Stories At The Margin
columnist: Christopher Espinal

Topic: Economics
The Big Trade Off: Efficiency & Partying

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The most partying isn't in the US; it's in Europe! Economic reasoning tells us why!

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by Christopher Espinal
(Conservative)
Friday, December 7, 2007

Boy oh boy, don’t I love to party. I remember those awesome days in Zaragoza, Spain. Just imagine, waking up from a "siesta" to eat some amazing dinner to prepare our stomachs for "time traveling," or what those college kids call drinking in their absurd language.

I always wondered why returning to the United States meant boredom. Geez, after partying every day, including weekdays, transitioning to a low-key culture of kids pondering ways to have a better time depressed my soul.

An interesting conversation I had with one of my friends at the University of Chicago involved these great Spanish pastimes. Why do these European kids have so much more fun than us envied Americans? Well, let’s look back to the good old days.

Thinking back to my Spanish Exchange in April 2005 I could only remember the simple lifestyle of my host family. The family worked an average of six to seven hours a day. Students schooled much longer than parents worked. Breakfast was a must. Never miss their lunch time because this meal constituted their largest one of the day. At dinner, we ate something mediocre, sipped on Cabernet, and conversed about the oh-so horrible United States. Did I have it bad or what? Let’s just say that I never mentioned my Bush-Cheney leanings!

We spoke of politics and they boasted about their excellent benefits and decent national healthcare system, yet complained about constrained and heavily controlled labor markets. Check this system out: the Spanish government sets a quota as to how many graduates of each area of academia can enter the job market! In addition, they also hissed at paying 50% or more of their income to the national government.

This information gave me some clues as to how to analyze this information. I remembered that they work less than Americans do because the incentives to work harder and become more productive just didn’t exist. They paid so much money in taxes, choices in terms of occupation just don’t describe the Spanish labor market, and they have nothing to worry about in terms of the future. Big brother put their lives together and gave them everything they would ever need.

On the other hand, I can’t even use 2000 pairs of hands to count the number of people I know who work their butts off here in the United States. I’m talking about working more than six to seven hours. Let’s just say folks I know fall anywhere from eight to 18 hours of work a day. Anywhere from secretaries to investment bankers represent this spectrum. A good portion of them work weekends as well. Here in the US, we have choice in the labor markets, we are extremely productive, and Big Brother doesn’t necessarily do as much. We buy our own healthcare and fund our own retirement.

If you ask me, it sounds as if Americans have to worry about prosperity today and security in the future. An economist would say that Americans have lower personal interest rates discounted from their future value than Spaniards. In other words, unlike Spaniards, we try to live more responsibly in the short term to account for our lives in the long term. We also work pretty hard since the incentives to work exist. I mean, c’mon, taxes are high but they sure aren’t 50%.

In terms of the labor supply and demand curve, Americans find that the greatest use of their time, given their high productivity and the mentioned incentives, is to spend more time at the office. Therefore, our supply curve is much more inelastic than that of Spaniards. Thus, other alternative uses of our time aren’t as attractive to most Americans.

My good Spanish compadres have a different supply curve due to different alternative uses of their time. They have higher personal interest rates discounted for the future. These are folks who care a lot about what happens in the short term. Why, because they don’t have to worry about the future. Spaniards can enjoy their present lives more with less compromise for the future. Thus, their elastic labor supply curve shows us that they indeed value the benefits of leisure more than the benefits of working, or, as others would say, the cost of their time at work.

Just to let you know, by leisure time I mean partying! They party because they can. They have the time since they don't do anything that would make them more productive.

So the more the government gives us, the more free time we have. This obviously means inefficiency in the allocation of resources, but hell….you get to party dude! No wonder why Papa Bear O’Reilly called Europe a big frat party.

This gets me thinking: is socialism and Hillarycare that bad after all!?

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2007 Christopher Espinal, all rights reserved.
Published: Friday, December 7, 2007
Last modified: Friday, April 4, 2008

The views expressed in this article are those of Christopher Espinal only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Christopher Espinal is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.

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