The Americans are causing me a great deal of stress.
They are beating us at the "cost of" game by a mile, or 1.6 kilometres if we want to keep our euro standardisation fascists at bay.
We Brits think stress costs us a puny £11 billion a year. The yanks think it costs them about $300 billion (£170 billion) a year. If there are six times as Americans as us (we are counting numbers of people here, not bodily weight) then stress costs the average American 2.5 times what it costs us.
The reaction to the terror attacks might be something to do with it. The yanks are still in a panic about 9/11. The Brits have got on with life. The tube does not work, but then it never has done anyway. So life carries on. By being normal, we won and the terrorists lost. By being stressed out and in a panic, the Americans gave the terrorists an undeserved victory. So they should chill out and have fun. That would really upset the terrorists: happiness is revenge.
But Count Kostov digresses.
The $300 billion is classic "cost of" meadow mayonnaise. It goes through all three stages of bullshit:
1) The venal start. Who commissioned the work on stress? You guessed it already: the American Institute of Stress
2) The Meadow Mayonnaise moment. The AIS got what they wanted: a huge figure for the cost of stress.
3) The illogical conclusion. In Europe, the illogical conclusion is that the state should spend more money on dealing with stress, and should introduce anti-stress regulations and laws. In the land of the free, the state butts out and it is left to market forces (cue the friendly helping hand of the AIS for a very modest fee) to help businesses deal with stress or get sued for $100 billion for the stress caused by letting the coffee machine run out of raspberry and hazelnut flavoured moccachino.
They are beating us at the "cost of" game by a mile, or 1.6 kilometres if we want to keep our euro standardisation fascists at bay.
We Brits think stress costs us a puny £11 billion a year. The yanks think it costs them about $300 billion (£170 billion) a year. If there are six times as Americans as us (we are counting numbers of people here, not bodily weight) then stress costs the average American 2.5 times what it costs us.
The reaction to the terror attacks might be something to do with it. The yanks are still in a panic about 9/11. The Brits have got on with life. The tube does not work, but then it never has done anyway. So life carries on. By being normal, we won and the terrorists lost. By being stressed out and in a panic, the Americans gave the terrorists an undeserved victory. So they should chill out and have fun. That would really upset the terrorists: happiness is revenge.
But Count Kostov digresses.
The $300 billion is classic "cost of" meadow mayonnaise. It goes through all three stages of bullshit:
1) The venal start. Who commissioned the work on stress? You guessed it already: the American Institute of Stress
2) The Meadow Mayonnaise moment. The AIS got what they wanted: a huge figure for the cost of stress.
3) The illogical conclusion. In Europe, the illogical conclusion is that the state should spend more money on dealing with stress, and should introduce anti-stress regulations and laws. In the land of the free, the state butts out and it is left to market forces (cue the friendly helping hand of the AIS for a very modest fee) to help businesses deal with stress or get sued for $100 billion for the stress caused by letting the coffee machine run out of raspberry and hazelnut flavoured moccachino.
posted by Count Kostov at
10:45 am
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