I present to you Exhibit 1 titled: “EFFECT”
And, now I present to you Exhibit 2 titled: “CAUSE”
Sorry in advance for the small font size on the images. These two news clippings, from Tuesday 5/5/09 of the Wall St. Journal show something that struck me as very funny and very sad. Same paper, same day. Unbelievable.
You may dispute this ‘causal’ determination - that spending nearly half the day eating and sleeping lead to economic decline and stagnation. But, you can’t help but wonder if all the people in the unemployment line take their customary breaks for napping and eating.
One of my favorite authors, Dan Kennedy, once said:
“most people are running around with their umbilical cords in their hands looking for another place to plug it in.”
Kennedy was referring to a marketing more effectively to consumers. But to me, this perfectly sums up the mass amounts of people in developed nations across the globe that are lining up for a pull on the public teet.
At present, no place on earth exemplifies sucking on the government teet more than the countries of Western Europe. God bless their food, art and rich culture of chain smoking - but take another gander at the first clipping. If you can’t read it, here are some highlights:
- it is anticipated that the EU economy will shrink by 4% in 2009
- Fiscal deficits (large ones) for member nations
- Unemployment is at 17% in Spain (the picture is of an unemployment line in Spain)
Scroll to the next clipping above (Sleeping Giant) and some of the gems you will find are as follows:
- The French sleep more on average than any other nation - 530 minutes per day (8.83 hours)
- Americans sleep for 518 minutes per day on average (8.63 hours)
- Koreans sleep for 469 minutes per day on average (7.8 hours)
- The French spend 2 hours and 15 minutes per day eating and drinking, Italians spend 1:54 and Spain 1:46 the U.S. spends 1:14 on average
- France has mandatory 30 paid vacation days (government required) per year
Ok. Let’s put this in the form of a game show question just for fun:
Q: The European Union is shrinking in terms of output and population and the best response to this ____?
A) Sleep more than anybody else in the world
B) Spend more time eating and drinking than anybody else in the world
C) A and B
D) Neither A nor B
5 seconds to buzz in…..3….2…1……if you said “C”give yourself a big pat on the back, you have just passed the qualifying exam to become a government official in France, Spain or Italy.
Now, I am all for balancing out your work with your personal life - I don’t take that away from anybody. But this is taking it to the extreme. Kinda like the ‘no kid gets cut from the soccer team and everyone gets a trophy’ mindset that has gripped America in recent years.
What’s funny and sad about what these two short articles is that they unintentionally capture a culture in a few words that is quickly becoming accepted in a country you know…the USA.
In my previous post, I mentioned some of the Q/A session from the 2009 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholder meeting. During the meeting, Vice Chairman Charlie Munger said that he thought that American health care was going to eventually become very similar to that of Western Europe. My view is that more things are going to be similar to Western Europe than just health care.
For those of you that haven’t noticed, the government bailout line that everyone from banks to auto companies is standing in looks a lot like the Spanish unemployment line from the WSJ article.
I fear that we will increasing live in a world where non-producers will live off of the productive work of others - invariably creating a negative economic effect that could lead to serious problems damaging living standards and retracting many years of productive capital and labor. It will be very hard to tear people’s umbilical cords away from the mother ship they are plugging them into when the ship runs dry.
