Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Answered: Who Works Hardest in the Eurozone

A new poll from the Pew Global Attitudes Project offers some interesting insight into how eurozone members view each other and themselves.

Everyone thinks that Germans are the most hardworking and Greeks the laziest. Everyone, except the Greeks, who think of themselves as the hardest working and the Germans as the laziest.

Also fascinating is that after a slew of votes for Italy, the Greeks, Poles, Czech and Spanish sees their countries as most corrupt.

Here's a chart of the voting results, created by Derek Thompson at Atlantic:


7 comments:

  1. I think Italians are most in touch with the reality of their gov't.

    Sicily has a long tradition of suspicion towards gov't, which is why the Mafia was born there and so successful in that region.

    Most Italians that own businesses in Italy(south of Rome specifically) that I know keep two sets of books.

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  2. I couldn't care less who "works hardest". What matters is, who lives within their means.

    Snoop-Diggity-DANG-Dawg

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  3. Its interesting how so many consider the Germans hardworking and least corrupt. That is probably the global perception of them. I wonder if its more myth then reality. I use to believe that German engineering was superior to everything else until I started working on my BMW (2003 m3) out of necessity. I soon learned that their plastics are very low quality, they have little concern for maintenance and they use loads of low quality manufactured parts, like the soft top lid motor which has a plastic top to hold a metal gear in place that has enormous tension placed on it when activated.

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    1. I have a cousin who works for Mercedes in Germany. His job is to take the cars on test drives throughout Europe. He thinks the quality of Mercedes has gone downhill.

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    2. The Italians at least made their trains run on time.

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  4. Don't let one gear cover from on car be your entire impression of German engineering. In my work as a manufacturing and product development consultant I can tell you that generally speaking - the Germans do it right. Italians make things beautiful, the French make nothing, China makes things cheap, Germans make things right. My best projects are designed by a firm in Milan, engineered and prototyped by a firm near Frankfurt, and manufactured in China or the US.

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    1. This is a good illustration of law of comparative advantage and division of labor. Don't the French make great foie gras, saddles, scarves, and perfumes?

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