When it comes to global productivity quality of life and working life, the same job is done for different reward depending on the geographic location.

A doctor in Cuba gets paid like $30 a day, whereas in the West we are talking $1000 per day.

A visit to the doctor in Malaysia costs 30 Rinngit ($10) while in the states we are talking $50.

A mid-upper manager in an Australian hospital does 35 hours a week and gets around $100000 per annum. A worker in a food court shop like a cafe or kebab shop can do 65 hours a week which reaps $50000 per annum.

A factory worker in Germany gets 25 Euro an hour. A factory worker in China gets $8 a day.

In Finland its illegal to do 65 hours a week.

In France, the working week is 35 hours a week. 2 weeks annual national holidays are observed in the summer and the whole country shuts down.

The western world and most of Asia suffer from a chronic deprivation of sleep.

People realise the cost of children and this results in slowing population growth changing demographic ratios to reflect the older population. The days of the 6 child family are over. From One child policies leading to more men than women in rural underdeveloped areas of China, to the exultation of the rights of the individual in the West leading to a general overal increase in the expense of being alive, cultural and policy issues are shaping world norms.

There was a time when you lived in a hut that you made yourself. You had no protection from diseas or violence, but you paid no taxes and you did as you pleased. No supermarkets existed, but nature teemed with now long exstinct species and you could just catch a fish or shoot a wild boar.

Now to exist on a patch of land you must annually pay either a rent, or a mortgage - and even if this mortgage is paid off, you will still be required by your highly formalised community to pay some form of land tax council rates or other regular payments.

In the constant forward thrust of cosmopolitan civility and perfection we have swapped small pox and pestilence for bowel cancer and diabetes. Each is roughly equal in its horror. Life ought not to be a rat race. Clearly utopia aint here yet. Who wants to make more humans who are destined to suffer? Its a valid argument - although you need to "think outside the square thin outside the box" etc. If not one single human existed, then not a single human would suffer. If there are less humans tomorrow than there are today then there will be more resources available for the population and consequently living standards increase and suffering decreases. They said that automation would alleviate the long working hours but in reality it enabled us to compete more fiercly with each other. China has a one child policy to reduce the amount of mouths to feed. Globally the challenge is to feed people. With climate instability looming this could be problematic. What to choose at Ikea will seem like a small problem when it hasnt rained in 20 years.

Globally some equalibrium in salary will probably occur. It stands to reason that any imbalance will reach equilibrium. Expecially when boarders relax and highly intelligent highly educated indian and chinese workers "spew" out into the highly paid west and win jobs and in doing so, decreasing salaries and increasing corporate productivity. But wheres the sense in working 20 hours a day some days? Wheres the happiness in a 6 day working week? Wheres the sobriety in a night and day roster?

Given that in modern life you may die at 40 from a work-stress induced heart attack, one almost feels it would be a more fullfilling opportunity to take ones chances with a cave man lifestyle, hunting fish with a long spear and living in the wilderness. Does any wilderness exist anymore? Even on Google Earth I scan deep into Siberia and am dissapointed to find this supposedly empty uninhabited wilderness is full of human activity. From this I conclude that the Earth is overpopulated. Imagine how the world would have been pre inductrial revolution! Rivers teeming with fish, pristine old forests packed with deer and boar. Water that can be drunk from the stream and the noises and aromas of nature untouched. So many species of plant and animal insect and so on have been extinct in the last 300 years. Before that nothing was extinct except the dinosaurs! Nowadays the only animal garunteed to survive and never become extinct is the cow, because we love to eat beef, we have taken over the control of the reproductive situation of all cattle. They are born to die, they exist because we kill and eat them, but we always produce as much as we destroy.

When it comes to sex and reproduction, sex sells. but who knows what goes on inside a woman's mind? The whole of the world is built and expressed by men. Therefore when I see a movie scene depicting sex and the woman is behaving (as the male director directed her to) I wonder why this film depiction of women does not generally match my own empirical experience of women? Id say if women directed all the hollywood movies without restriction, then and only then would I get to see what the woman's world looks like.

The new world family parameters mean women dont have to suffer through six pregnencies anymore, but women love kids and big families and since women get paid equal they are encouraged to work alot which in a way hinders women severely from achieving the satisfaction that comes with fulfilling their destiny as mothers. The old school feminists say this is freedom and defend it militarily so, but id say its swapping one trouble for another. so much water under the bridge but no real progress.

The only constant I know of in all this is the golden figure of a million dollars. It aint what it used to be in the roaring 20's but a million bucks in the bank or invested in bonds stocks and property, will return enough income to supply an inflation adjusted after tax salary to one person for the term of their life. So if you have a million dollars and you dont dilute that principle sum, you need not work a single day in your life and in this senario a man could work still, and his wife could raise kids and the happy couple would be in an optimum situation where they still participate in the community but they need not base their existance on the "two spouse at full time work" model. Labour or capital. Most people are born into the world with nothing at all and since all they do have is time health and labour, they supply labour for a pittance of capital. Then their health goes and they die. During their life these working people - due to human instinct, reproduced and made more humans who come into the world with nothing except the ability to labour and these perpetuate the cycle. To what end?