Germany and the Medium Chill

A while ago, American blogger David Roberts coined the phrase 'medium chill.' It's based on recent research into happiness, which has shown that 'it's unlikely any job advance, material acquisition, or singular event will make you durably happier; the good news is that it's possible to make yourself durably happier without any new job, material acquisition, or singular event.' To do this, you scale down on the amount you work and consume, and concentrate more on social activities, which leads you to 'become more positive, open, and empathetic, to cultivate a resilient wellbeing that weathers changing circumstances.' You give up focusing on the next big career move, learn to live without unnecessary consumer luxuries, and spend more time doing leisure activities you love.

Problem is, you may not be able to live the 'medium chill' lifestyle on your own. You need a social infrastructure that makes it possible to enjoy a basically decent quality of life on a modest income. And that's something that America doesn't provide, except to a small, highly-educated elite. As Roberts notes, 'if you're going to de-emphasize the material in favor of the social, you're going to be talking about places. If we want people to own and consume less privately, we need to provision safe, accessible, pleasant public spaces and resources.' Recently, he also pointed to the role health insurance plays: 

I suspect there are many, many medium chillers who would be happy working 30-hour weeks and trading the extra income for leisure time. Or perhaps they'd like to share a job. Or maybe they'd like to work more when they need money and less when they don't -- just "work and get paid for it" when they need to. Those options aren't workable for most people today because of the specter of health insurance. To deviate from the 40-hour employee model is to take on risk beyond what all but a few brave souls are willing to bear.

...

To me this looks like an argument for universal, single-payer healthcare. Not only would it achieve better health outcomes for less money than the employer-based system, but it would free people to pursue much more diverse working arrangements. It's a step toward "de-formalising and de-bureaucratising labour," as Wilkinson seeks. Work-sharing along the lines of what Germany does would be another nice step. Or if you wanted to get really socialist-freaky, you could go for a guaranteed minimum income.

This is mildly revolutionary advice in work-obsessed America, but, as Roberts notes, reflects reality for most Germans. German society contains dozens of subtle mechanisms permitting most citizens to scale the amount of work they do to fit their current life situation. If the company you work for hits a rough patch, you're more likely to be put on part-time work than laid off. You never have to worry about losing your state-mandated basic health insurance. Both mothers and fathers of children are given an almost absurdly luxurious palette of options for adjusting their work schedules to care for young children. You get over a month of paid vacation automatically. And Germany offers tons of inviting public spaces and cultural options to fill all that free time. Of course, cultural factors play a role here, as well. Assuming you have a decent work record and a good reason to do so, if you visit with your boss and request a lighter work schedule, you're likely to get your wish.

The overall result is that Germans work about 70% as much as Americans do, and much of that difference takes the form of people voluntarily scaling back their workload. Unfortunately, many Germans, hopelessly provincial and blinkered as they are, constantly bitch about the work-life balance in Germany, claim to be overworked and overstressed, and pout like three-year-olds who've just had their favorite toy taken away. They appear to have no idea at all what life is like in countries without these generous social protections built in to everyday life. That's why I return to this theme so frequently...

Comments

[vivian]

Version 6.0 of Joyfax Server has great functions--> cool fax editor

[Sebastian]

@MM:

nice graph you linked to, but there is more to the well-being at work than clocked hours.

You don't say. Workplace accidents would be another thing, wouldn't it? These have massively declined in Germany, from over 100 in 1960 to 26 in 2009 je 1000 Vollarbeiter (pre-1990 data for West Germany).

Look at an income graph for the same time span.

The subject matter was "well-being at work," not income, remember? In fact the whole starting-point for this discussion is the conflict between well-being and income.

[MM]

@sebastian

nice graph you linked to, but there is more to the well-being at work than clocked hours.
Look at an income graph for the same time span.

[Sebastian]

@MM:

"Cranky" europeans compare their present workplace experience with the environment 10 years ago. Even worse the compare it with that of their parents.

I doubt that. Maybe they get lost in nostalgia. If they did objectively compare modern workplace conditions to those of the post-war generation, they would again have to concede that they're pretty well off.

Judged by the past the present is an awful workplace.

What the hell?

[MM]

People don't and cannot compare US to europe.They just lack the experience. "Cranky" europeans compare their present workplace experience with the environment 10 years ago. Even worse the compare it with that of their parents.
Judged by the past the present is an awful workplace. Regulation's might be the same, but undermined by extensive use of loopholes, they have lost their regulating power.

[Martin]

@Christian: Yes, I wasn't talking about the article Andrew pointed us to. I was talikg about the things Andrew and others said.

And when I talk about burnt out people I talk about persons I know personally (friends and family) which where in psychiatric hospital for half a year, got almost divorced, or have other serious medical conditions as a side effects. Burt out is a really serious depression.

Martin

[Sebastian]

@Martin

Yes, you might(!) get a lighter work schedule. But you can also kiss your career good bye.

Uhhh, wasn't that exactly the point of this whole "medium chill" business? That your career will suffer, but that that's preferrable because your career will not make you happy anyway? I'm not saying that's actally true, but the discussion seems to be:

Person A: "You should ditch your career plans and take a lighter workload, and you will be happier in the end."

Person B: "Are you crazy man? If you take a lighter workload, your career is at stake!!"

I'd also like to say that there are lots of misconceptions about what burnout syndrome is and what causes it. Don't use it as a synonym for "overworked", people.

[Martin]

@Andrew: I agree, thats the point of the article you pointed us to and I was discussing something else: I will never agree to a system where it is either "have a career and live on the edge of burnout" or "have no career at all". There has to be a way to have career and life. And I don't know why I should stop fighting for this.

Can you give me one reason it has to be so?
At least one?

Our discrimination law could and should be enhanced. Agreed!

They should be comparing the amount of pressure they face to the amount of pressure the rest of the human race faces, including people doing similar work to theirs in the U.S.

This, they can not do. This would require them to experience it first hand in the U.S.

Their problem is that they're constantly comparing the amount of pressure they face to the amount of pressure they would face in a perfect universe.

Having much more personal experience with burnt out people than I would have preferred, I can tell you that this is a very, very high level and abstract way to put it. And I am not talking about all these whiners and bitchers you can find abundantly. I am talking about seriously depressed people.

My experience is more like that burnt out people can not live up to their own expectations because of a completely insane business environment they work in. They wouldn't mind a heavy workload at all if they have the feeling that it is getting results.

Martin

[Andrew]

@Martin: You're pointing out that there are trade-offs to these generous social benefits. Agreed! That's part of life. Perhaps you might 'kiss your career goodbye' if you ask for less work, but that's OK! The entire message of the blog post I linked to is that it's often the right thing to do to 'kiss your career goodbye.' You can either work as hard as you possibly can and advance rapidly in your career, or you can relax and accept that this will mean less career advancement, but more time with family. You can't expect both of these things to happen at the same time, because that would be a perfect world.

As for pregnancy discrimination, that's certainly a problem, but it's mainly down to Germany's toothless anti-discrimination laws. If employers had to carefully document their employment decisions, AND had to pay a fixed 10,000 euro penalty for proven pregnancy discrimination (in addition to any more specific damages) AND would have that fact publicized in all media, you'd see a lot less pregnancy discrimination.

@Curtis: I'm with Christian here. The fact that 1 person has to work extra because 20 others are enjoying a vacation sort of makes my point. And let me guarantee you that that one person who's working pretty hard now will get, and take, his mandated 6 weeks of vacation and holiday at some other time during the year. So he should remember that he's part of the 2% of the human race that has ever enjoyed such a privilege, and stop bitching.

And as Christian points out, burnout is a cultural phenomenon. Objectively, Germans and Austrians have less reason to be actually genuinely burned out than 99% of the human race. Their problem is that they're constantly comparing the amount of pressure they face to the amount of pressure they would face in a perfect universe. They should be comparing the amount of pressure they face to the amount of pressure the rest of the human race faces, including people doing similar work to theirs in the U.S.

[Martin]

Christian, yes I am from Germany. But I guess, that Curtis is from the US. This kind of argument (vacation as reason for burn out) is ridiculous.

Curtis blames the symptoms for the cause. The symptoms can be mitigated by a proper ressource planning, short time employment, etc.
The cause is the utter lack of competency in our management levels. Companies are led by managers that
- rely completely on numbers provided by their minions that isolate them against the real world,
- never had any kind of operative responsibility themselves
- shareholder value and short term profits is their only goal
- people (employees) are just ressources and not to be taken seriously or into account

And please: Nobody should take the comparatively low number of working hours a year in Germany as a whole as an indicator that everyone works that few hours.

Martin, working in an IT department led by a lawyer.

[Christian]

I'm not sure where the authors of the previous two comments are from, but my guess would be Germany (or at least Europe). From an American perspective, workers are not burnt out because everyone is taking vacations, thus causing unequal distributions of the workload at times. American workers are burnt out, because they are working at burn-out levels the entire year round, without the vacations. If you pile all those vacations together for the entire staff, you realize you could just fire an employee, pay the others a little bit more for their trouble, save some money at the corporate level, make the same profit, and have everyone work more! And when life is generally more expensive and time consuming, because America lacks features of basic social infrastructure (e.g., public transit) such that everyone is forced to fund and maintain their own personal substitutes for that which should be social, you have a system that burns up all this extra productivity just in its own maintenance, without yielding much reward in the happiness of those who live in it. A few people at the top then reap the rewards.

I think the real question is how to sell something as intangible as "happiness" on the level of social policy without being shouted out of the room by people screaming, "you lazy socialist."

[Curtis]

With all respect I think it's precisely these luxurious benefits that leads to burnout, at least from my humble observations. The trend to take so much time off means that the work has to be taken over by others in addition to their own workload. This, as I've seen in at least 6 cases, often leads to the ever increasing and popular "burnout syndrome".

Today I met a friend of mine that just came back from a 3 month voluntary leave at work. Why so much time off? She took time from work to spend with her 12 year old son after a recent divorce. I think that's great her company allowed her this time off but her work co-worker certainly was not as thrilled to have to do the work of two people for one salary for three months.

And as Martin pointed out, because of all these benefits, women are especially the targets of systematic discrimination.

I'm simply not convinced that having all this time off is such a great idea. How would I feel having to constantly do the work of a co-worker because of his/her penchant for time-off at work? I have another colleague who works as a lawyer for a large company where's he's currently being worked to a bloody stump because of the summer vacation madness. Everyone at his office is currently away for weeks at a time on summer holidays, which means he has to start work an hour earlier and doesn't get to leave until late at night. Despite all the extra time he has to be putting in to finish everyone else's work, the case files keep piling up on his desk.

I'm just awaiting the phone call, which should come any day now, saying he's hospitalized for burnout.

[Martin]

assuming you have a decent work record and a good reason to do so, if you visit with your boss and request a lighter work schedule, you're likely to get your wish.

Andrew, maybe you should come out of your academia world sometimes. Did you see the most current burn-out statistics?
Yes, you might(!) get a lighter work schedule. But you can also kiss your career good bye.

Both mothers and fathers of children are given an almost absurdly luxurious palette of options for adjusting their work schedules to care for young children.

Thats exactly why so many woman lose their job, their career and their chances of a good return to a decent position in the professional world after becoming mother. Because of your "luxurious palette". And that's why so many of them decide to not get kids at all.

I think in comparison you are not completely wrong. But heaven is somewhere else.

Martin