Yugoslavs Find No Paradise at McDonald's (1988)
articles.latimes.com
articles.latimes.com
Very few people understand that for most people life was pretty good in Soviet times.
It just turned out people preferred the outcome of a having a little less comfort and a bit more progress, which is what really drove the Soviet collapse in the end.
It was kept propped up by purposefully (and often viciously) keeping the populace ignorant of the progress made beyond it's borders, but in the end the allure of the shiny and new behind the curtain won.
According to a recent domestic survey, average I.T. managers work efficiently for only 10% of their eight-hour workday. The rest of the time is spent reading email, conducting pointless meetings, or having interminable private chats with colleagues over "best practices".
I've heard this 'Every body has a job to do' thing many times when I ask managers what they do.
But they never tell 'what exactly are they doing or they are supposed to do'.
I've been born and raised in Canada and my parents are immigrants from the former Yugoslavia. I've taken many extended trips back home and I have to say that "working efficiently for only half of their eight-hour workday" is overstating their efficiency. Socialism destroyed work ethic in Yugoslavia amongst other things. The villagers and farmers were the only ones who had any work ethic left as they were primarily subsistence farmers on the "receiving end" of socialism if you will. They were the ones who left to work and settle in other countries.
People with money aren't viewed as investors, but crooks. Anyone who turns a profit is suspected of stealing. Almost no one understands the concept of looking for work or creating their own job. It's sad.
... which is why Austria and the Netherlands are so poor and backwards??
If the EU consisted of just those places it would probably be as productive per capita as California.
Well, 90% of them are crooks.
It can take longer than 1 generation to destroy a country's work ethic.
Work ethic is shaped by social and economic factors rather than some ethereal work culture independent of them. Social and economic systems do in fact shape culture to an important extent.
1. Humans come first. Even before money.
2. But, but, lot of people exploited 1. due bad organization, nepotism, ...
Because of 1. people had, for example, health care and education for free (best universities included), but because of 2. -> system wasn't always in favor of people that actually work (even for others).
People, at one moment, voted for capitalism -> now we don't have free health care and education, but most of people from 2. are still here. Worst from both worlds :-( But when i look at Scandinavia it looks like they knew how to minimize 2. and also have 1. at the same time. So if i ever choose to leave current place it will be Scandinavia ;-)
Now, when a foreign company enters, esp. one with reputation of being a big, profitable business, people would assume that getting a job there is the same, or even better than working at a big domestic company.
Sadly, this is still true for many people today. We have a lot of foreign companies here now, and many people have got the job, just to quit days or weeks later. Main complaint being: there's too much work. People only stick and work in companies where wages are 40-50% above the average wage in domestic companies. We still suffer from low productivity.
This is slowly changing, and I assume it will be much better in 5-10 years. 7-13 year old kids who are in school now are growing up in a different kind of system, and their parent are also young enough to have sane perspective on state of things. They enter the workforce in 5-10 years from now.
Our main problem now is current youth, who were raised during the war, whose parents could not teach them good value system, because all they could see on television was that criminals and people waging wars are idols for boys, and folk singers for girls. Also, many criminals earned a lot of money during the war and seeing them go unpunished was really a bad message to all children. Those children are 15-25 years old now, and a lot of them simply have no goals in life, see no perspective and either want to become criminals themselves or leave the country.
On the subject of the first McDonald's restaurant in a country, my wife (who grew up in Taiwan) and I went (on my suggestion) to the opening day of the first McDonald's in Taiwan in early 1984. We waited in line outdoors at least an HOUR, and when we finally got into the restaurant, the workers inside all looked shocked at the number of customers still in line to order. People in Taiwan are used to working hard, but that was a level of intensity of desire for a particular restaurant's food that was baffling to the young new hires there. I think everyone in Taiwan who had ever been to any country with a McDonald's, both locals and expatriates, were there to see what a local McDonald's would look like.
After my newlywed wife had her first McDonald's hamburger, she asked her American husband why I went to the trouble of waiting in line so long for such indifferent food. That was sheer nostalgia on my part--by then I had been away from the United States for two years. Here in the United States, I can and do go two years at a time without eating a McDonald's hamburger, just because I can. But felt I had to have the hamburger in Taiwan at my first opportunity, just because I couldn't before. I think for a while that McDonald's store in Taipei had the worldwide record for highest weekly gross sales of any McDonald's location, eventually to be surpassed by the first-ever McDonald's in some other country. You can now get good service from diligent young workers in a McDonald's all over Taiwan.
It actually took me several weeks to understand that to them the McDonalds was a special place; an affordable restaurant with an air of foreign mystique ...
Just to be clear, 95% of people sitting at McDonalds would just be eating their schlep, while these couples would sit starry eyed between them.
Also, if you're talking about Prague: that's not Czech Republic as many Czechs like to say ... it's a different world all unto itself.
The trend of demanding more work for less money is hardly restricted to Yugoslavia, though - it's crippled America, for one thing, but Western Europe loooves to exploit Central Europe for cheap labor, even though Central Europe's cost of living has come up to Western levels now.
I think only Asian countries can be good examples of working hard and good work ethics. US is not, it is excellent example of a lot of other good things. If you don't think this is true, just look at Yahoo to name one.
Also: I think US citizens are a lot more well-travelled than you assume. Sure, they work hard and don't get much holiday time, but they do travel quite a lot in their free time.
In my ignorance I must have interpreted the article like this: 1. Communism = bad, 2. all Communist people lazy = Communism doomed to fail, 3. big Western company comes bringing enlightenment but people no want jobs (couldn't possible have anything to do with lousy pay = must mean communists be lazy), 4. everybody knows in capitalism people work incredibly productively 8 hours per day - except those crazy Yugoslavs
Blame it on the communism still goes hand in hand with the era when the article was published, but today...? Really - "a Yugoslavian problem"?
EDIT (after your edit): Also - where do I say or assume that a lot of US citizens are not well-travelled? Please read again...
The US citizens you hang out with, sure. And certainly, a lot of US citizens I know now are well-traveled as well. But I moved away from an area in central Pennsylvania where there were families who had lived in the same county since the 1600s. Friends who had, by their mid-twenties, never gone so far as New York, let alone across a national border.
It's certainly a mistake to think that all Americans are ignorant and sheltered, and it's great to see that more and more Americans have passports, but it's still very accurate to say that Americans are mostly untraveled.
I don't see how those two are related in this way. Unless you lose your basic income when you work.
Without defrauding the system, you are better off getting a job as it provides you with a better income. Despite this, there are still a significant number of people who would rather remain unemployed than contribute productively to society. Many of them defraud the system or engage in crime to boost their income.
I think I would rather see the government guaranteeing a basic job rather than offering benefits for any length of time. Supporting somebody legitimately between jobs is fine. Somebody who hasn't worked in a year should be sent to a labour camp until they decide to find better employment.
Considering recent trends, now seems like the last time you would want to lock people into wage slavery.
On top of that, in a situation like now where you have tons more hands than jobs to make use of them, this policy seems like it would only exasperate the situation in times of economic repression.
This idea is literally considered the Bad Future(TM) in Marshall Brains Manna[0]. And I can't say I disagree. I don't want to live in a world where those homeless people I see on the street are rounded up and sedated somewhere. Especially if one day I might join them.
Not to mention that this basically outlaws several kinds of professions. (Freelance artist, Consultant)
There's nothing wrong with being a freelancer, or deliberately homeless, or simply taking a break from work in order to pursue your own projects or goals. However, if you choose to claim a benefit and do so for an extended period (i.e. >60% of the time for a year or more) then I think it's fair for the government to say "from now you work for NZ, or relinquish your benefit".
It's unreasonable to burden society just because you're lazy and unmotivated
The ridiculous utopia portrayed in Manna would be nicer, of course, but we aren't there yet. Right now everything has a cost, including lazy beneficiaries, corrupt politicians and jaw-droppingly stupid government projects. I can't see any way to fix those problems but I am allowed to hope for a world where one day we can
That's a little different, and more reasonable.
And yes, I mainly linked that story for the Dystopia part.
I'm betting that a typical Brazilian Cuisine restaurant in Brazil charges much less than 100 Real per person. That would fit my guess that they're a specialty destination which can charge pretty much anything they want... for awhile, while the novelty lasts.
(Edited to add, lazy me, I googled around and found an article online from 2012 claiming a single dude should expect to spend about R$350/month on food, so the local Brazilian restaurant in the USA is asking for more than a weeks worth of groceries equivalent, which would be pretty high end dining in my USA local experience)
I fail to understand why many people choose a place to eat as if it was a first one in their life.
But a small apartment rents for close to $2,000/month if you can find one.
Of course, I have also seen very similar results in resort towns for slightly different reasons: only the rich can afford to live there, so there is no poor to work the low paid jobs.
I know enough people that went there recently and in the early 1980s too during phase one of the oil boom.
And I'd guess that employees are similarly averse to being exploited all over the world. For example, if you were hired as a developer in the U.S. at an average salary but your employer expected you to work twelve hours every day and answer support calls in the middle of the night, you'd quickly realize that you could find another job where you could get the same salary with less painful working conditions.
And the constant departure of qualified employees should be a strong signal to management that they don't pay enough.
In any case, super-luxury cars are more and more being built by robots anyway...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B6eBAuhvEY&feature=youtube_...
Prices aren't considered low and you can actually get a quality meal for same price.
Regarding the employees, the unemployment rate is relatively high, so there will always be some available.
Also, the wage of a younger non-skilled employee is less than $2/hour. (If McD's pays more than that, I don't foresee many quitting.)
It's common for people in their 30's to be living with parents.
Housing and food are cheap, while consumer goods are expensive.
Unless of course you put a lot of stock in the "according to a recent survey" part.
I'm actually surprised how many people appear to be discussing this seriously, or why this was even submitted. Can anyone explain what is interesting about this?