Countries with a long average working time are more economically successful than those countries which do not have a long working time. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
题目大意
平均工作时长更长的国家会比那些没有很长工作时长的国家经济发展更成功。你是否同意？
写作思路解析
我认为一个国家的平均工作时间与其经济成功水平之间没有明确的相关性。
国家的经济水平和劳动力的工作时间根本不成比例，工作时间背后的复杂原因和导致经济发展的多重因素迫使这种说法是荒谬的。在评估一个因素是否对结果有贡献之前，应该首先找出因果关系的内部系统；在某些情况下，一个国家的工作时间较长只反映了该国的劳动力可能不如其他国家发达。换句话说，他们可能不得不增加工人的工作时间，因为就生产率而言，他们的效率不如那些技术繁荣的地方。这种情况解释了为什么时间长度不能作为衡量经济成功的标准：有时平均工作时间更长的国家是经济成功国家的反例。
在评估各国的经济成就是否可以进行比较之前，我们必须提供能够成功完成这项工作的可信标准。然而，甚至没有可信的测量方法来找出答案。我们考虑以甚麽量化参数来衡量一个国家在经济上的成功，或应该说，“经济成功”的真正含义是甚麽呢？我们应该衡量一个国家的GDP总量还是人均GDP？或者我们能比较一下CPI或进出口额吗？各国可能因标准不同而有所不同，即使有确凿的统计数字，结论也可能有偏差，因为它们不能客观地反映自己是否“在经济上取得成功”。整个国家的GDP可能因为人口多而高，人均GDP高可能把贫富差距隐藏在里面；其他的衡量标准也可能存在这样的问题。虽然一些国家在经济繁荣方面有明显的差距，但当我们试图比较经济发展差异不大的国家时，会遇到很多困难。
总而言之，把工作时间加到国家经济是否更成功的考虑中是很简单的；国家的经济也很难比较，因为没有令人信服的标准。
提纲
关键词
economically successful 经济更加成功，这个成功的概念要去被定义。
average working time 平均工作时长
写作示范
I would argue in this essay that there is no clear correlation between the average working time of a country and the economic success level of it.
The economic standard of nations and their working hours of labor forces are not proportional at all; the complicated reasons lying behind the working time and the multiple factors leading to economic development compel the claim to be ridiculous. To objectively verify whether an element contributes to an outcome, one should first find out the internal system of the causality; in some cases, longer working time in a country solely reflects the fact that its labor forces may not be as developed as that in other countries. In other words, they may have to increase the working hours of laborers because they are not as efficient as places that are, say, technologically prosperous in terms of productivity. Such a situation explains why time length cannot be a measurement in judging economic success: sometimes countries with longer average working time are the counterexample of more economically successful ones.
Before assessing whether or not countries can be compared in terms of their economic success, we must provide credible standards that can successfully do this job. However, there are no even plausible measurements involved in finding out the answer. What is the quantifying parameter we consider to measure the success of a country in terms of economy, or should I say, what is the true meaning of "economic success"? Should we measure the total GDP or per-capital GDP of a nation? Or can we compare the CPI or the import-export volume? Results may vary with different criteria, and even if there are confirmed statistics, the conclusion may still be biased because they cannot persuasively reflect whether they are “economically successful” or not. The GDP of the entire country may be high because of a large population, and a higher per-capital GDP may hide the wealth disparity inside; other measurements may still have problems like this. Though some countries have significant gaps in terms of economic prosperity, there are lots of difficulties out there when we attempt to compare countries that are close in their economic development.
In conclusion, it is simple-minded to add working time into consideration of whether countries are more economically successful or not; the economy of nations is also hard to be compared because of no persuasive standards.
