on productivity?

[Cleopatra]

Originally posted by Malachi151
This is the e-mail I wrote to him. I think it was a little harsh, oh well ;)

Could you be any more clueless? Not exactly the best way to open a letter, but seriously, how do people like you get jobs as professional writers?


Malachi, have you lost you mind? Is this a way to address a professor of STERN??? Don't you think that you appear ridiculous when you try to justify your points of view by quoting yourself???!!!!!!! Who you think you are?

Come on, you are not the only one who has composed a paper in his life... there are other people here who have a PhD and they don't quote themselves all the time!!!!!!!

Now regarding the article. The article is not very well written,indeed, in fact I have the idea that it's the digest of a longer article. In my humble opinion, an opinion that cannot be supported by a paper composed by my royal self, you all missed his point.

It was not the Faith to a religion that contributed to the american miracle -AMONG OTHER THINGS.

It was the way that the specific dogma was developed. Protestantism, encourages self-control and devotion to a goal. People who go to church on a regular basis are most disciplined than others and they have the courage to be more resistant to difficulties.

Of course , I am not suggesting that we shall start going to church to learn discipline.

I think that this was his point and it was a very interesting approach.

[DanishDynamite]

Originally posted by Mike B.
Are there comparable statistics on productivity? Check out the OECD link I gave in a previous post. According to this link, Norway, Belgium, Netherlands and Italy (:eek: ) have a higher productivity than the US.

I'd just like to add a comment to the link. The OECD doesn't convert the local currencies to a common currency based on exchange rates, but on PPP (Purchasing Power Parity). This is a good idea in some respects, but I would just note that in converted dollar terms, the "lazy" socialist Scandinavians have consistently outperformed the US (http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/allied_contrib2000/E-2.html) since 1994.

[Mike B.]

Thanks DD for the information.

I wonder if there is a bit of "apples and oranges" here.

I would guess that productivity follows the law of diminishing returns. The later hours are the least productive. So if a country (i.e. Italy) works fewer hours the hours that they do work will be most productive. If the US works more hours the later hours will be least productive and hence will bring down the over all average of productivity. Even with the larger number of hours the US is still 4th. I would conclude the US, with all its faults, is a highly productive country.

Does that make sense?

BTW from your latest link Denmark had a bit of an economic boom in the 1990s. As a Dane do you have any theories why this happened?

[DanishDynamite]

Mike B.:I would guess that productivity follows the law of diminishing returns. The later hours are the least productive. So if a country (i.e. Italy) works fewer hours the hours that they do work will be most productive. If the US works more hours the later hours will be least productive and hence will bring down the over all average of productivity. Even with the larger number of hours the US is still 4th. I would conclude the US, with all its faults, is a highly productive country.

Does that make sense?There is no doubt that the US is indeed a very productive country. However, your thoughts regarding "diminishing returns" doesn't seem quite viable. If the later hours in the US are less productive, then why aren't the later hours in Italy or anywhere else also less productive?
BTW from your latest link Denmark had a bit of an economic boom in the 1990s. As a Dane do you have any theories why this happened? I'm not sure there was much of a boom in the 90's. From this site (http://www.eurunion.org/news/press/2000/2000020.htm) it is clear that we just barely outperformed the US in the period 1991-1995, but that we have since then had less GDP growth than the US.

[Malachi151]

Originally posted by Cleopatra


Malachi, have you lost you mind? Is this a way to address a professor of STERN??? Don't you think that you appear ridiculous when you try to justify your points of view by quoting yourself???!!!!!!! Who you think you are?

Come on, you are not the only one who has composed a paper in his life... there are other people here who have a PhD and they don't quote themselves all the time!!!!!!!

Now regarding the article. The article is not very well written,indeed, in fact I have the idea that it's the digest of a longer article. In my humble opinion, an opinion that cannot be supported by a paper composed by my royal self, you all missed his point.

It was not the Faith to a religion that contributed to the american miracle -AMONG OTHER THINGS.

It was the way that the specific dogma was developed. Protestantism, encourages self-control and devotion to a goal. People who go to church on a regular basis are most disciplined than others and they have the courage to be more resistant to difficulties.

Of course , I am not suggesting that we shall start going to church to learn discipline.

I think that this was his point and it was a very interesting approach.

The fact that the guy has a PhD is all the more reason he needs to be more responsible in what he writes. That article was irrisponsible and baseless. If they guy made it all the way though to getting a PhD and he hasn't learned any more about how to do a study or support a thesis then he needs a good ass chewing. That article is an embarassment to education.

BTW, I had ot do a search for his e-mail address, turns out he got attended a Christian school, so its no wonder, those schools are full of crap and let anyone get a hD as long as they wrtie incoherent garbage that supports theology.

I didn't quote myself, I just gave him links to my web sites, because they offer differing views and "real" explanations for how we have gotten wealthy as a nation. The guy needs a real education.

Hey, that's just me, I can't abide theology, and I can't abide people spreading stupidity using the phD title, so whatever :p :D

[Shane Costello]

Originally posted by Danish Dynamite:
Check out the OECD link I gave in a previous post. According to this link, Norway, Belgium, Netherlands and Italy (:eek:) have a higher productivity than the US.

The link is interesting in that it doesn't give a definitive answer as to how productivity was calculated, and lists a number of factors i.e. hours worked, differences in labour utilisation and GDP per worker. IMO the last factor is important. Say I work 8 hours a day making milk cartons, while someone else spends 8 hours a day cutting and polishing diamonds. Surely then their GDP per hour worked us going to exceed my GDP per hour worked, since diamonds are worth more than milk cartons? In which case even if we are equally efficient workers, our productivity will be very different?

I wonder can anyone provide a breakdown of national workforces i.e. what sectors they are employed in, main industries etc?

Originally posted by DialectricMaterialist:
Interesting and good point.Though I doubt the US has less unemployment then Europe, less we include some very bad areas of East Europe like Yogoslavia(which I believe is unfair.)

The US has substantially less unemployment than most European countries, including France, Germany and Italy.

Standardized OECD unemployment rates (www.oecd.org/pdf/M00030000/M00030784.pdf)

Just wondering, how do we explain the fact that America's poorest region is the Deep South, a bastion of fundamentalist Protestantism, while it's risher regions probably have more Catholics and Jews than Protestants? Any data suggesting that in America there exists a discernible Protestant work ethic?

[Malachi151]

Ha, me and this author got into an e-mail exchange, and this was my last thing to send him:

Well, I don't have Weber's essay, but how about this.

"In it, Weber argued that modern capitalism was "born from the spirit of Christian asceticism" in its specifically Protestant form"

I have studied the matter myself and here is what I think.

The Protestant Reformation was cultural and economic revolution. It is not that the Protestant "religion" shaped the work ethic of the people, the work ethic of the people shaped Protestantism. Religion, being a man made contrivance, is the expression of people and culture to create it.

Weber was, apparently, putting the cart before the horse.

The Protestant Reformation one step in the continual process of social revolution. And now to get Marxist on you, I will say that the Protestant Reformation as it relates to capitalism was a product of class struggle. The class struggle inherent in Feudalism begets capitalism, the Protestant Reformation was the vehicle for that social revolution, nothing more.

The Protestant Reformation and the rise of capitalism are critically important steps in the process of the advancement of human society, to be sure, but they are just that, steps on a never ending ladder.

"there was a link between the self-denying ethos of the Protestant sects and the behavior patterns associated with capitalism, above all hard work."

I agree. This was a critical element in the development of capitalism. This hard work ethic is what creates the productive roots of capitalism, but once the Industrial Revolution started, which was a product of capitalism this hard work ethic became self harming to the proletariat and petty-bourgeoisie. People still immersed a culture of hard work were being taken advantage of by capitalists. You can argue that the fact that people allowed themselves to be taken advantage of is beneficial to the economy, at least in certain ways, and primarily for the wealthy capitalist.

"To put it bluntly, we are witnessing the decline and fall of the Protestant work ethic in Europe."

As I stated, the "Protestant Work Ethic", is not owned by Protestantism. Protestantism is a product of the work ethic of the German people at the time of the reformation.

This is an assertion of mine, which I am not going to back up here because I don't feel like writing an entire paper to prove my point.

"This represents the stunning triumph of secularization in Western Europe — the simultaneous decline of both Protestantism and its unique work ethic."

"It's" work ethic is not unique. What about Japan, which is almost all atheist? What about India, they work hard, they have an even harder work ethic actually, they just have a problem with the supply and demand of workers which lowers the value of labor in India as well as problems with foreign interference in their culture. I ask you, have you compared the work ethic of Indians and Japanese to the other cultures, or do you just assume that the word revolves around the West?

"Just as Weber's 1904 visit to the United States convinced him that his thesis was right, anyone visiting New York today would have a similar experience."

Strange since New York is one of the Jewish capitals of the world. In addition though, w/o even getting into those issues, New York is a unique city, especially at that time. To throw out hundreds of reasons as to why America at the turn of the century would be productive and rapidly growing economically and pin it all on Protestantism is pure foolishness. No wonder so many people have spent time debunking this nonsense. As I stated in my first letter, America was a vast treasure chest of opportunity because it was a land of untapped resources. The primary difference between Europe and America at that time was that the ratio of available resources to people was huge compared to Europe. In Europe almost everything was already owned and had been owned for thousands of years, and the resources had been exploited for thousands of years. IN America we had massive land giveaway programs, timber, gold, gems, oil, farmland, etc all free to be taken by anyone and even at the turn of the century, they could be purchased for very low prices. All of this opportunity creates a desire to take advantage of it, because the level of entry into the economic system was so low, and it is still low today in America compared to Europe, but it is rising quickly. As opportunity becomes more scarce and more expensive to take advantage of changes in society will take place and class struggle will commence, just as it did in Europe. In order to prevent class struggle you have to facilitate opportunity of ownership in the economic system. Capitalism naturally works against that, whereby a few people end up controlling opportunity, which is why capitalism begets socialism the state where people are in greater cooperation as opposed to competition.

Right now, America is still a highly competitive society which still works for us because we have a relatively low population density which allows more people to have access to ownership of resources. As that ownership of resources becomes consolidated into the hands of a smaller percentage of the population America will be forced to move towards socialism as well, or else we will revert to feudalism. Capitalism is a transient state, that cannot be maintained w/o redistribution of wealth, in which case, we are really moving to socialism. As I said, steps on a ladder.

We are looking at the difference between Europe, which has existed for 4,000 years, but lets just say 1,500 years, who underwent the Industrial Revolution must sooner than took place in America, and which has fewer resources per unit population compared to America which has really only been inhabited by our culture for let's say 150 years if you want to approximate how long we have "civilized" all of the land.

"Its death is a peculiarly European phenomenon — and has grim implications for the future of the European Union on the eve of its eastward expansion, perhaps most economically disastrous for the "new" Europe."

The implications are anything but grim. The EU provides great promise, especially with the euro, which may turn out to be a globally revolutionizing currency, in which the US will lose out. This is what the war in Iraq is about, its an economic battle between the EU and the US. Its also interesting to note that many of the wealthiest people in the world are secular people, or only mildly religious. The financial world is driven by areligious people, the "workers", being religious, are just exploited. Capitalism has most greatly rewarded the non-religious in America, Bill Gates is of course the classic example, but I could put together a huge list of the world wealthiest, in which you will see that Protestants are under represented.

"Many economists have missed this vindication of Weber because they are focused on measures of productivity, like output per hour worked. On that basis, the Western European economies have spent most of the past half-century spectacularly catching up with the United States. "

Good one. "Catching up"? Again this is a complex issue, but in many cases there was never any catching up to do. If you mean by the fact that Europeans had to "catch-up" after Europe was wrecked by the Napoleonic War, WWI, the Spanish Civil War, and WWII, yes, they had to do a lot of rebuilding repeatedly, whereas America did not, and due to the nature of America and its vast resources rebuilding after the Civil War wasn't that difficult, and in fact the Civil War helped the American economy. Other than that America has had a much easier time due to its geographic location and its lack of domestic military conflict, in addition to all the resources.

Perhaps I could also point you to Alexander Hamilton's report on manufacturers:

http://members.tripod.com/~american_almanac/hammanuf.htm

which explains some other reason why America has been advantaged, in that he presented the case for how America could take advantage of its situation and his plans were followed.

"But what the productivity numbers don't reveal is the dramatic divergence over two decades between the amount of time Americans work and the amount of time Western Europeans work. By American standards, Western Europeans are astonishingly idle."

IDLE!? So if people are not working they are "idle"? Nice choice of words there. No, actually Europeans spend more time with their family, raising their children, and enjoying their lives. Do you think that the goal of life is to work? That sounds awfully close to the Aztec religions actually, in their faith they stated that the goal of human existence is to work, which serves the gods, that life is meant for toiling and labor, an that only heaven is where humans can find happiness, the earthly life is for labor and sacrifice. Gee, what a lovely way to see things.

Yes, I DO know the history of Protestantism and the Protestant aversion to "leisure". I do know that Protestants used to say that vacation itself was a sin, that dancing was a sin, etc. I do know that there was a time in America where taking time off of work would socially unacceptable and that in fact an entire industry of so called "clinics" sprang up where people claim that they had to go off for weeks at a time to these "clinics" to get medical treatments, yes of course this is the starting of "club med". If was all just a way to take vacations in a socially acceptable manner because the people were so delude that they though "enjoying life" was horrible.

Yes, the developed world is liberalizing and people want to spend more time on leisure and with family. Long working hours are what gets in the way of that. Back 100 years ago and beyond work and family were not separated as they are today. Capitalism is what has caused that separation. That separation is growing in America, and Capitalism is the wedge that is driving family apart. The need to relocate to find work, the longer working hours, both men and women working, less vacation, this all breaks down the family and the "Protestant work ethic" is to blame.

"According to a recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the average working American spends 1,976 hours a year on the job. The average German works just 1,535 — 22 percent less. The Dutch and Norwegians put in even fewer hours. Even the British do 10 percent less work than their trans-Atlantic cousins. Between 1979 and 1999, the average American working year lengthened by 50 hours, or nearly 3 percent. But the average German working year shrank by 12 percent."

Yes, that's exactly right, and though time spent has gone up for average Americans, compensation has not, in fact is has gone down for when compared to inflation while the income and wealth of the top 2% has skyrocketed.

However, what is driving all this is not Protestantism or the "Protestant work ethic", it is competition and the "freer"-market in America. Competition drives down labor prices, which forces Americans to work longer to make enough money to get by and satisfy needs and wants. Its a condition created from necessity to survive and live comfortably.

Lets also look at studies that show the US has a higher rate of mental illness than other developed countries. Shall we attribute that to Protestantism too?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/05/030507080958.htm

"The United States has a higher prevalence and lower treatment rate of serious mental illness than a number of other developed countries, according to a study published in a special edition on international health care in the May/June issue of the policy journal Health Affairs.

Treatment was also to be more strongly related to the ability to pay and less to need for care in the United States than the other countries. The study analyzed data from community surveys with more than 22,000 respondents in Canada, Chile, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States. All these countries, except the United States, have universal health insurance.

Despite differences in treatment, researchers found remarkably similar high proportions of the population with mental disorders (17 to 29 percent), early age of onset (mostly in childhood through the early adult years), high rates of chronic mental illness, and high levels of adverse effects on jobs, marriages, and other aspects of life, said corresponding author Ronald Kessler, professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School's Department of Health Care Policy."

So, you see, working al the time is not everything. I will not try to draw concrete relationships here because I have to data to backup my claims, but I would certainly suggest that the working conditions of parents puts greater stress on families and children which can lead to mental illness, combined with lack of treatment in America due to not having universal health coverage.

"Yet even these figures understate the extent of European idleness, because a larger proportion of Americans work. Between 1973 and 1998 the percentage of the American population in employment rose from 41 percent to 49 percent. But in Germany and France the percentage fell, ending up at 44 and 39 percent. Unemployment rates in most Northern European countries are also markedly higher than in the United States."

All of that being a rise in females entering the workforce, whereas in Europe the feminist movement had already taken place and women had already entered the workforce so there was not a surge at that same time of women into the workforce. It was also due to the Reagan Supply Side economics, which resulted in a large increase in job, while unemployment stayed about the same, which means that more people needed to work to survive, whereas before there were more single worker households. It was a rise out of necessity. Europe is also experiencing stagnate to negative population growth and an aging population. This is because they are being more environmentally responsible and because they don't have as many immigrants, which America has because corporations want cheap labor.

This also ignores the global labor market, which hurts Europe because of so much cheap labor in Asia and India, which is close to them and the fact that as America increased its competitiveness it had a direct impact on Europe, in taking a share of the global labor market, which decreased demand for high priced European workers in the global labor market. Because America did many thing that increase the supply of cheap workers in the global labor markets by opening up the Asian markets and keeping American labor prices low.

"Then there are the strikes. Between 1992 and 2001, the Spanish economy lost, on average, 271 days per 1,000 employees as a result of strikes. For Denmark, Italy, Finland, Ireland and France, the figures range between 80 and 120 days, compared with fewer than 50 for the United States."

So, Spain is now at fault because the Spanish capitalists refused to properly compensate its workers? You know if people would pay decent wages there would be no strikes in the first place. Even Henry Ford, the great Protestant that he was, knew that.

"All this is the real reason that the American economy has surged ahead of its European competitors in the past two decades. It is not about efficiency. It is simply that Americans work more. Europeans take longer holidays and retire earlier; and many more European workers are either unemployed or on strike. "

No its not. Its one small factor which you did not trace back to root causes. I pointed out many more factors as well, and I didn't even point out all the factors.

Other major reasons are shown here:

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/opec_iraq_euro.htm

"As we all know, the mighty dollar has reigned supreme since 1945, and in the last few years has even gained more ground with the economic dominance of the United States, a situation that may not change in the near future. By the late 90s, more than four-fifths of all foreign exchange transactions, and half of all world exports, were denominated in dollars. In addition, the US currency accounts for about two thirds of all official exchange reserves. The world’s dependency on US dollars to pay for trade has seen countries bound to dollar reserves, which are disproportionately higher than America’s share in global output. The share of the dollar in the denomination of world trade is also much higher than the share of the US in world trade."

"It must also be recalled that the links between crude oil and the dollar are deeply embedded in economics, politics and trading traditions. Naturally, the trading of oil in dollars has served the interests of the US, giving it an immediate advantage over other countries because it carries no currency exchange risk. For most other oil consumers around the world, the pricing and payment of crude in dollars increases the risk for these countries because of currency fluctuations. When the dollar rises against other currencies, the price of oil is more expensive for the rest of the world, thus potentially increasing inflation in these countries."

You think that MIGHT have something to do with it?

"How to explain this sharp divergence? Why have West Europeans opted for shorter working days, weeks, months, years and lives? This is where Weber's thesis comes up trumps: the countries where the least work is done in Europe turn out to be those that were once predominantly Protestant. While the overwhelmingly Catholic French and Italians work about 15 to 20 percent fewer hours a year than Americans, the more Protestant Germans and Dutch and the wholly Protestant Norwegians work 25 to 30 percent less."

This does not even make sense. In what way does his thesis support the idea that Catholics countries would work harder than Protestant countries? According to his thesis you would expect the Protestant countries to work longer. Why would the fact that these countries used to be dominantly Protestant and then now they are secularizing support his thesis? It does not.

Furthermore you TOTALLY ignore the fact that Germany has the strongest economy in Europe. Why should they work long hours? If they are getting more work done in a shorter amount of time and they still have the strongest economy then what is the complaint? This is where Weber's thesis falls flat on its face.

The fact is that Protestantism is a product of the German culture and German work ethic in the 1500s. It was a revolutionary stage in human social and economic development, produced by conditions of society at that time and the reaction of its people to feudalism. Now, the German people are again leading in the reaction to Capitalism, just as was done prior to WWII. You see, WWII was the culmination of struggle against capitalism to advance to the next revolutionary stage in human society, socialism. The Nazis and WWII was a counter revolutionary reaction to the conflict within Capitalism. For whatever reason, Germany was, and still is, the key to economic and social conditions in Europe. The entire fate of the world was dictated by Germany and WWII. Had Germany successfully undergone the socialist revolution in the 1930s instead of being taken over by the fascist counter-revolutionary movement things would be much different today. Instead we are now coming back around to the same position the world was in about 90 years ago. The internal conflict within capitalism is once again going to result in global discord, hopefully with more peaceful results this time, but obviously Iraq is just the beginning. Germany will likely be the staging ground for conflict between capitalism and socialism once again, as it was in the 1920s and 1930s. Germany is the most productive country in Europe, to defame it because they achieve this productivity with high efficiency which lets people spend less time working is totally absurd.

"What clinches the Weber thesis is that Northern Europe's declines in working hours coincide almost exactly with steep declines in religious observance. In the Netherlands, Britain, Germany, Sweden and Denmark, less than 10 percent of the population now attend church at least once a month, a dramatic decline since the 1960's. (Only in Catholic Italy and Ireland do more than a third of the population go to church on a monthly basis.) In the recent Gallup Millennium Survey of religious attitudes, 49 percent of Danes, 52 percent of Norwegians and 55 percent of Swedes said God did not matter to them. In North America, by comparison, 82 percent of respondents said God was "very important.""

Hardly a clincher. It also coincides with about a million other things too. It also coincides with increases in global warming, maybe that is to blame :p Where is you cause and effect? In the whole article you never show cause and effect you only show coincidence. And again you fail to show why working hours are even a problem, especially considering that many of the countries you name have the highest production and highest per capita GDP and highest level of wealth.

"So the decline of work in Northern Europe has occurred more or less simultaneously with the decline of Protestantism. Quod erat demonstrandum indeed!"

More like I'll throw bones and read your fortune indeed! That was not a demonstration of proof. First of all you fail to show why shorter working hours are never something to care about, secondly you only succeed in observing a coincidence. Thirdly you fail to understand that Protestantism is a product of human culture not a dictator of it. Protestantism was a vehicle for social revolution and the rise of capitalism. Protestantism did not create capitalism, nor did it create the work ethic. The work ethic created Protestantism and capitalism. Now society is changing, as it always does and we see the flaws in the capitalism of Adam Smith's 14 hour work day and the progressive members of humanity are marching forward once again for new revolution, and after that there will be new revolution, and it will never end, it is of course Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution, out of which progress in made from stagnation.

"Weber's vindication has profound implications for the next year's enlargement of the European Union, when the Baltic States, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and the Czech and Slovak Republics will become full European Union members."

Not really, and no this is not a call for thousands of crazy missionaries to flood the Baltics. The Baltic region is bound to be stomped on by capitalists I'm am sure, and no doubt there will be a surge in capitalism there, a surge that will be good for the region, because really that region did not experience socialism, it experienced industrial feudalism, out of which it much now experience capitalism. And not this is not a call for America to flood the Baltics with its capitalism and multi-national corporations as it is already doing, the Europeans must develop that region for themselves. You implications are obvious and obtuse.

"A crucial feature of this enlargement, compared with those of the 1970's and 1980's, is that the material gap between old and new members is far wider this time. In 1974, the richest old member (Luxembourg) was twice as rich as the poorest new member (Ireland) in terms of per capita gross domestic product. Today, the average Luxembourgeois is more than five times richer than the poorest new member (Lithuania)."

Oh come on, we all know that Luxembourg is the smallest European country, its no bigger than some American counties. Its just a place where rich people live. You may as well compare Beverly Hills to Mississippi and point out problems there.

"The impact of adopting the European Union's economic and social rules is bound to be far greater for this generation of new Europeans. They should remember what happened in the 1990's to the East Germans, who initially celebrated their accession to the vastly richer West German Federal Republic, only to discover it meant unemployment for roughly a third of the work force."

Yes, exactly, yet this is something that you failed to take into account earlier in your article when you sited employment numbers from that time period, instead up put the blame squarely on the decline of Protestantism.

"This is where productivity statistics matter. Even after more than a decade of free-market reforms, productivity levels in the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary are as low as one third of the French level. What this means is that unless wages in those countries are set at around a third of French levels, their workers will not be able to compete. "

Nice wording. You fail to point out that productivity was highest right before the fall of "communism". All of the members of the USSR were more productive under their so called communism than they are now.

"East Europeans are currently able to compensate for their low productivity by working longer hours. The average Czech worker does more than 2,000 hours of work a year — a figure steadily rising since the collapse of Communism"

Yes, exactly, they used to work less and get more done.

"Unfortunately, European Union labor legislation will reverse this, to prevent what the West Europeans disingenuously call "social dumping" — the competition from low-wage economies. Czechs will be obliged to work less by a combination of legal entitlements to a shorter working week, longer holidays, higher minimum wages and generous unemployment benefits when their employers go bust because of all this."

Its a tricky situation. We have the EECs who need to undergo capitalist expansion and the current EU members who do not. I agree that forcing socialism onto a region that is not really ready for it is disastrous, that was the whole problem with Russia in the first place. Russia was a very poor choice of countries to start the Socialist Revolution in, it was a mistake by the Bolsheviks to start there. The result was inevitable failure. The same thing stands to happen again if the Europeans don't really know what they are doing, and the Americans certainly don't know what they are doing, but I agree that capitalism is what the EECs need. Many Americans agree, but for the wrong reasons. Managing and EU with this combined situation will be difficult.

"The question is how much the Czechs will care about the ensuing enforced leisure."

LOL, enforces leisure, you act like leisure is torture. "Enforced leisure", only a Protestant could come up with that one :) LOL

"Like nearly all the 10 new members of the European Union, the Czech Republic is a predominantly Catholic country. (The exceptions are Protestant Estonia and Latvia.) But one striking consequence of 40-plus years of socialist rule in Eastern Europe has been a decline of religious belief almost as marked as that in Northern Europe. "

Really, I thought they were predominately atheist.

"According to Gallup, 48 percent of Western Europeans almost never go to church, but the figure for Eastern Europe is just a bit less, at 44 percent. Meanwhile, 64 percent of Czechs regard God as not mattering at all"

I thought you just said they were Catholics?

" In this respect the difference between "old" and "new" Europe may turn out to be less than many Americans now believe. Enlargement of the European Union may simply confirm the eastward spread of the leisure preference in an increasingly work-shy and Godless European continent."

Oh my, can you get any more propagandistic? "Work-shy" and "Godless". Yes, those awful lazy Godless people. Again you fail to take about a million other things into account seeing the world purely in black and white and only in relation to your own narrow realm of interest. Religion and god are products of human culture, not the other way around. Or will you now attempt to argue that Zeus created Greek culture, that Shiva created Indian culture, that umpteen gods created Native America culture, that Allah created Islamic culture, etc? No, those cultures created their gods.

The people of Europe were hard workers before they were Christians and they will be hard workers when they are no longer Christians. Rome was not built by Christians, and it lasted over 1,000 years, it was not until it became Christian that it crumbled. Egypt was not built by Christians and it lasted over 4,000 years.

"The loser will be the European economy, which will continue to fall behind the United States in terms of its absolute annual output. The winner will be the spirit of secularized sloth, which has finally slain the Protestant work ethic in Europe — and Max Weber, whose famous thesis celebrates its centenary by attaining the status of verity."

And here is where I will bet you money. The loser is going to be the US, and the winner will be humanity. The US will be the loser unless the US maintains its global hegemony through its manipulations of the dollar against the euro and if the US maintains its position of global military supremacy and becomes the global tyrant that Bush and company want it to be. Hopefully that will not happen, and if it does not happen then the only result can be that the US will be the loser. The steps that Bush has taken with the economy are only digging us into a deeper hole, out of which it will be harder to climb out of and break the chains of capitalism. While capitalism has served the US well, you, and most other people, fail to see why and how it has done so, and in so doing do fail to see what steps to take next.

And, prey tell, just how much "work" have you ever done? Would your Protestant work ethic keep you digging coal in a mine for less than a living wage while the mine owner becomes a millionaire? Is that the work ethic you speak of?

No, Europe is going to go on to enjoy life, raise their families, spend time with them, taker vacations and see the world, and here in America families will have both parents working 7:30 to 5:30 51 weeks a year with barely enough money to send a child to college, and no money for healthcare, but OH, according to YOU, the fact that hey work MORE HOURS is ALL THAT MATTERS in life. Meanwhile you get to sit in your cushy office and write silly ramblings about an imaginary world in your head where you tell people doing "real work" that they are not working hard enough and that they should go to Church on Sunday to be filled with the Holy Spirit so they can go to work on Monday and drone their way though life.

No thanks, I'll pass on the religious slavery routine.

[DialecticMaterialist]

The US has substantially less unemployment than most European countries, including France, Germany and Italy.

Standardized OECD unemployment rates

Yes, actually this is true. Though I always believed more socialist countries had less unemployment. It's interesting to note however that the US has less people in poverty then many European nations(The US is about 13 percent, whereas France, Germany, and Spain are N/A), England in fact seems to be the only major European power in the lead here with 17 percent. According to the CIA World Fact Book.

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/


I should also note that the people of Northern Europe are reported to be the happiest people on earth, with western europe, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand coming second.

http://chem.tufts.edu/science/pigliucci/rationally-speaking/03-01-virtue%20ethics.htm

[Cleopatra]

Malachi, would you be kind enough to illustrate which is your input and which is the author's reply?

Unless this is a way to imply that the smart and wise sentences belong to you :p

[DialecticMaterialist]

True, but its impossible to compare US states to European countries really. I mean resources are pretty much openly shared among states.

True, but why does that make them impossible to compare? That may simply indicate the federal model is more efficient or the US has some other advantage.

Did you go to that link? It shows US unemployment lower than EU or Japan, but again, each country reports unemployment differently as well. I have no problem believe that unemployment is lower in the US.


Yes I did, though I dodn't really buy it at first so I had it confirmed by more information. Now I do believe the US has more unemployment but the US does have more poverty.

Japan it should be noted is likewise way ahead of almost any single european state in terms of overall purchasing power, has N/A below the poverty line and only slightly more unemployment then the US. (The US has 5 percent, Japan 5.4 percent.) Which is really amazing seeing as it really doesn't have much of an advantage over any European nation, save perhaps its lack of military.

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ja.html



The US has a great economy, and I won't bash the US economy or the fact that it is relatively well mamaged to do what it is that its "managers" want it to do, which is create a huge amount for wealth for the very few.

Well I don't think that's necessarily true.

Now a lot of people in the US do live in below the poverty line (13 percent), but that leaves another 87 percent fairly well off.






With the low population density in America its much easlier for people and companies to own resources or land, even shop space. That helps. Yes the most dense places are where a lot of wealth is, but since we have a federal system it doesn't really matter that California is dense, companies and people located in Cali benefit from resources which they may own or exploit all over the country, and the fact that other people can exploit those resources easily makes for a stronger consumer base, even though many financial headquarters may be located in cities, their consumer base is all over the country.

See now Malachi, you are now answering post hoc with post hoc. We really don't know why the US is overall ahead of Europe, just as we don't know why Japan is ahead of England, France or Germany.

You propose "low population density" however I have given a counter-example: California/New York vs Alaska. Now you are saying "well it doesn't matter....they get wealth from exploiting other states". Basically now making your claim totally untestable/spurrious. If we stretch it enough I could literally advocate any factor now as "the factor" and when confronted with a counter-example make an ad hoc defense.

Also you need to notice certain European countries with a lower population density are poorer then those who have a high density, Finland(136 billion, 5 million people, 305,000 sq. km of land) to Germany (2.1 trillion, 83 million people, 349,000 sq. km of land.)
And both have less density and less wealth then Japan, (3.5 trillion, 127 million people, 374, 000 sq. km).

Likewise Canada has far less density then the US, and far less overall wealth. About a tenth of what of the US has. It also has FAR LESS density then China and still far less wealth(about 1 sixth of China's overall purchasing power).

Hence there doesn't seem to be any link between little density and purchasing power/overall wealth. In fact, the relatioship as of now appears to be the opposite. Though I'm not proposing this as I imagine counter-examples can be easily found.

Now I imagine Malachi will simply create some ad hoc excuses though to fit this square peg into a round hole.

However the point is though, China and Japan are way ahead of their MORE religious counter-parts in Europe. So if the God/Work Ethic hypothesis is pretty dead.

I'm not going to say it plays no part though, simply that the presumption is post hoc. We simply don't know enough to conclude exactly what makes one country wealthier then another in the modern world. I imagine it is a variety of factors though, as an economy is a complex system. Asking for a factor is like asking "which organ keeps a person alive?".

[Malachi151]

Originally posted by Cleopatra
Malachi, would you be kind enough to illustrate which is your input and which is the author's reply?

Unless this is a way to imply that the smart and wise sentences belong to you :p

His stuff is mostly in quotes, and my stuff is the writing with grammar mistakes and poor wording :D

[Malachi151]

Likewise Canada has far less density then the US, and far less overall wealth. About a tenth of what of the US has. It also has FAR LESS density then China and still far less wealth(about 1 sixth of China's overall purchasing power).

Hence there doesn't seem to be any link between little density and purchasing power/overall wealth. In fact, the relatioship as of now appears to be the opposite. Though I'm not proposing this as I imagine counter-examples can be easily found.

Well, firstly I would say that its not overall purchasing power that we are looking at here, but the ratio of purchasing power to population. Yes, China has more overall that Canada, but each Canadian has a higher degree of purcahsing power than an individual Chinese.

It all goes back to oppertinity of owership, and resources per person is one element of that. Its obviously not the only part of the equation though as you correctly point out.

I mean look at Hong Kong :)

The issue is, how easy is it for a person to own how much?

In America it is relatively easy for a person to own "a lot" compared to China, where it is harder for a person to own "a lot".

The easier it is for a larger percentage of the population to own larger percentage of the total national resources then the better capitalism works.

The ratio of resources to people is just one of the factors involved in that situation.

[Cleopatra]

Originally posted by Malachi151


His stuff is mostly in quotes, and my stuff is the writing with grammar mistakes and poor wording :D

Thank you and please accept my wishes for a speedy recovery from this sudden crisis of modesty that you are going threw right now. I hope that it's not something serious or worse, permanent! :p :D

editted to add: Do you know that I have to print your posts in order to be able to reply?? !@#$%

[DialecticMaterialist]

Well Malachi if you are saying that an individual person in a country with more overall wealth but less people, that the average person has more wealth then a country with more people and the equivalent overall wealth: I'd agree. That is proven by simple math.

I believe the issue was concerning a nations overall wealth/production though, which I do not see as being effected in any predictable sense by population density. I think that's what the main issue was about, to which individual purchasing power is irrelevant.

I believe you may also be advocating a less density=more individual purchasing power formula though. However comparing Canada to the US likewise disproves that notion.

Canada has 32 million people over roughly 9,000 sq, km. The US has about 280 million over around 9,000 sq. km.

Yet the average US individual's purchasing power is higher. About 35,714 dollars for US person(10 trillion/overall wealth divided by 280 million people) whereas Canada's is around 28, 843 dollars (923 billion divided by 32 million).

Which I believe does make some sense if you imagine a larger group and smaller group both trying to accumulate wealth, yes the smaller group does have more land and raw rescources per person, but the larger group has more labor, can exploit the land quicker, has more inventors(for innovation), more competition between corporations to encourage efficiency, more traders to export/import, more scientists to do research, etc.

Hence the larger group may produce more wealth overall and may by that virtue alone, give each individual more purchasing power.

I'm not saying that's what happens, the data is insufficient to support this. I'm just saying for me, it makes sense and helps explain why a nation with more density may have more wealth per person. :)

[Malachi151]

I agree with what you are saying DM. However in comparing Canada to the US you also have to see that the US has more useable land and resources, just having land isn't much good if its not of much use.

American resources were easier to exploit.

But again these aren't hard and fast rules I'm talking about. I think that there is probably some optimum population desnisty for given conditions in for producing the most wealth per person, but again wealth per person may not equate to equality of life even.

I just consider it one element in the equation. Alos you have to factor technology in as well because higher technology lets fewer people take greater advantage of more resources. Technology creates virtual workers which create wealth.

So, if a country with equal resources and land area has 1 billion people and the other has 200 million but both have equal GDP, then obviously the country with a smaller population will have more GDP per person (duh) and probably higher quality of life. This is what technology can do.

Due to the laws of supply and demand, a high population keeps labor costs low, which makes the implimentation of techology more difficult, because there is less economic incentive. This is China's problem. With so much cheap manual labor there is little drive to mechanize, because its more expensive then just employing cheap workers.

Anyway, I just consider it "A" factor, certianly not the only one, as you point out.

[Malachi151]

Well, here was my reply from him:

Your views are close to R.H. Tawney's - one of a number of critics of Weber.
Marx would probably have agreed with you if he had written anything on the
subject. Before you exhaust yourself writing any more, I'd recommend some
reading. Accordingly I attach the list I used to give to first-year
undergraduates at Oxford. There's no need to reinvent the wheel.

Yours,

Niall Ferguson.

:rolleyes:

[DialecticMaterialist]

Well Malachi like I said, you're theory is now untestable. Allowing for enough exceptions one can establish any rule.