The German obsession with "lazy"?

This word seems to be used everywhere.

I think it is a bit of a myth like the British stiff upper lip - it doesn't exist.

Does anyone else hear this constant reference to "hard working Germans"?

Why the hell do thesy have so many holidays in Bavaria? (not that I ever complained when I was working!)

so are you asking if we here 'lazy' or 'hard working' often - can't be both I guess?


because its catholic

You'll probably find that productivity as a whole is high in Germany.

Why "work" 10 hours if you can do it 6 and go to a beer garden?

The only time I heard "lazy" was when a BIG sized woman introduced herself. We thought that her name was very apt and we would recite it when we ran out of jokes to laugh at. Took us many months later to realise that her name is "Lacy", not "Lazy".

Well, in my albeit limited experience, I find that concept laughable. I dunno about factories and production lines, but in IT firms, people are as good as useless. Now, there might be some good skillsets out there, but people are blinkered, follow orders, and have no desire to be innovative in fear of that leading to increased responsibility and workload. Second only to Singapore in the scale of fuckwit useless sheep workers.

Thanks for the compliment!! My UK IT coordinators were real sheep workers (and probably are working in farms) too!

Now, Don, please, tell us how you REALLY feel about the IT workers here!

For fuckwit useless sheep workers, Singapore's GDP ranks 29 out of 231 countries i.e. Singapore's GDP per capita is $23,700 compared to UK's $27,700 GDP per capita (#19) & $27,600 for Germany (#20). See for yourself http://www.worldfactsandfigures.com/gdp_country_desc.php

I still don't really understand the original question to be honest

define productivity, pls MT.

historically, Germany has had comparitively high unit labour costs, which has meant a willingness by companies to invest in labour saving technology, thus in manufacturing, for example, less people produce the same goods, meaning higher productivity. Does this mean that the people working actual work harder and longer than, say, in Britain. No. in fact, they can work fewer hours and still produce higher productivity figures.

High Productivity does NOT nescessarrily equal hard and longer working individuals producing more. It usually means less people working fewer hours using technology than produces more.

That is one of the many reasons why Germany has such high unemployment.

GDP per hour worked probably, or something similar

exactly my point, BR. machines don't "work" in that sense of the definition. So in countries like Germany, where labour is replaced by technology, productivity goes up. The closer the gap between the unit cost of labour and capital, the more likely it is that countries will invest in technology, thus improving productivity. This has no bearing on whether those still in jobs actually work hard or long.

You know, there are people & careers in every culture and country that fit this profile. What do you have against Singapore.

Agree with Owain - it's all lies, lies and statistics. Currently the productivity (he will back me up on this) per head of a Chinese worker is about 2% that of a US worker.

Does that mean Chinese workers are 50 times lazier than an American? Nope.

Just been chatting most of the weekend to a nice 32 year old German chap who works for a big US company over here. He manages 15 German staff in his department. Agrees they are a mostly bunch of corner-cutting lazy skivers that need to be watched and handheld all the time.

His current pet hate is setting up a day of interviews, and being presented with a moron who makes no effort at all, and at the end of the interview demands you sign his unemployment form to prove he "attended" an interview. Like the scene from "Trainspotting".

All staff should be dismissable on the spot with no pay and no reason given. That would keep people on their toes.

Interesting statement, that one. Could you provide your sources? (I know that GDP/person in China is roughly 1/30 of what it is in Germany, when measured at market prices. And Germany is a bit behind the US, so China vs. US is probably around 1/35 to 1/40 when simply comparing GDP. But presumably, to measure and compare productivity, you should look at purchasing power parity. While this is exceedingly hard to measure, surely China most be much closer to the US than 1/40. Maybe 1/10 to 1/15 or something around there.)

(Not really arguing with the rest of your post, though...)

Not my intention to criticize Singapore here, but in this specific case, GDP is not a good measure of productivity. Singapore is among the world's most capital-intensive economies, because the government has encouraged huge investments in super-capital-intensive industries like microchips and biotech. As a consequence, the percentage of GDP that goes to wages and consumption is unusually low. Put differently, once you factor out the capital-intensity, labor productivity in Singapore is much lower than what GDP data suggests.

(I believe this issue was first raised by Paul Krugman who famously compared Singapore and some other East Asian countries to the Soviet Union, because they invested huge amounts of capital to obtain GDP growth, whereas total factor productivity didn't really show all that much growth. Really made ol' Lee Kuan Yew angry at the time. But Statistics Singapore acknowledges the facts in their official statistics yearbooks. Krugman did exaggerate a bit, though.)