[porphyra]

It's an East Asian cultural thing to work super hard for some reason, same with Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. By "Rest of the world" you really just mean a handful of Western European nations with stagnant economies, but by god I do wish I could work less.

[ta1243]

We've had 45 years of GDP increase not being reflected in wages, who cares if the economy is "stagnant" if the people making it happen aren't seeing the benefit.

[me_me_me]

"See your boss ferrari? If you work really had he will buy himself a second one"

[logicchains]

>By "Rest of the world" you really just mean a handful of Western European nations with stagnant economies

Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South-East Asia, South/Central America and Africa all work much shorter hours than East Asian nations.

[marcosdumay]

Also, at least South America is (very slowly) moving toward 4 days work weeks too.

[KingMob]

Well, I can mostly speak to Japan, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was also true in China.

The long hours of Japanese work culture are true, but simultaneously, there's a lot of wasted time. Japan evens praises sleeping at the office, when you're clearly getting no work done.

This might be limited to white-collar office workers; no idea about people on the factory floor.

[lvl102]

I don’t think people in East Asia work harder at all. It’s mostly sitting around and taking two hour lunches. I regularly worked 80-100 hours for most of my 20s and early 30s. It’s not sustainable at all and 95% of the population do not even have the physical and mental stamina to do it for more than a couple of weeks out of the year. Out of all the places I’ve experienced, East Coast (and particularly NYC) has the hardest working culture. It’s not even close.