European countries like Germany have very good welfare and living standards. Why?

Germany can only be ranked second. The first is the Netherlands. The Netherlands has the shortest working hours but the highest income in the world. The Dutch only work 4 days a week, and the average working hours in a year is more than 1,300 hours. Do the math yourself. How many hours do you work in a day.

Many things in the Netherlands rely on machinery and are highly automated. In fact, the same is true in many places in Europe. It seems like the automatic paving machine in some videos. Three people and the machine can pave the entire road. There are also Building a house is modular and can be transported to the destination and installed. Flowers are the main export of the Netherlands. Dutch agriculture is also highly automated. One person can manage a large flower field on a large scale with some agricultural machinery. The logistics is also automated, and 17 million flowers are exported to the world every day.

In addition, garbage collection in the Netherlands is also highly automated. On the surface, the garbage cans are small, but there is a large garbage storage space under the garbage cans. When the garbage trucks come, workers only need to control the garbage trucks. The garbage truck has a mechanical device, similar to the hydraulic rod of an excavator, to load the entire underground storage garbage into the garbage truck and transport it away. The workers don't even have to get off the truck, and they can't touch the trash can with their hands. The whole process is just the same. Two minutes, one person can do it. . . .

And those countries in Europe have very strict immigration management. If you don’t get a local work permit, you are not allowed to work, so no one is grabbing jobs, and the work efficiency is extremely high and highly mechanized. , so some teachers said that some European countries already have the prototype of socialism. To put it bluntly, productivity is highly developed. Many things are mechanized, intelligent, and automated. People only need to work four days a week to create things easily. Great value. . .

To put it more plainly, work hard is not as efficient as work smart....

And to add, some countries in Europe have minimum wages or standard working hours, as well as laws to protect labor. For example, the boss cannot call employees after work to ask about work matters, otherwise even if they work overtime, it is illegal not to pay overtime pay, or even after certain working hours, they cannot even call to ask. In addition, the time spent commuting to and from work is also included in working hours and paid. These series of measures protect the income of ordinary people. It seems to be similar in Hong Kong. When it was announced that the minimum wage would be implemented a few years ago, a lot of bosses said they couldn't stand it. , there will be a wave of closures, which will kill many companies. As a result, the minimum wage is implemented, the income of ordinary people increases, and consumption is stimulated, which in turn increases corporate profits and government revenue.

So policy is also very important. Not only are welfare policies good, but labor policies for some workers and white-collar workers must also be supporting. After keeping up with so many supporting policies, companies have to find ways to increase revenue and reduce expenditure. Therefore, as mentioned above, a lot of machines have been introduced, which indirectly increases a person's production capacity and improves productivity.

As a counter-example, in India, workers are underpaid and there is no minimum wage guarantee. In disguise, human resources are cheap, so cheap that rich people would rather wash their clothes manually than install a washing machine. , many hotels and wealthy people like to take their clothes to laundry factories for washing, and laundry factories in India are basically all washed by hand. This is because the price of hand washing is cheaper than the electricity bill of your own home washing machine. Electric washing is more expensive than manual washing.

As a result, the income of Indian laundry workers is very, very low. They basically have no rest days a week and can only struggle to survive on the line of food and clothing.

So welfare and living standards are closely related to productivity, laws and regulations, education and other factors. Europe is mainly due to its advanced productivity, good labor laws, restrictions on immigration, and keeping up with education. With a series of supporting facilities, it is now like the Netherlands, which has short working hours but the highest per capita income in the world. . . But productivity and laws and regulations are key. . .