Do We Want To Be Like France?

A few days ago, CNN/Money had an article that discussed a gentleman, John De Graaf, who is trying to get the US to switch to a European style labor framework: i.e. a 35 hour workweek, 11 mandatory paid holidays and mandatory vacation time. He asserts that we need to work less in order to improve the quality of life in the US.

I'll agree with the idea that we are overworked, but I don't think that we need new government regulations created in order to rectify the situation. Everything about our capitalist economic system is geared around the idea of opportunity costs. At any point, you have the option of working fewer hours. No one is forcing anyone to work against their will. There is no legal requirement that you must work "x" number of hours in a week. However, if you choose to work fewer hours, there is an opportunity cost associated with that choice. You may not have the opportunity to work your dream job. You may not be able to find a job that pays quite as much, either on an hourly or an absolute basis. But that is a choice you get to make.

Do you want more money and less free time or less free time and more money? The choice is already yours. Do we really want a system that imposes that choice on us? I don't.

I know that some people would put forth the argument that people really are being forced into working more hours by the rising cost of living. That argument doesn't really hold water with me and I'll tell you why.

Most people who are complaining about the rising cost of living are up to their eyeballs in debt, have two brand new cars, just took a new home equity loan and have never bothered to try to live within their means. Too many people aren't being caught up in a rising cost of living as much as they are being caught up in a rising relative cost of debt servicing. For the most part we just carry way too much debt.

All of this goes back to opportunity costs. People aren't being forced to work more hours because of the rising cost of living. They're being forced to work more hours because they mortgaged their own future earnings, and the bills are coming due. The choice was made long ago when the debts were first incurred, the cars bought, or the house refinanced. The effect is one of the complainer's own choosing. They chose to give up free time now in order to spend more then. They may not have consciously thought of it then, but the law of unintended consequences is still a "law" nonetheless. Ignorance, whether willful or not, does not absolve one from the effects of it.

So why do we need a European style labor regulation? We have choices, we have opportunity, and we have created an economy that produces more opportuntiy for those with ambition. Europe, by contrast, has limited choices for employment in good times, an extraordinarily high unemployment rate, minimal to limited opportunity until you're in your mid thirties, and a moribund economy.

Is all that really the model we want to be following?