One question is to compare the purchasing power one gets on average by working forty-seven 35 hour work weeks in France versus the same amount of work in the United States. Because those reduced hours and increased leisure are not state sanctioned (or culturally sanctioned, for that matter) in the U.S., I suspect (without knowing) that a French worker working those hours would enjoy a higher standard of living than a U.S. worker with the same hours.

Vive Sarko

Hard work never killed anybody, but it is illegal in some places.

U.S. GDP (ppp) per capita - $43,500
French GDP (ppp) per captia - $33,100 according to the CIA world factbook. I'll let Doug calculate hours worked in each country, but it looks the U S and A comes out on top.

This is one time where I agree with both Josh and Ezra.

On one hand, I recoil at the idea of the government telling me how much/little I can work. Americans, at least now, won't put up with that.

On the other hand, American professionals who want to be competitive in their fields pretty much give up much of "family life" in many cases because of the massive hours requirements that a professional career requires.

Sure it's a "choice" but it'd be nice to be able to be both successful and have a family life. Why are Americans so much worse at that than the French? American doctors and lawyers and doctors especially generally work absurd hours in sterile environments, especially during their early years of practice, and it's expected if you want to succeed.

The answer probably isn't government intervention, but dangit, kids grow up fast. Once you've missed the first five years of their lives, you don't get that back.

There are some real conservative values supporting finding a way to place some sort of limits to the professional rat race that develops in a free-market society. All these wonderful, amazing technological and social advances, and yet so many of us are still doing the white-collar equivalent of grinding away in the salt mines.

Yes there are ways to make the rat race optional. But it's hard enough to be successful at all, with the competitiveness of school and work. At some point you look up and say "dang, if I'd just focused my early career path on making sure I had leisure time, I might have been able more of a family life."

By then, it very often requires painful sacrifice in order to make that "choice" to have more leisure time, because you've got years of effort expended into your chosen career path, and nobody reminding you how important family can be.

Is it really true in any meaningful sense that American workers can choose to work 35-hour weeks? I mean, there's the trivial sense in which you can also, e.g., 'choose' not to work any sort of job at all. The _government_ leaves those options open, sure (or at least 'til you get picked up for vagrancy!), but does our _society & economy_ actually make the 35-hr week a potential option for even a good-sized minority of workers? I rather doubt it. The option for everyone not independently wealthy, or not willing to subsist on some combination of odd jobs and the dole, is: work a full week (often with mandatory overtime), or take a hike.

This is also a bit unfair, as a response to Ezra: "It makes you wonder how we ever get by here in America without the all-knowing bureaucratic majority ordering our lives." There's hardly a _radical_ difference between the French system and ours. They have a 35-hour, almost-no-exceptions work week. (Actually, as he notes, managers work more than that, but get more overall vacation time.) We have a 40-hour, exceptions-but-with-significant-pay-regulations work week. Making this out to be some profound appeal to an 'all-knwing bureaucracy' is thus as misguided as, e.g., describing a fight over a few marginal points of the highest tax rates as a debate between one party that thinks 'you own your money' and another that thinks 'the government owns your money'. Both parties are so much on the same page, that glossing the debate in ideological terms is close to an absurdity. We're vying over a _very_ small piece of ideological turf here, after all, and all of it in varying flavors of managerial liberalism.

We have a 40-hour, exceptions-but-with-significant-pay-regulations work week.

For hourly wage earners, the 40-hour work week may be the standard, but working overtime is quite common. For salaried professionals, working 45-50+ hours a week is common--especially for anyone who is ambitious to advance his/her career. So, yes, I'd describe a hard 35-hour limit as a pretty radical difference; the outcome is perhaps not radically different, but definitely markedly so.

I agree, however, that choosing to work 35 hours per week isn't a realistic option for most workers. By the same token, though, most American workers wouldn't choose to work 12% fewer hours for 12% less pay. I'd guess there are plenty of opportunities for those who want to work less than 40 hours to do so, if they're motivated enough to get into the right sort of job.

As noted, salaried professionals, etc. _do_ work more than 35 hours/week in the French system; so I suspect the difference is still less radical than painted above. And, really, if it's just a difference in degree (even a significant one), but nothing that rises to the level of a difference in kind, then the radicalism presupposed by JC's joke is still off the mark somewhat.

Also, the problem with the "anyone who is ambitious" clause is exactly the problem that Phil pointed to: the system is set up so that very often you have, as it were, no choice but to choose between family and career. And we, as a society (and I do mean _as a society_ -- not as people-deferring-to-bureaucrats) might want to make other choices available. It really is important to recognize the way in which our system allows certain choices only formally, but not in any materially real way. I, for one, would like to maximize people's real choices, not just their notional ones.

"By the same token, though, most American workers wouldn't choose to work 12% fewer hours for 12% less pay."
My understanding is that this is not so; see, e.g, http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/?&sid=cp105wYcWO&refer=&r_n=sr011.105&db_id=105&item=&sel=TOC_12436&
There are some trickinesses here, however, with the endowment effect -- people willing to trade in future raises for more time off might not be willing to trade current income for more time off. Cf., e.g., people's willingness to commit future raises to savings when they are unwilling to commit current income to it.

Now, I do think (and I suspect that Ezra would think so as well) that we would want more flexibility than the French system, with a real _worker's_ option for overtime (as opposed to what we now have, which is more often than not the _employer's_ option to make you work overtime, if you don't want to lose your job).

Btw, does anyone know what the options are in the French system for individuals to take on additional part-time employment? That might be one way to have the best of both worlds: no one job can make you work more than 35 hours/week (again, except for management), but if your preferred leisure/income trade-off leans more towards the latter, you can have other labor options.

As I said before, the outcome may be a difference in degree, but I do believe it is a difference in kind when the government steps in and says "No, you may not work extra hours to further your career." It offends libertarian sensibilities. I wouldn't expect those who are more comfortable with government regulation of people's lives to find it as distasteful.

I wouldn't say that one always has to "choose between family and career." In most professions, if you put in good work during your 40 hours a week, your career will advance. Not as quickly as someone who chooses to work more hours, but that person is making a free market decision to trade additional labor for more wages. What it comes down to is that you can't have your cake and eat it, too.

On one hand, I recoil at the idea of the government telling me how much/little I can work. Americans, at least now, won't put up with that.

You can thank the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 for instituting the 40 hour work week. The act was passed to eliminate "labor conditions detrimental to the maintenance of the minimum standards of living necessary for health, efficiency and well-being of workers."

Along with establishing the 40 hour work week, it also established a minimum wage and age of employment (14 years).

The US average work year is just north of 2000 hours (one of the highest in the first world, if not the highest according to Business Week) whereas the French work year is around 1700 hours, which is similar to that for most first world countries (again, according to Business Week).

300 hours is over thirty-seven work days so for their per-capita hit of $10,000 the French gain over two months of time off, compared to their American counterparts. Now everyone raise their hand who would be willing to earn $10,000 a year less in exchange for two more months of leisure a year, and what The Economist called "The Best Health Care System In The World" without having to pay for health insurance?