EUROPEANS HAVE MORE TIME, AMERICANS MORE MONEY. WHICH IS BETTER?

Comparing Europeans and Americans is dangerous terrain, but last week Nicolai Tangen, head of Norway's giant oil fund, went there. He told the Financial Times there was a difference in "the general level of ambition. We [Europeans] are not very ambitious. I should be careful about talking about work-life balance, but the Americans just work harder."

This has been said often before. In Franz Kafka's novel Amerika, published posthumously in 1927, the main character, Karl, travels from Europe to the US, where he meets a man who studies by night and is a salesman by day. "But when do you sleep?" asks Karl.

2024-05-05T16:21:37Z dg43tfdfdgfd