| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Jez" |
| Date: |
01 Sep 2004 07:23:03 AM |
| Object: |
OT Part-Time President needs a long rest. |
PART-TIME PRESIDENT NEEDS LONG REST
By Bill Gallagher
http://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/gallagher178.html
"Cultivated leisure is the aim of man." -- Oscar Wilde, Irish genius.
DETROIT -- George W. Bush is right on target with the leisure part, but
that cultivated stuff doesn't interest him. America's worst president
ever also has the distinction of being the most rested. He typically
takes more time off in the month of August than the vast majority of
American workers do for the entire year.
When Bush speaks to the Republican Convention he'll be tanned and
relaxed, fresh from another nine-day stay at his Rancho Wacko in
Crawford, Texas. This is his 34th paid vacation in his three-and-a-half
years in office.
Bush, who disdains most things European, goes on holidays at a rate that
would make a French nobleman blush. The summer numbers have not yet been
tallied -- he will, of course, need more rest after his grueling
convention duties -- but the vacation stats he's already chalked up are
staggering.
CBS News calculated that, through April 2004, Bush had spent all or part
of 535 days of his presidency at vacation spots. That's 42.4 percent of
his time in office. While most Americans crave a week or even a day off,
our leader in leisure goofs off for weeks at a time.
I don't buy that "working vacation" crap for one minute. He puts on his
blue working shirt and parades around the ranch for a few photo ops with
his minions in mufti -- ***** Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condi Rice --
in tow. It's all for show. He spends little time on matters of state.
The president enjoys jogging in the oppressive heat of the Texas desert,
playing golf, fishing, shooting birds, chopping wood, clearing brush,
hanging out with his dog and spending endless hours playing video games
and watching sports on the tube. He reads little, if at all. And, as we
learned from his 2001 summer hiatus, he even ignores written material
vital for our national security.
On Aug. 6, 2001, Bush received an intelligence briefing paper entitled
"Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S." Did he call for a National
Security Council meeting? No. Did he order the military and his Cabinet
to respond to the warning? No. Did he do anything? No. We do know the
very next day the commander in chief went to the Ridgewood Country Club
in Waco, Texas, to play a round of golf.
We also know from congressional Intelligence Committee reports that the
CIA knew terrorists were planning to use airplanes as weapons, and
senior government officials were made aware in a July 2001 brief that
bin Laden "will launch a significant terrorist attack against U.S.
and/or Israeli interest in the coming weeks. The attack will be
spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S.
facilities or interest. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will
occur with little or no warning."
This spring, George W. took a work break from his vacations and chatted
with the 9/11 Commission about those briefings. While sitting on Lord
Halliburton's comfy lap, he said he considered the warnings of bin
Laden's plans "historical information." I'll bet he never bothered
reading the reports. He didn't want to be late for tee time.
Also in late August 2001, CIA Director George Tenet was informed that
the FBI had nabbed Zacarias Moussaoui, a known Islamic jihadist who had
been taking lessons on how to fly a 747. During her performance -- which
should have been nominated for an Oscar -- before the 9/11 Commission,
Condoleezza Rice made a dramatic speech about how Tenet briefed the
president nearly every day, even when George W. was hanging out at the
ranch.
But Tenet had a different story. He testified that, during that entire
month, he did not have a single conversation with the president. Tenet
too was "on leave."
Like a baron in pre-Revolutionary France, Bush surveys his estate and
isolates himself from the unwashed masses that work every day and
cherish rare days of rest. The elitist Bush regime is systematically
exploiting overworked, vacation-starved Americans.
George W. is the rare American who gets too much vacation, but he has
made leisure respectable. What he should be saying at the Republican
Convention is that Americans need more time off, and then he should
unveil his new plan for trickle-down vacations.
But in George Bush's America, the fruits of labor provide the very few
with pampered privileges and leave out the rest. His Labor Department
just issued new rules that will make it possible for employers to deny
overtime pay to as many as 6 million American workers. People will work
longer hours for less money, and be able to afford fewer vacations.
Deborah Figart, co-editor of the book "Working Time," told the Institute
for Public Accuracy that "part of the problem is that U.S. managers are
encouraged to overwork people because of the fixed costs associated with
each employee, like health care insurance and unemployment insurance."
Meanwhile, Figart adds, "low income people work overtime so they can pay
their bills."
During the Bush presidency, 9 million working Americans have had their
health insurance taken away as their employers cannot or refuse to pay
the premiums. These workers must now pay all their health care insurance
out of their own pockets or join the growing ranks of the uninsured.
In a national disgrace, a record 45 million Americans now are without
health insurance, and I'm sure Bush didn't spend even two minutes of his
latest vacation time trying to do something about that festering problem.
Vacations are out of the question for the 4.3 million people who, under
the Bush regime, have fallen below the poverty line of $18,660 for a
family of four. And another statistic you won't hear mentioned at the
Republican Convention is median family income. It was $44,853 in 2000
and it's plunged $1,535 during the first three years of the Bush dark ages.
While Europeans don't have our income levels, the wealth distribution
there means significantly less poverty -- especially among children --
and studies show they are much more satisfied with their lives than are
Americans.
Europeans tend to "work to live" while we "live to work." The Economic
Policy Institute analyzed data from the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) published in a forthcoming book, "The
State of Working America 2004/2005." The comparison of the United States
and 19 other countries on time off and productivity shatters some old myths.
The average American worker put in 1,815 hours in 2002, 59 more days
than the average worker in the Netherlands. All that time off didn't
hurt, but rather helped, productivity. The study finds "the Netherlands'
hourly productivity reached 106 percent of the U.S. rate, while working
fewer hours and keeping the poverty, as measured by the OECD, to less
than half that of the U.S."
The unprecedented findings reveal that, with fewer working hours and
lower poverty rates, Norway has 131 percent of U.S. productivity levels.
The fun-loving Irish, Italians and, yes, even French workers are topping
the productivity of Americans.
Alan Greenspan has a dire warning that Social Security and Medicare
benefits for the Baby Boom generation may have to be scaled back, but
that heightened productivity growth of workers "offers the greatest
potential" for allowing the nation to support the aging population. As
Europe shows us, let's give workers more time off and improve
productivity at the same time.
Greenspan finally admits the record Bush deficits have reduced national
savings rates and we're forced to borrow more money from abroad. As the
deficits balloon, that creates more trouble for Social Security, which
might require a gradual delay in retirement ages.
If we're forced to work longer, why not have more time off?
Here's why. George W. Bush wants to protect his business and corporate
sponsors who want nothing to do with shorter hours and more vacations
for workers.
Besides, our rested leader fears vacations give people more time to
relax, read, reflect and reason, and that means they're more likely to
understand what a fraud and disaster his presidency is.
--
Jez
"The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious,
of being out of one's mind, is the condition of the normal man. Society
highly values its normal man.It educates children to lose themselves
and to become absurd,and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed
perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years."
R.D. Laing
Skype ID callto://hellward
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| User: "move fiftyfour" |
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| Title: Re: OT Part-Time President needs a long rest. |
03 Sep 2004 07:00:12 AM |
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http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/000551.html
uropean Productivity, August 16, 2004
The Economic Policy Institute, a left-wing think tank (well, the
newspapers always refer to Cato and Heritage as right-wing think
tanks, don't they?), writes,
seven OECD countries have passed the U.S. in productivity: Norway,
with 131 percent of U.S. productivity levels; Belgium, 11 percent;
Netherlands, 106 percent; Italy, 105 percent; France and Ireland, 103
percent; and Germany, 101 percent. The ability of these countries to
surpass U.S. productivity in 2002 suggests that their comprehensive
welfare and collective-bargaining systems have not stymied income
growth or improvements in economic efficiency relative to the more
free-market-oriented U.S.
Actually, it suggests no such thing. As Brad DeLong once pointed out
to me in an email, you would expect hourly productivity (which the EPI
is using) to be higher in Europe than the U.S., because of all the
cost-increasing labor market restrictions there. Any business anywhere
will avoid hiring workers beyond the point where productivity fails to
match costs. The European productivity data simply illustrate basic
economic behavior.
Bruce Bartlett, who the newspapers might refer to as a right-wing
think tank, writes,
A new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the United
States with real gross domestic product per person in 2003 of $34,960
(in 1999 dollars). This is well above every European country. The most
productive European country, Norway, has a per capita GDP of just
$30,882 (converted using purchasing power parity exchange rates). The
major countries of Europe are even further behind: United Kingdom
($26,039), France ($25,578), Italy ($24,894) and Germany ($24,813).
In other words, Europeans produce no more per year than Americans
did 20 years ago.
What Bartlett is quoting are statistics on annual productivity. The
reason that the U.S. comes out so much higher on annual productivity
than hourly productivity is that U.S. workers work more hours. The
question then arises as to how to value the additional leisure time of
European workers. If it is all voluntary, then the higher annual
productivity figures are completely misleading, and the Europeans in
fact are doing well.
Bartlett questions how much the Europeans are enjoying their leisure.
One reason for the short workday is that Europeans seem to get
sick a lot more than Americans. According to a July 25 report in The
New York Times, on an average day 25 percent of Norway's workers call
in sick. A 2002 study in Sweden found that the average worker there
took more than 30 sick days per year. Makes you wonder just how good
their health care systems really are.
Bartlett cites work by Edward Prescott showing that high taxes are a
significant factor in leading Europeans to put in less time in market
activity.
Don Boudreaux writes,
Differences in marginal tax rates is one that [op-ed writer Niall]
Ferguson mentions, along with government-enforced restrictions on the
maximum number of hours anyone can work per week. Also mentioned is
the fact that American employers can – compared to their European
counterparts – much more easily fire lazy employees.
These reasons strike me as pretty sound explanations for why the
average German worker works 22% fewer hours per year than does the
average American worker, and the average French worker toils 32% fewer
hours.
But Ferguson ends his op-ed curiously: despite these strong
explanations mentioned earlier in his op-ed, he concludes that the
likely explanation for this difference in work patterns is the fact
that more Americans than Europeans attend church. Apart from an
allusion to Max Weber's protestant-ethic thesis, Ferguson offers no
further justification for identifying Americans' greater church
attendance as a reason why Americans work more than Europeans.
Curious.
Perhaps the connection is that the religion-reinforced work ethic in
America is reflected in a tax code that is relatively less punitive of
labor than that in Europe.
UPDATE: Stephen Kirchner led me to an article by Robert Gordon.
Europeans worked longer hours than Americans during the 1945-73
era of postwar reconstruction, so their passion for long vacations and
short weekly hours of work is a recently acquired taste.
...gap between a Europe/U. S. ratio of 93 percent for [hourly]
productivity and 77 percent for [annual] output per capita, I would
make a wild guess that about one-third of the difference represents
voluntarily chosen leisure and the remaining two-thirds represents a
lack of employment opportunities. This would imply that the
"welfare-corrected" ratio in the year 2000 is neither 77 nor 93
percent, but something closer to 85 percent.
For Discussion. What evidence is consistent with the view that the
labor-leisure choice is adversely distorted in Europe, and what
evidence suggests otherwise?
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