the politics of vacation time…

So I came across this great/depressing chart over at one of the failblog sites this evening:

job fails - I Love This Country!

Now keep in mind that this is looking at government mandated vacation time – not what individual companies offer – but I think what was even more amusing was the 145-post international debate that formed in the comment thread below the graph! It never ceases to amaze me how people can get so fanatical about “freedom” when whether we’re talking about vacation time or healthcare, it means that some big corporation usually has the “freedom” to screw them however they please! Funny, it’s always the ones who already have benefits, not the ones who don’t that shout about their right to choose to not have mandated healthcare and paid time off from work.

Some of my absolute favorite comments…

  • In the USA, we have the freedom to negotiate whatever vacation we want. The idea that it’s generous to force employers to give holidays is just populism for suckers.
  • A lot of countries just don’t report information accurately. That’s one reason a lot of countries pretend their health care systems are better than the US’s (they just throw a lot of babies away).
  • so, you have a “right” to the labor and products of those in the healthcare industry?? That’s called slavery. No one has a right to even one second or one penny of another’s life. Period. Thus there is NO RIGHT TO HEALTHCARE
  • (Source: Wikipedia)? Anyone can contribute to wikipedia which makes all of its content suspect and unreliable.
  • Probably why most of the European countries with the highest benefits are broke as s**t, right?

Fortunately, there were also many, many voices of reason to balance the scales…

  • Health care? Paid holidays? Insurances? It must be a cultural thing, because I can not for the life of me understand why you’re so afraid of your own government!
  • They’re wouldn’t have to order you to do it if you’d be fair and actually give your employees some vacation time.
  • But you can have guns !

So to summarize, apparently it’s better to give your boss the option to treat you fairly on his own whim, high unemployment rates and greedy corporations are no excuse for not just negotiating better benefits with your employer, America is free and thus better, and Wikipedia is stupid and inaccurate, even though it has 40x more contributors to moderate it than any printed encyclopedia ever did.

Also, did I mention freedom?

In closing…

  • Why must the people from my country be idiots?

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