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.
Well, to be fair, anywhere the Habsburgs ruled is like this because that's the way their empire worked. You could only get rich by exploiting others or engaging in corruption - or be born into it because your ancestors did that.
Nah. Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Northern Spain, Northern Italy. Those are really wealthy and quite efficient places. And most of those have been so for decades if not centuries.
If the EU consisted of just those places it would probably be as productive per capita as California.
I think it was the communism - it was a really bad economic system that was so out of touch with the reality of human beings and the past thousand years that people had no other choice but to engage in corruption (bypassing the system).
There's the communist revolution, which gave power to people who were not fit to wield it. There's the dekulakization, which liquidated millions of people who knew what they were doing. Then there's the forced collectivisation...
That's bollocks. There are many post communist countries which have a strong cultural work ethic. Try making that allegation to the Polish and see how far you get.
Yugoslavia was a paternalist state since pre-Union times. Paternalism lasted in Poland less than 30 years, until the shortage economy kicked in and then the people's republic collapsed.
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.
Born and raised in China, I can testify that working ethic was bad before they adopted market economics. What skylan_q described was happening in China as well.
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.