A Study Of Labor

While in Sakkara Egypt last week, I watched some workers making repairs to the oldest pyramid in that country. To be honest, it looked as though the whole scene was designed to appeal to tourists because of the methods they were using. It made me think of a contrasting scene that I observed in Mt. Aso Japan in late December.

Here's what I saw in Egypt:


It's kinda' hard to tell in the small photo but if you click on it to get the full-sized one you'll see a guy pulling a rope tied to a wheel barrow being pushed by a second guy. Like I said, it was like they designed and ran the construction site to be as historically accurate as it would have been when they first built the pyramid.

Contrast this to the scene from Japan:


Here, a guy is digging a two-foot-deep trench with a miniature backhoe. In the first, they're rebuilding a huge pyramid built out of giant stones and in the second, the guy's moving less dirt than if you planted a tree. Well, I guess that's what you get when labor costs about 7.5 times more in Japan than it does in Egypt (according to the World Bank). Either way, both pictures are kinda' fun.