{"id":749,"date":"2009-07-26T08:48:55","date_gmt":"2009-07-26T06:48:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/?p=749"},"modified":"2009-07-26T08:48:55","modified_gmt":"2009-07-26T06:48:55","slug":"france-eliminates-sunday-work-restrictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=749","title":{"rendered":"France Eliminates Sunday Work Restrictions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-51 alignright\" title=\"Bureau of Economics\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/be.jpg\" alt=\"Bureau of Economics\" width=\"140\" height=\"174\" \/>The Wall Street Journal <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB124835745710975827.html\">reported<\/a> this week that the French government has relaxed restrictions on requiring retailers to close on Sundays.\u00a0 Americans will find this strange but most European countries are rather quiet places on Sundays, where many retailers are closed.\u00a0 This of course dates back to a time when one was expected to go to church and pray on Sundays, but now it is taken more simply as a day of rest.<\/p>\n<p>Having lived in both the U.S. and Switzerland, I can say that there is something to both having to plan ahead one day so that you&#8217;ll have food for Sunday (and breakfast for Monday), as well, as something to be said for not running around one day per week.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously this sounds rather paternalistic on the part of the governments, and it does originate from people who call themselves Fathers, but there is another side to who gets to play daddy.\u00a0 Someone, I think it was George Stephanopoulos, joked early in the Clinton administration, \u201cIf you didn&#8217;t work 14 hours on Saturday, don&#8217;t even bother showing up on Sunday.\u201d\u00a0 The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sleepfoundation.org\/\">National Sleep Foundation<\/a> conducted a survey that shows the average American works 46 hours per week, trying to compete with his or her neighbor, and our neighbors to the South, and China, and everyone else.\u00a0 Employers are the new Fathers in this world of globalization.\u00a0 Perhaps such laws pose a limit on employee productivity, and perhaps that&#8217;s just as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the French government has relaxed restrictions on requiring retailers to close on Sundays.\u00a0 Americans will find this strange but most European countries are rather quiet places on Sundays, where many retailers are closed.\u00a0 This of course dates back to a time when one was expected to go &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=749\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;France Eliminates Sunday Work Restrictions&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,30],"tags":[258],"class_list":["post-749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-humanity","tag-work-week"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=749"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":751,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749\/revisions\/751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}