Letter from America

The spurs to hard labour are opportunity, competition and utter fear

The Protestant work ethic in America has proved far more enduring than Protestantism itself. While the various Protestant churches have waxed and waned, with the Episcopalians now whispering at the back as the evangelicals shout hallelujah at the front, the link between hard work and public virtue remains as strong as ever.

It is certainly as strong as when that old moraliser Benjamin Franklin berated his fellow countrymen with maxims such as ‘plough deep while sluggards sleep’. Or when Teddy Roosevelt gave his speech ‘in praise of a strenuous life’. Roosevelt thundered, ‘Our country calls not for the life of ease but for the life of strenuous endeavour.’

Even America’s most venerated slacker, Henry David Thoreau, couldn’t help himself. Yes, he could write this in his journal from 1842: ‘The really efficient labourer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure. There will be a wide margin for relaxation to his day… Those who work much do not work hard.’

But while urging others to take it easy, he was banging out twenty volumes on philosophy and natural history, and helping to run his family’s pencil factory. No surprise, he was dead at 44.

When it comes to American leisure, again we are looking at an industry designed to soak up every free minute and dollar at your disposal and set you back on the hamster wheel as soon as possible. While the Englishman is napping in his garden, taking his ease away from his bills, the American is racking up more of them, on the golf course or beside the pool, his smouldering credit card reminding him of the work that awaits.

There are three major reasons for the endurance of Americans’ work ethic. The first is opportunity. There are natural hierarchies in America, but dynasties tend to ebb away in a matter of decades. They are always ripe for overturning by the next generation of thrusters.

The second is competition. In every corner of American society, you find people jostling for advantage, forcing each other to improve. You see it in the economy, obviously, but also in education – the deranged scrum among children for university places – and among cities and states competing to attract the best people and businesses. In Washington, lobbyists compete for influence over competing politicians to set the legal rules of competition. There is very little room in all this to just sit and rest.

And third, there is fear. If you dare glance down, you’ll see the gnashing misery of failure. This isn’t Denmark. The safety net is shredded. You slide down the economic ranks at your peril, losing health insurance, housing, education, legal protection. It gets so much worse at an accelerating pace that it really pays to pedal hard.

So what in this model is there for Britain to emulate? Theresa May’s government is hung up on the idea of enhancing British productivity. A recent survey by the Bank of England showed that the past ten years have been the worst for British productivity growth since the 18th century.

A German worker can finish in four days what it takes a British worker five days to do. If the British were as productive as their American counterparts, they would earn £8,500 a year more. But they would have to produce a third as much more as they currently do every hour.

Governments and economists like to focus on productivity because they can calculate it easily and feel there is something they can do about it. You measure productivity simply by dividing the value of goods and services you produce by the hours of labour it took to produce them.

You can lighten regulations – so people spend more time working and less time filling out forms. You can improve the transport infrastructure – so there’s less waiting for trains or sitting in traffic. You can invest in education – so people have the nous to create and invent, rather than depend on repetitive, manual labour. And you can lower taxes – so people feel more like they are working for themselves, and less for The Man.

But can you make people work harder? That’s the one input that all the treasury officials in the world struggle to control. Singapore’s economy and society is optimised for productivity. But in the middle are the insanely industrious Singaporeans. Inserting a load of Brits, popping out for tea, cigarettes and moaning, would be like throwing pebbles into the transmission of a Ferrari.

The difference between hard work and productivity is the difference between the singer James Brown and Luxembourg.

Brown, barely educated and variously drug-addicted, violent and abusive towards women, was known as the hardest-working man in show business. He would routinely lose several pounds sweating through a live set.

The landlocked Grand Duchy, ranked the most productive country in the world, makes its fortune guarding the secrets of global finance behind thick medieval walls. Brown gave us funk. Luxembourg, Jean-claude Juncker. Which would you rather have?

Philip Delves Broughton is author of ‘What They Teach You at Harvard Business School’ (Penguin)

‘If the British were as productive as Americans, they’d earn £8,500 more’