You might be entertained by this table, courtesy of the OECD, of the average number of hours worked per year by workers in various countries. It tells us, for example, that on average Americans work about two weeks more per year than Canadians, that New Zealanders work about as many hours per year as Americans do, and that the people of France, Germany, and the Netherlands work a lot less than Americans, months less on average in a year.
It also tells us that Greeks work much, much longer on average than Germans do. That’s another way of saying, as I’ve claimed for years, that Greece’s problem isn’t that the Greeks are lazy but that Greece is undercapitalized.
Some of the hardest working people in this country are caretakers for the ill — not nurses or doctors, but nurses’ aides and the like. Thier work is severely under-compensated.