[thu2111]

Re: last point. Fair enough. That point is sound.

Japan seems to have evolved a work culture very similar to strongly unionised societies but without unions. Japanese salaryman culture is famously a culture of employment for life with unusually strong loyalty between employee and employer, hence weird things like "banishment rooms" that you don't find elsewhere. If it's the end results that matter and not the means, Japan might not be a good counter example.

I think French strike law sounds tighter than Italian strike law? The French are famous for striking but strikes must still be a collective decision and related to a specific set of issues, whereas Italian strike law really does sound incredibly broad and vague.

With respect to Pakistan, that's doesn't mean anything, poor countries always have very high GDP growth. It's easy to grow something small and backwards by a lot because you can get a lot of relative growth just by copying what other countries do, and less absolute improvement is needed to get a percentage point of growth to begin with. You can only compare GDP growth rates between countries of a similar level of wealth.