Re: Inger: school days

October 24, 2004

At 08:44 AM 10/23/04 +0200, Inger Lorelei wrote:

>10 days vacation??! :-o We have at least 25 or 30 days vacation here in

>Sweden + lots of bank holidays on top of it.

I've wondered at times how some countries manage to do what they do: full

coverage, lots of vacation time, and an online friend who lives in Denmark

said that sometimes people just take a year off and go on the dole to rest

and recover. Yet the economy of the Scandanavian countries is very good and

the per capita GDP (how much is produced by the country, when divided by

the number of people who live there) is competitive with the other

developed nations.

My partner said that it's because of size - the Scandanavian countries are

much smaller than the U.S. so it's easier for them to organize things that

way.

I think a lot of it is cultural attitude, too, though. For example, when I

asked the Dane, " if people can just stop working and collect government

money, don't you have a problem with people doing that and never going back

to work? " He said, " why would people do that? You get bored if you quit

working! "

So I figured that the idea of " slacking " is a little more alien to your

culture than to ours and that some things that are stigma to you are normal

to us and some things that are stigma to us are normal to you. From all

I've heard, it sounds like Scandanavians also have more of a " participant

culture " which is to say that people are more likely to think things like,

" why would I little in this park? It belongs to us all! " where Americans

are more likely to think, " so what if the trashcan is full to overflowing.

I'll put my stuff in it rather than walk all the way to the other trash

can. Don't we pay people to clean this park up anyway? "

(Of course I'm generalizing here.)

It seems to me like the America government is always careful to watch that

people don't abuse the system while the Scandanavian government is more

careful to watch that the system is already giving the people what they

need so that no one would have a reason to want to abuse it.

:

>> Our culture tends to demand that we deny or minimize any difficulties

>in life. At my last work place an employee could take 3 days off for a

>funeral if it was in the immediate family and then clock in as if

>nothing happened.

>

>Wow! Here it is taken for granted that such a thing may take months just to

>get over the initial shock. And the first weeks one would be actively

>encouraged to stay at home on sick leave - unless one really wanted to work

>to get one's mind off the sorrow.

It's hard to remember some of the details, but I believe my father only

took one day off work when my brother died. My brother died on a Saturday

night. I stayed with a neighbor on Sunday while my parents took care of

paperwork and stuff. The funeral was on Monday and then I seem to remember

my dad going back to work the next day.

In my dad's case, though, going back to work might have been the best thing

for him. He's always better and more mentally stable when he's working than

when he's just laying in bed all day, reading -- which is pretty much what

he ends up doing if he isn't working.

Sparrow

October 24, 2004

Sparrow.

>10 days vacation??! :-o We have at least 25 or 30 days vacation here in

Sweden + lots of bank holidays on top of it.

> I've wondered at times how some countries manage to do what they do: full

coverage, lots of vacation time, and an online friend who lives in Denmark

said that sometimes people just take a year off and go on the dole to rest

and recover. Yet the economy of the Scandanavian countries is very good and

the per capita GDP (how much is produced by the country, when divided by

the number of people who live there) is competitive with the other

developed nations.

Yes. We do pay very high taxes, though (30% + 8 - 25 % VAT on everything

sold) and do not divert billions upon billions of it into a bloated

" defence " industry. And we are having some trouble coming up since more and

more people get retired and fewer and fewer are working. We are also obliged

to try to lower our taxes to match EU standards so we can expect some cuts

in privileges over here.

> My partner said that it's because of size - the Scandanavian countries are

much smaller than the U.S. so it's easier for them to organize things that

way.

Yes. Though other big countries like Canada have similar systems to the

Scandinavian ones.

> I think a lot of it is cultural attitude, too, though. For example, when I

asked the Dane, " if people can just stop working and collect government

money, don't you have a problem with people doing that and never going back

to work? " He said, " why would people do that? You get bored if you quit

working! "

Right.

> So I figured that the idea of " slacking " is a little more alien to your

culture than to ours and that some things that are stigma to you are normal

to us and some things that are stigma to us are normal to you. From all

I've heard, it sounds like Scandanavians also have more of a " participant

culture " which is to say that people are more likely to think things like,

" why would [i litter] in this park? It belongs to us all! " where Americans

are more likely to think, " so what if the trashcan is full to overflowing.

I'll put my stuff in it rather than walk all the way to the other trash

can. Don't we pay people to clean this park up anyway? "

(Of course I'm generalizing here.)

It is still basically correct. We are more fostered into thinking in terms

of solidarity than in terms of competitiveness and " every man for himself " .

> It seems to me like the America government is always careful to watch that

people don't abuse the system while the Scandanavian government is more

careful to watch that the system is already giving the people what they

need so that no one would have a reason to want to abuse it.

Something like that, yes.

:

>> Our culture tends to demand that we deny or minimize any difficulties

>in life. At my last work place an employee could take 3 days off for a

>funeral if it was in the immediate family and then clock in as if

>nothing happened.

Inger:

>Wow! Here it is taken for granted that such a thing may take months just to

>get over the initial shock. And the first weeks one would be actively

>encouraged to stay at home on sick leave - unless one really wanted to work

>to get one's mind off the sorrow.

Sparrow:

> It's hard to remember some of the details, but I believe my father only

took one day off work when my brother died. My brother died on a Saturday

night. I stayed with a neighbor on Sunday while my parents took care of

paperwork and stuff. The funeral was on Monday and then I seem to remember

my dad going back to work the next day.

> In my dad's case, though, going back to work might have been the best

> thing

for him. He's always better and more mentally stable when he's working than

when he's just laying in bed all day, reading -- which is pretty much what

he ends up doing if he isn't working.

To genrealize, I think that for most men - especially Aspie men - it is

often better to work than to sit at home getting depressed.

Inger

October 24, 2004

Sparrow:

>> My partner said that it's because of size - the Scandanavian countries are

>much smaller than the U.S. so it's easier for them to organize things that

>way.

Inger:

>Yes. Though other big countries like Canada have similar systems to the

>Scandinavian ones.

Sparrow:

Though it seems that Scandanavia is making it work better than Canada is

(though I'm an outsider to both countries so I may be missing a lot of

information.) If there's a spectrum for ways that governments deal with

people's needs, the U.S. would be on one end of that spectrum and

Scandanavia would be on the other and then Canada would be somewhere in the

middle, a little like each of the ends.

>Sparrow:

>> It's hard to remember some of the details, but I believe my father only

>took one day off work when my brother died. My brother died on a Saturday

>night. I stayed with a neighbor on Sunday while my parents took care of

>paperwork and stuff. The funeral was on Monday and then I seem to remember

>my dad going back to work the next day.

>

>> In my dad's case, though, going back to work might have been the best

>> thing

>for him. He's always better and more mentally stable when he's working than

>when he's just laying in bed all day, reading -- which is pretty much what

>he ends up doing if he isn't working.

Inger:

>To genrealize, I think that for most men - especially Aspie men - it is

>often better to work than to sit at home getting depressed.

That's definitely the case for my father. He managed to hold things

together pretty well until he lost the job he'd had for so many years.

After that, he went through all kinds of employment difficulties. He got

his job as a chemical engineer right out of college and worked there for

decades. By the time they laid him off, he was quite a bit older, his

education was out of date, and he had developed that irascibility and

stubbornness that older aspie men too often end up with. So he wasn't

competitive for the market place and didn't interview well at all and

dind't have a " winning personality " to make up for any of the rest.

He had been able to maintain some semblance of normality so long as he had

the job to go to every day. After losing it and having such troubles

finding more work, he quickly became extremely " eccentric " with too much

time on his hands to dwell on everything. It's really sad to think about

because my father is such a good man. He said this to me once, " I did

everything right. I went to the college they told me to, I studied the

things they told me to study. I got married and had kids and a dog and a

house. I did everything I was supposed to do. Why did it end like this? "

Sparrow

October 24, 2004

Inger:

>>To genrealize, I think that for most men - especially Aspie men - it is

often better to work than to sit at home getting depressed.

Sparrow:

> That's definitely the case for my father. He managed to hold things