Intensive Academic Writing for the Social Sciences January 24, 2006 No Work and No Play James Surowiecki

1 In the nineteen-fifties and sixties, it was a commonplace that Americans 2 would soon devote their lives to leisure, not work. The number of hours the 3 average American worked had fallen by almost twenty-five per cent between 4 1900 and 1950, and pundits saw no reason for the trend to stop. By the end of 5 the twentieth century, the futurist Herman Kahn prophesied in 1967, 6 Americans would enjoy thirteen weeks of vacation and a four-day work week. 7 The challenge, it seemed, would be figuring out what to do with all our free 8 time. 9 Kahn was wrong. Today, Americans work about as many hours each year 10 as they did in 1970, and, instead of thirteen weeks of vacation, the average 11 American now gets four (and that includes holidays). But there is a place that 12 has got considerably closer to the leisure society of the futurists’ 13 dreams—Western Europe. The French work twenty-eight per cent fewer hours 14 per person than Americans, and the Germans put in twenty-five per cent fewer 15 hours. Compared with Europeans, a higher percentage of American adults 16 work, they work more hours per week, and they work more weeks per year. 17 One obvious result of this is that America is richer than Europe. In terms of 18 productivity—that is, how much a worker produces in an hour—there’s little 19 difference between the U.S., France, and Germany. But since more people 20 work in America, and since they work so many more hours, Americans create 21 more wealth. In effect, Americans trade their productivity for more money, 22 while Europeans trade it for more leisure. Folk wisdom suggests that the 23 reason for this difference is cultural, which, depending on your perspective, 24 means either that Europeans are ambitionless cafe-dwellers or that Americans 25 are Puritan grinds with no taste for the finer things in life. But, while culture 26 undoubtedly matters, not that long ago it was the Europeans who worked 27 harder; in 1970, for instance, the French worked ten per cent more hours than 28 Americans. 29 So what changed? The Nobel Prize–winning economist Edward C. Prescott 30 has pointed to sharp increases in Europe’s tax rates since 1970—higher taxes 31 give workers less of an incentive to work extra hours. But taxes aren’t high

1 32 enough to explain Europeans’ new taste for free time. A more plausible 33 explanation was put forward recently by the economists Alberto Alesina, 34 Edward Glaeser, and Bruce Sacerdote: European labor unions are far more 35 powerful and European labor markets are far more tightly regulated than their 36 American counterparts. In the seventies, Europe, like the U.S., was hit by high 37 oil prices, high inflation, and slowing productivity. In response, labor unions 38 fought for a reduced work week with no reduction in wages, and greater job 39 protection. When it was hard to get wage increases, the unions pushed for 40 more vacation time instead. Governments responded to political pressure by 41 plumping for leisure, too; in France in the eighties, for instance, a succession 42 of laws increased mandatory vacation time and limited employers’ ability to 43 use overtime. 44 The difference in work habits between Europeans and Americans, in other 45 words, isn’t a matter of European workers’ individually deciding they’d rather 46 spend a few extra hours every week at the movies; it’s a case of collectively 47 determined contracts and regulations. There is a good deal to be said for this 48 approach—most Americans, after all, are happy that the forty-hour week is 49 written into law—but it has its costs. Even if you want to work more, it’s hard 50 to do so: try getting anything done in Paris during August. And reducing the 51 amount of work employees do makes it more expensive to employ people, 52 which contributes to Europe’s high unemployment rate. 53 The embrace of leisure affects the job situation in Europe in other ways, too. 54 Because Americans spend more hours at the office than Europeans, they spend 55 fewer hours on tasks in the home: things like cooking, cleaning, and child care. 56 This is especially true of American women, who, according to a study by the 57 economists Richard Freeman and Ronald Schettkat, spend ten fewer hours a 58 week on household jobs than European women do. Instead of doing these jobs 59 themselves, Americans pay other people to do them. For instance, Americans 60 spend about the same percentage of their income stocking up on food at home 61 as the French and the Germans do, but they spend roughly twice as much in 62 restaurants as the French, and almost three times as much as the Germans. Not 63 surprisingly, many more Americans than Europeans work in the restaurant 64 business. The same is true of child care. 65 In the American model, then, you work more hours and use the money you 66 make to pay for the things you can’t do because you’re working, and this 67 creates a demand for service jobs that wouldn’t otherwise exist. In Europe, 68 those jobs don’t exist in anything like the same numbers; employment in 69 services in Europe is fifteen per cent below what it is in the U.S. Service jobs 70 are precisely the jobs that young people and women (two categories of

2 71 Europeans who are severely underemployed) find it easiest to get, the jobs that 72 immigrants here thrive on but that are often not available to immigrants in 73 France. There are many explanations for the estimated forty-per-cent 74 unemployment rate in the banlieues that have been the site of recent riots, but 75 part of the problem is that voluntary leisure for some Europeans has helped 76 lead to involuntary leisure for others. The less work that gets done, the less 77 work there is to do. Helping some people get off the labor treadmill can keep 78 many people from ever getting on the treadmill at all.

Source: The New Yorker, November 28, 2005.

Wanna Buy a Bridge? Alec Wilkinson

1 Hi, Mr. Vandemark? Are you there? . . . Can you pick up? . . . I guess 2 you’re not there. O.K., this is the Talk of the Town Realty Office. I’m still 3 working on apartments for you and Mrs. Vandemark, but something else just 4 came up that I thought, maybe, might really work for you. I remember you 5 said you had an island—Maine, or somewhere?—and I wonder, is this island 6 by any chance either three hundred and one feet or two hundred and forty-four 7 feet from the shore? Because if it is I have a really unique property. Actually, 8 it’s more of an accessory. Anyway, it’s a bridge. The . 9 City is selling the Willis Avenue Bridge. For a dollar. First New 10 York City bridge ever offered for sale, far as anyone knows, and I wouldn’t 11 advise holding your breath for the next one. The kicker? Delivery anywhere 12 within fifteen miles of its present site, at 125th Street and the Harlem River, is 13 free. Comes in sections on a barge. I’m thinking this bridge might make a 14 terrific approach to your island. Think how 6,213 tons of steel and 29,546 15 cubic yards of masonry would look in Penobscot Bay. Is that a statement, or 16 what? 17 I know you’re probably thinking, What’s wrong with the bridge that the 18 city’s selling it? Nothing, they’re just replacing it, starting in 2007. According 19 to Iris Weinshall, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Transportation, 20 the city usually dismantles a property like this one, “decomposes” it, she says, 21 but since some of the funds for the new bridge are coming from the federal 22 and state governments, the city’s required to try and find a new use for it. It’s 23 old—it opened in 1901—and it needs some attention, but it handles so much 24 traffic that the city can’t shut it down to repair it. The new Willis Avenue

3 25 Bridge, by the way, will occupy space beside the old one. It’s the first time the 26 city is building what the Commissioner calls an “in kind” bridge. 27 I know you’re also wondering what it looks like. To be honest, it’s an 28 unusual-looking structure. It’s a swing bridge—it opens for traffic on the 29 river—so it’s in two sections, which is why I mentioned the footage, and it 30 looks a little like two different bridges that weren’t really meant to go together. 31 In real estate we call this charm, but I guess when it opened some guy named 32 Livingston Schuyler wrote that it had an “adventitious ugliness,” whatever that 33 means. He also wrote, “One says, with confidence, that the arrangement would 34 be intolerable to a designer of any aesthetic sensibility.” I know, not good, but 35 you have to bear in mind they had different standards then. “People usually 36 think of the bridges on the as the city’s jewels,” Commissioner 37 Weinshall says. “The Harlem River bridges are the city’s workhorses.” 38 Commissioner Weinshall says she hasn’t got any calls on the bridge yet, but 39 I doubt it’ll last, not in this market. She thinks any civilian interested might be 40 up against someone in the federal highway department who has a bridge to put 41 up and thinks, Why pay for a new bridge? Why not install this historic one? 42 I’ll mention the one stipulation the Commissioner imposed and then I’ll 43 hang up: if you purchase the bridge and take it past the fifteen miles, it’s yours. 44 “No bringing it back,” she says. “We don’t want people knocking on our door 45 in a couple of years saying, ‘We tried it. It didn’t work.’ ” 46 Let me know if you want pictures. Buh-bye.

Source: The New Yorker, January 17, 2006.

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