Speaking of religion, Islam is going to be a powerful force in Europe by the end of the century. Both in France and Sweden, abour a half of the immigrant population from the Islamic world observes religion, a much higher percentage than among original Europeans. Christianity has left a cultural legacy in Europe but is otherwise largely dead or dying like an ossified tree.

The proportion of muslims of Americans will be much smaller owing to the fact that immigrants into the US are predominantly latinos. As the weight of Islam in Europe begins to be really felt in the middle of the century, America may perhaps expect tens of millions of secularized nominally Christian immigrants from Europe as a result of increasing Islamic influence on society.

It is the destiny of the Northern Eurasian stock of humanity, the nerdies of them all, to always explore new frontiers and flee from heavily populated habitats where too many other humans are specialists in intra-species competition. In fact, Northern Eurasia itself was populated by our species exactly in that manner: the most exploratory types always followed the retreating glaciers towards the North.

Paradoxically, the nerdiness of Europeans - and earlier that of the Chinese - allowed theirs to become a dominant civilization, but the relatively recent immigration of huge numbers of non-assimilating rapidly growing elements in Western society is replacing Westerners in the West. By the end of this century, Europe will no longer belong to the West. The cycle is about to start over. Perhaps this time The Law of Accelerating Returns will allow humans to transform themselves into something capable of colonizing space soon enough.

However, I still find the sections I have read explaining topics such as the religious baggage carried to America, the different philosophical views on Time and private property to be thought-provoking.

(Diane Rheem rocks)

The subtitle and premise of the book:
“How Europe’s Vision of the Future is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream”

That sounds like Finnish farmers.

Is that boook any good? It sounds something I’d like to check out.

The author proposes that the American culture is still strongly defined by a cross between its Calvinist forefathers’ view on life (each individual is called upon to constantly improve their lot in life by increasing their productivity) and Enlightment science (efficiency is a rational, technical way to improve productivity). So somewhere along the way, in the mind of the Americans productivity = good moral values.

This is also why Americans are always ‘busy being busy’ or needing to tout just how much, how early, how late, how long, how hard, etc they work. It makes them “better people”, goes the argument.

Thus, it seems that if you take long vacations, you are either lazy (= person of low morals) or not important.

I find the vacation time issue similar to the maternity leave issue - most Americans don’t even realize that in other advanced and industrialized nations, people actually are given time to relax, enjoy life, start a family, etc. And, not being aware it, makes the American standard seem not so bad. You don’t hear a single politician anywhere (save perhaps for California) proposing to lengthen any of these - sad, isn’t it?

It’s much more relaxing just stay home, read a couple of good books, take a nap everytime you want and share a few beers with your friends, without rush or pressure. (and it’s cheap too

Interesting statistics, but its not really a useful way to compare countries for these purposes.GDP/person/hour measures the supply of labour versus the supply of capital. That’s why places like Norway and Luxembourg are top of the list - they have a heck of a lot of capital and a tiny workforce.

Some sort of measurement of job/overtall life satisfaction per country might give a better picture.

-BM
(ex-economics student, can you tell? )

I’m sure, there is an optimum for the vacation length. Everybody needs a certain time to unwind from the job, but after some time, the visiting relatives, the surprise guests at the summer cottage, the grand in-law tour and the compulsory home improvement (which is never accounted, when the household workload distribution between the spouses is considered) begin to wind you up again.

1 Norway 39.70
2 Luxembourg 38.49
3 France 38.16
4 United States 35.42
5 Belgium 34.04
6 Ireland 33.94
7 The Netherlands 32.49
8 Austria 32.29
9 Denmark 31.53
10 Germany 31.26
11 Sweden 30.29
12 United Kingdom 28.99
13 Italy 28.38
14 Finland 28.37
15 Canada 27.67
16 Australia 27.57
17 Switzerland 26.54
18 Japan 25.51
19 Iceland 24.05
20 Hong Kong 23.59

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita_per_hour

So it is just a question of work to live or live to work. More holidays, less money and vice versa. I’d bet the most efficient way to work could be only about 6,5 hours per day with no longer than 15 minute lunch break. Any longer than that and the time is spent more and more fixing of all kinds of errors and not actually thinking before action. Surest way to have a really crappy end product or service is to have too tight deadlines set by the marketing department.

The main thing wrong with the American way of life is that striving to be maximally productive economically in modern capitalism based on specialization is not psychologically healthy. Humans are not narrow specialists by nature. Humans are natural generalists. In some ways physical laborers are more fortunate than engineers, lawyers, and many other educated professionals in that at least they are not selling their brain-time. Of course, most today’s physical laborers pay a heavy penalty in status loss compared to educated professionals.

Without much time for creative hobbies and socializing, life is dull indeed. I can’t wait for machine intelligence to finally surpass and soar past human intelligence in every possible respect and render all human labor utterly worthless economically.