Ezra Klein is puzzled by American vacation habits:
Every other advanced economy offers a government guarantee of paid vacation to its workforce. Britain assures its workforce of 20 days of guaranteed, compensated leave. Germany gives 24. And France gives, yes, 30.Upcoming Klein columns will no doubt include "How come we have so many people in prison if crime is down", and "Why don't physically fit people stop working out so much and eat some donuts already?"
We guarantee zero. Absolutely none. That's why one out of 10 full-time American employees, and more than six out of 10 part-time employees, get no vacation. And even among workers with paid vacation benefits, the average number of days enjoyed is a mere 12. In other words, even those of us who are lucky enough to get some vacation typically receive just over a third of what the French are guaranteed.
This is strange. Of all these countries, the United States is, by far, the richest. And you would think that, as our wealth grew and our productivity increased, a certain amount of our resources would go into, well, us. Into leisure. Into time off.
I responded once in that thread and was instantly denounced as a fool. Who'd be silly enough to actually think that locking up criminals would reduce crime? What a dummy I must be!
Also, there are other threads, and other sections, which aren't as nutty and those can be fun.
We certainly do have way too many people in jail - it provides free room and board for a large number of people who are unemployable. In part, this was fuelled by welfare that drove men ought of households and by a war on drugs that prevented inner city growth and fed violence and corruption (as drugs are illegal but highly mobile assets, they can be defended only by lawless violence). We ought to lower the tax burden on the rest of us and encourage growth by ending the war on drugs.
It's not hard to imagine that the missed vacation in America adds little or nothing to productivity growth. It could be that the extra work is one sacrifice more productive people make to widen the income gap between themselves and less driven workers at all levels of the income spectrum. That would skew income distribution without increasing growth.
Anyone who works in a Japanese company can attest that much of the time that isn't spent on vacation is spent doing things like alphabetizing the coffee (We've always done it that way. It's the rule. It was decided.) that add zero value, save perhaps the spiritual benefit of knowing even deeper down that your work is an end in itself, be it dead or otherwise.
I keep waiting for socialism to explode or collapse, but it never seems to happen. Sure, it evolves, like in Scandinavia where they've had to ease back here and there, or in Japan, where it's oddly, unevenly practiced, but, on the whole, it thrives where it's practiced carefully in a judicious mix with free enterprise.
That must really burn you up, GB...
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