Just how lazy an American are you?

[markv]

I'm definitely in the more than 6 category. If you count summer jobs (2-3 months of work) that were needed to pay for educational expenses then it's much more than 6. If you count jobs that are worthy of being on a resume than it's more like 4.

I wouldn't call myself a profesional musician but as a strict definition I guess I am. I play in one band that makes enough money for the IRS to care, has one and 1\2 CD's out. I've played tracks on three other CDs and pretty regularly play (informally) with visiting bands\groups passing through (Davy Spillane, Kevin Glackin and Chulrua this weekend).

I think of it as more of a self supporting hobby.

Mark V.

[spittin_in_the_wind]

Well, my husband is an immigrant who has had long-term employment in three other countries before coming to the U.S. He says he didn't know the meaning of hard work until he came to work in America. Just my 2 cents.

Robin

[Darwin]

US Army - 20 years. Even in MI, it's not really a job for the lazy.

Engraver - 5 years. My only 9-to-5 job, but I did clock a fair amount of overtime.

Programmer - 15 years. A lot of that has involved twelve-to-sixteen-hour days, seven days a week. At least I get to sit down...

[Nanohedron]

Here's another interesting tidbit I read recently: some economists apparently estimate that a good 90% of your American income is social capital.

In this case, "social capital" refers to the extra $$$ you make just by virtue of living in a society that assigns value to your work. For instance, if you work exactly as much in a 3rd-world country as you do in the US, you'll make a lot less money, both in absolute terms and relative to the cost of living and quality of life.

It is reasonable to ask if people in the developed world are therefore prone to laziness, if they can derive so much more wealth from less work.

Caj

Just a counterpoint, here: I was having a conversation with a cabbie on my way home, and he, a Somali, said that he and other Africans are struck by the amount of work and hours one has to do for compensation in the US. His angle was that one could be more relaxed about one's labors elsewhere. True, you get paid less, but cost of living is far less, too, and nobody's in all that much of a hurry, anyway. It'll get done, insh'allah. The nose-to-the-grindstone ethic here is, in his opinion, actually a way of getting more out of the worker for less reward, and one of the costs of this is decreased socialization and family contact.

In no way did I construe this to be a sign of laziness. I was shown a glimpse of a cultural divide, and I must say that I had to allow the "more for less" argument.

[Nanohedron]

Oh, yes: well more than a mere six jobs, here, and I have been a good, lazy 'Merkin throughout.

[Montana]

Yup, I have had more than six jobs, although for the resume I would probably list only about 5.
Problem is that I don't know what I want to be when I grow up! Then again I'm only in my early 40's.:roll:
Right now I'm working on being a whistle-playing, documentary-making activist.
And yes, I would consider domestic engineer to be a very demanding job, the level of demand increasing with the number of clients. I knew I would do poorly in the job so never applied...

[cj]

My family had nothing, and even though I'm merely middle-class now, I make more than most people ever did in my family. I've had two careers, have been in my present one for 7 1/2 years.

[littlejohngael]

I didn't bother to count HS jobs or college jobs. From the point where I moved down to Louisiana on my own to today, I've officially held 4 professional jobs. Lemme see ... 4 jobs in <counts fingers> 10 years. Is that bad? :roll: That's an average of ... 1 job every 2.5 years. I'm really not that hard to get along with. They were.

Little John

[RonKiley]

I only had about 4 jobs. One before I started a career then 37 years in the same line starting at the very bottom and working to the top in electronics, computers, and programming. I retired and tried two other jobs. One was delivering cars and the other was programming multi-lingual interactive training programs. Now I am working on non-paying service activities.

Ron

[Monster]

Here's another interesting tidbit I read recently: some economists apparently estimate that a good 90% of your American income is social capital.

In this case, "social capital" refers to the extra $$$ you make just by virtue of living in a society that assigns value to your work. For instance, if you work exactly as much in a 3rd-world country as you do in the US, you'll make a lot less money, both in absolute terms and relative to the cost of living and quality of life.

It is reasonable to ask if people in the developed world are therefore prone to laziness, if they can derive so much more wealth from less work.

Caj

Nothing much to dispute about what you say on social capital, wouldn't any country wish to have a high Social Capital? Maybe some countries such as Germany + Japan + England have pushed a little too hard though to keep wages up and the result is higher unemployment. The U.S. unemployment rate is probably much higher than what is reported, due to many people just giving up looking, so they just conviently are dropped out of the equation. Interesting to see what effect China has had and will continue to have on global trade.

It is reasonable to ask if people in the developed world are therefore prone to laziness, if they can derive so much more wealth from less work

Good bit of polemic here Caj, but I think what you're talking about is just a self adjusting principle, if people want to work just hard enough to put a roof over their head that's what they'll do, if it takes less work in a developed country, so be it. If it takes more work in a less developed area to put a roof over the head, that's what people will do if they want a roof bad enough. Here's a bit of nivea for you. U.S. workers are putting in on average near 50 hours a week, with much less time off than their European counterparts. Can you say road rage? I think you can!

[Caj]

Here's another interesting tidbit I read recently: some economists apparently estimate that a good 90% of your American income is social capital.

In this case, "social capital" refers to the extra $$$ you make just by virtue of living in a society that assigns value to your work. For instance, if you work exactly as much in a 3rd-world country as you do in the US, you'll make a lot less money, both in absolute terms and relative to the cost of living and quality of life.

It is reasonable to ask if people in the developed world are therefore prone to laziness, if they can derive so much more wealth from less work.

Caj

Nothing much to dispute about what you say on social capital, wouldn't any country wish to have a high Social Capital?

Oh, definitely yes. OK, well, it depends on who you're asking. Companies want cheap labor, and will try to look overseas to precisely those countries with low social capital; but beyond that, a country would certainly want to be one whose citizens enjoy a high quality of life in exchange for reasonable effort.

It is reasonable to ask if people in the developed world are therefore prone to laziness, if they can derive so much more wealth from less work

Good bit of polemic here Caj, but I think what you're talking about is just a self adjusting principle, if people want to work just hard enough to put a roof over their head that's what they'll do, if it takes less work in a developed country, so be it. If it takes more work in a less developed area to put a roof over the head, that's what people will do if they want a roof bad enough. Here's a bit of nivea for you. U.S. workers are putting in on average near 50 hours a week, with much less time off than their European counterparts. Can you say road rage? I think you can!

Indeed, but then again, what kind of hours are they? In my field I hear horror stories about people working 70-hour weeks before product launches, but it's coding work rather than landscaping or construction work---i.e., the kind of work that you can get fat while doing, whose primary health risks are due to lack of physical effort rather than excess thereof.

This we talked about in the other laziness-related thread: that you can define laziness as a lack of productivity, or an aversion to physical exertion. So someone who spends 60 hours a week in an office chair day-trading, but who can't bear to climb down and up 2 flights of stairs to get a burger is either a hard worker or very lazy.

Caj

[Monster]

Caj,

I'm talking about personal trainers, that work 80+ hours a week, running up and down miles of stairs everyday, burning hundreds of thousands of calories a week lifting tens of thousands of pounds a day. With their off time they produce widgets and womblie-smackers, which they sell here, and at a loss on the Chinese black market in order to undercut the capitalist Chinese businessman widget and womblie-smacker maker. With the rest of their spare time off they dream up ever better ways to outdo everyone else on the planet, because that's just the way they are.

[vomitbunny]

We don't have womblie-smackers here in Alabama. Part of our state constitution. They are the work of the devil.
By the way, did you know, insted of the ten commandments, we have 13 here? One has to do with gambling, the other has to do with the location of Hooter's restaraunts, and I think the other has something to do with football or nascar or something. I don't know. I was never very religious.

[Monster]

V.B. I think the last commandment deals with NasCar and Professional wrestling, something about what a sin it is to have them at the same time.

[OnTheMoor]

I don't think the number of jobs you have had shows how (un)lazy you are. Some of the laziest people I've ever met have had handfulls of jobs... because of the very fact they are lazy. And what type of jobs are Americans and Canadians doing? Is it physically demanding and dirty or do we leave that to immigrants? In my experience, when foreigners call North Americans lazy they might be referring to the fact that we gorge ourselves on McD's and take our car to the house across the street (I'm sure everyone's heard the recent data that says obesity has replaced smoking as the number 1 self inflicted killer in North America).