Have you also thought about the possible connection between your observation and the fact that the US is a very wealthy country?
Seconded. It’s almost a cliche for Americans to visit (various parts of) Europe and Latin America, observe the less stringent work ethics, the far poorer standards of customer service, etc., and shake their heads, noting the ostensible causal link to lower levels of wealth… but that link does seem to exist.
The existing link is a correlation, not necessarily causality.
For example, imagine a country where the government can (and once in a while does) decide to take away your savings. In such country it wouldn’t make sense to try getting more money than you need to survive this month, unless you are ready to use it now (e.g. you are building a house). Imagine that you are smart enough and you could make more money than you need, but the money would probably be taken away, so you don’t want to do this. So instead of higher salary you will optimize e.g. for less work. If enough people do this, work ethics goes down.
Or imagine a country with such strong egalitarian ethics, than even if you do 10× more work than your colleagues, your employer just wouldn’t give you even 2× higher salary, because in their opinion, no one deserves twice as much as the market rate. Again, the usual response is to slow down to the level of average (sometimes even more, because the average people usually consider themselves to be above-average, so they slow down too).
There are countries where stronger work ethics would be a lost purpose; it would not improve the life of the given individual, on average. Sure, some people are strategic enough to find a way to do it, but most people are not. (For example, if you are 8× faster than your colleagues, but your employer insists on paying you exactly the same amount of money, you could try convincing them to let you work from home, then do in 1 hour what your colleagues would do in 8 hours, and spend the rest of the time working on your own projects or just having fun.)
And of course it’s equally a cliche for Europeans to observe the US’s wealth, long hours, short holidays, low taxes, extreme inequality, etc., and shake their heads, noting the ostensible causal link to various forms of societal dysfunction (see, e.g., http://moses.creighton.edu/jrs/2005/2005-11.pdf which is ostensibly about correlations between religion and societal health, but a lot of the clearest correlations are driven by the fact that the US is both very religious and badly messed-up).
Whether the US’s unusually severe work habits have anything to do with this is anyone’s guess. Quite likely they don’t. If they do, they might be effect rather than cause. But I don’t think the connection between those work habits and the US’s great wealth is at all obvious, either.
Seconded. It’s almost a cliche for Americans to visit (various parts of) Europe and Latin America, observe the less stringent work ethics, the far poorer standards of customer service, etc., and shake their heads, noting the ostensible causal link to lower levels of wealth… but that link does seem to exist.
The existing link is a correlation, not necessarily causality.
For example, imagine a country where the government can (and once in a while does) decide to take away your savings. In such country it wouldn’t make sense to try getting more money than you need to survive this month, unless you are ready to use it now (e.g. you are building a house). Imagine that you are smart enough and you could make more money than you need, but the money would probably be taken away, so you don’t want to do this. So instead of higher salary you will optimize e.g. for less work. If enough people do this, work ethics goes down.
Or imagine a country with such strong egalitarian ethics, than even if you do 10× more work than your colleagues, your employer just wouldn’t give you even 2× higher salary, because in their opinion, no one deserves twice as much as the market rate. Again, the usual response is to slow down to the level of average (sometimes even more, because the average people usually consider themselves to be above-average, so they slow down too).
There are countries where stronger work ethics would be a lost purpose; it would not improve the life of the given individual, on average. Sure, some people are strategic enough to find a way to do it, but most people are not. (For example, if you are 8× faster than your colleagues, but your employer insists on paying you exactly the same amount of money, you could try convincing them to let you work from home, then do in 1 hour what your colleagues would do in 8 hours, and spend the rest of the time working on your own projects or just having fun.)
And of course it’s equally a cliche for Europeans to observe the US’s wealth, long hours, short holidays, low taxes, extreme inequality, etc., and shake their heads, noting the ostensible causal link to various forms of societal dysfunction (see, e.g., http://moses.creighton.edu/jrs/2005/2005-11.pdf which is ostensibly about correlations between religion and societal health, but a lot of the clearest correlations are driven by the fact that the US is both very religious and badly messed-up).
Whether the US’s unusually severe work habits have anything to do with this is anyone’s guess. Quite likely they don’t. If they do, they might be effect rather than cause. But I don’t think the connection between those work habits and the US’s great wealth is at all obvious, either.