U.S. is the only developed country with no guaranteed paid vacation or holidays | Hacker News Reader

U.S. is the only developed country with no guaranteed paid vacation or holidays

washingtonpost.com

64 pointssethbannon142 comments

Time and money are fungible. When you "guarantee" workers 4-5 weeks of vacation, who's to say your comp isn't being adjusted downwards to compensate? What's the apples-apples comparison you could do between, say, Germany and the US to demonstrate how much better a deal the Germans are getting on this?

Meanwhile, if you're making near minimum wage, aren't you more likely to be fighting for additional hours rather than looking for reasons to give them up?

I used to think that mandatory vacation laws were an undesirable restrictions on worker freedom. I figured workers should have the freedom to choose their own balance between compensation and vacation time.

I changed my mind on the issue. For a long version of my new thinking, I have a blog post: The Four Economic Classes and Their Respective Plights http://intellectual-detox.com/2013/01/20/economic-classes/ I'll try and give a shorter version here.

The problem is that an increasing percentage of jobs in the economy are either zero-sum or positive sum but very competitive or winner-takes-all in nature. In such a situation, unilaterally choosing to take a vacation can be a death sentence. But if everyone takes a vacation, everyone could be better off.

This is a classic prisoners dilemma problem. As a sales person at a software company, I might want more vacation time. But if I take off the time, I might lose the sale to a competing firm, who does not take time off (the I lose, they win quadrant of the game). So both might work the extra day, and we both lose because we are working more. But if there is a law mandating a national holiday, then we both can take the day off, without losing the sale to the competing firm.

For the minimum wage worker, yes, that particular worker might be fighting for more hours. But when all the low wage workers fight for more hours and give up benefits, it just drives down the wages for everyone. The U.S. is rich enough to both give all workers a living wage and enough vacation, so why not enact the policies to do so? (Just mandating more vacation alone, might not be a good idea, but mandating vacation plus giving some sort of wage subsidy either in the form of cash or in health benefits, might be a quite good idea).

It is always great to read your comments on subjects like these.

I'm left though wondering whether society's attentions should be focused on the plight of your "rat-racers" --- the doctors, lawyers, software salespeople. They may be caught in any number of collective action problems, but on the whole American productivity is high and the parts of society that rat-racers engage with are generally not dysfunctional. Rat-racers in the US are not generally working themselves to death, like they are in Asia. So I'm not sure how concerned I should be about the work-life balance of someone making $250,000/yr.

The median household income in the US is $44,000. Does mandatory vacation help a family of 4 making $44,000? Or would they be better off with higher wages?

Perhaps I have 'yummyfajitas to blame for this, but every time an issue like this comes up on HN, I can't help but think about the differing quality of life between the US middle class and the rural poor of Asia. Humanity's big problem is probably not improving the lot of Americans.

So I'm not sure how concerned I should be about the work-life balance of someone making $250,000/yr.

Well, most rat-racers are not making $250k. A more typical example of a rat-racer is a Dunder Mifflin sales reps in The Office, who would probably make between $40-$70k.

The median household income in the US is $44,000. Does mandatory vacation help a family of 4 making $44,000? Or would they be better off with higher wages?

I do not see any reason why the right policies could not both raise purchasing power and grant more vacation time. Keep in mind, as I say in the essay, that the output of most goods in the modern economy is not bound by labor. Most output is bound by natural resource production, land, regulation, and natural monopoly. So if you decrease total labor output by 5%, that does not necessarily mean a decrease in output of food or housing or fuel oil by 5%. So there could be ways of increasing vacation time without lowering people's income.

Humanity's big problem is probably not improving the lot of Americans.

Well yeah, but this article is about America, and I'm a lot more involved in the problems of America than the problems of India. I do not know what I can contribute to solving the problems of India.

I wouldn't be. I don't wanna trade money for vacation. I am young, immigrant, I wanna save up money, I don't wanna trade vacation time for my salary.

You can make your case if you want, but please avoid taking anonymous authority and say things like "if everyone takes a vacation, everyone could be better off, if we just used the government to force every employer to give everyone vacation time".

"I don't wanna trade money for vacation."

My point is that the tradeoff between money and vacation does not exist in the aggregate. You get the vacation for free simply from moving to the lose-lose quadrant of the prisoner's dilemma to the win-win quadrant.

Note that we are talking about paid vacation. You get both. Your paycheck still comes, but you don't go to work.

If you're making near minimum wage, the absolutely last thing you want to do is work more than 40 hours a week. A low-income individual needs more time and energy than somebody with above average income. If you don't earn much, you will have to do a lot of things yourself and spend more time doing it; you'll take the bus instead of the car, you'll spend more time shopping around to save money, you may have to spend more time preparing your own food. If, say, you're taking on a second job, you're not increasing your standard of living; you're mostly just increasing your stress; you're increasing your income, but also your cost of living (generally dramatically more so if you have children).

You mention Germany: Germany does not have a statutory minimum wage; however, it guarantees you certain minimum living standards as long as you are working or actively looking for work (or, of course, if you're disabled, too young, too old, etc.). This includes a roof over your head, comprehensive health insurance, and enough money to get by (if you earn too little, the government will top it off). It's a frugal life (even if it's technically above the subsistence level), but one that can be managed and one that you're not improving on by working extra hours.

If you want to improve upon that situation, your best chance to accomplish that is to acquire extra skills, not to commit yourself to becoming a wage slave. If you're fine with that standard of living, your quality of life will be better by only working 40 hours a week and having 4-5 weeks of guaranteed annual vacation time rather than working 60 hours and not having any vacation time.

They're not completely. Try negotiating more vacation and less pay. This is very difficult in practice. The employer will be concerned about other employees seeing you're getting more vacation (they can't see your pay).

In my experience, the opposite has been true: companies have hard caps (bands) on salary, but not on vacation days, so you can usually negotiate for the latter more easily than the former.

If time and money aren't fungible, shouldn't there be a comparison we could do between Germany and the US to show that? Maybe there is one. I haven't looked hard.

It's expected that money is negotiated. Companies that have bands usually have pretty wide bands and then the band you're in is also negotiable. Most companies will have a vacation policy of some sort which is hard to negotiate against.

Vacation is more visible which can make it a problem. This also creates a "negative vacation" problem- people working on weekends, holidays, long hours and during their "vacation".

What would you compare between Germany and the US? Perhaps a more adequate comparison is US salary level vs. vacation days across different companies. Also a very hard/noisy compare.

We should do an HN survey... (I'd be interested in how much vacation people are getting/taking).

American Expat in Germany here...My salary would absolutely be higher in the U.S. In Germany I get 6 weeks of vacation. I make more than enough money to live comfortably, though. I definitely prefer a liveable salary and time to spend that money, rather than lots of money but no life.

Yeah but mandatory vacation laws takes away that choice from others. Sure you would like to have vacation time in lieu of your salary, but I don't, I am saving up for the future, and I can work harder now when I am young, forcing me to take vacation when I'd rather have more salary, is wrong.

My mother (in France) ended up with 8 weeks off, while the normal stuff is 5 weeks, because with time you're rewarded more days off. The other trick is that it is paid time off, you can still do overtime if you want to (there was even a tax break on overtime for a few years here). But as I said on another topic, since you're paid to work 218 days in the year as a software engineer (and not by the hour), overtime would mean working during the week-end. You can also do a good job and ask for a bigger salary.

You can also do a good job and ask for a bigger salary.

I am sorry but if I do a good job, and ask for a bigger salary, that means without mandatory vacation laws I would get an even bigger salary.

I don't understand how you think that's actually an equal solution?

It's all relative, it's the feeling of having more, not the actual amont of money that counts. the relative feeling of increase, having more than the Jones and stuff like that.

Because the actual trick to have an absolute lot of money is not linked to the hours worked. It's about working in Wall Street, or in some criminal activities, or in some investment. It's never about time spent at the desk, the whole point of earning loads of money is to decouple the revenue from the time worked. You have to earn money while you sleep. Then, why not earning while you tan?

That's the whole discussion between J.Schwartz and B.Gates on the java patents. And I think Gates knows a little bit about having loads of money (I can't say the same about Schwartz).

The mandatory vacation is there to make sure the employee is well rested, efficient at his job and not incurring extra expenses by becoming prone to illness through overwork. You assume that if there were no mandatory vacation laws your salary would be higher but that is highly unlikely - your taxes would be just as high (and in the long term probably even higher because of the side effects), paying to support social measures that improve the life of all citizens (e.g. - guaranteed healthcare).

No I am pretty sure with a mandatory vacation law my salary WOULD be lower.

Sure, because your average US company has the plantation mentality - "the more time the employee spends on the job, the more productive he is", which is obviously not true for software development. The US company sees vacation as wasted time, not an investment into the employee's productivity and well-being.

First of all no one can be sure about such a thing. Secondly why would you not just get a second temporary job on your vacation days. In fact if you're so desperate for money do you have a second job already?

"Forcing me to take vacation when I'd rather have more salary, is wrong."

You have a weird idea of what's "wrong."

What's wrong is American companies that have created this environment where employees feel guilty to stay home when they have the fucking flu or take a week or two off to spend time with their families on vacation. These are the companies that ostensibly offer paid time off benefits.

Then there's the vast majority of the working poor who don't even get this option, so they're screwed when they or their kids get sick or they're at the end of the rope and just need a break. It's not even just pay either -- unpaid sick time can result in getting fired.

No, fight for other, better paid jobs.

From a European perspective, social welfare is supposed to be there to ensure crisis does not turn into disaster, that illness does not bankrupt you, that workers are as free as possible to move to better jobs. See above.

We are probably on the same page politically, more than you might think. But the emphasis on securing mandatory vacation days for employees might be misguided.

Germans are less bitter[1], they have a far less violent society, and live longer? oh, and they are better appreciated in the world. All that with a smaller country. Nothing fungible with money, it's true. That's the trick with Maslow's analysis (not an economist, sorry): past a certain level of income your values drift from simply earning more to more immaterial needs.

[1] They didn't militarily invade any country recently, also there are waves of Germans swarming sunny European beaches during the holidays, they eventually recess in the fall.

Time and money are not fungible; no amount of money can create time. Even money and time off are not fungible, and, given the empirically demonstrated diminishing marginal effect on experienced utilit of additional income, it's highly unlikely that money could even compensate for the lost utility of less time off for most in the upper ranges of the middle class.

If time and money are really fungible try asking your employer for more holiday. I suspect many will not even enter into this kind of discussion.

Just want to clarify my point: in theory I agree that there is likely to be some substituability between the two, but in practice I haven't seen employers do this.

The high costs of hiring and nature of specialization in certain industries makes it impractical to let employees determine how much time they will work each year. Now, if a new position opens up at a company and the fixed costs of bringing on new employees turns out to be low, and there are two equally qualified candidates who would like to split time with each other, then there's little reason why the employer shouldn't take them both on. But getting back to the point, doesn't it make sense for the employer to pay these two employees the full amount for the time they are actually working, rather than paying them half for when they work, and half for vacation/time off?

> who's to say your comp isn't being adjusted downwards to compensate?

Who's to say everyone wants to go to work more to earn more money?

> Meanwhile, if you're making near minimum wage, aren't you more likely to be fighting for additional hours rather than looking for reasons to give them up?

Not when it's paid time off.

Its rare that anyone on minimum wage is on a salary.

Minimum wage jobs tend to be hourly mcJobs. In the UK thats 6.31 an hour, or 9700 a year (~14,500 USD). I struggle to think of salaried jobs that low (apprentice positions maybe but they are highly protected)

If you're working an hourly job in the UK, you're still entitled to paid statutory leave (as a fraction of actual time worked) [1].

[1] https://www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights/entitlement

Service sector jobs like bank admin are only £1000 or so higher than that per annum.

Can you really use this as an argument against the government protecting workers by ensuring they get a guaranteed amount of holiday a year? I don't think its valid to say EU workers have their pay downsized to compensate for enforced holidays, what about things like minimum wage? (After all, we are talking about people on the bottom end of the scale here, who have minimal protection from employers already)

Here's the definition of fungibility, so the readership at large can decide for themselves whether they think time and money are indeed fungible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungibility

If you're making minimum wage then adding more paid vacation days is only going to increase your total compensation.

The point is minimum wage workers are often not working 40 hours at any one job to begin with.

Paid vacation days are accumulated by time worked.

If they work only 20 hours a week they will be entitled to half of the yearly paid vacations that a full-time worker is entitled to.

It's a little bit more complex than that because local laws in Europe differ about how many hours each person needs to work continually to accumulate a portion of a day off, but the principal is generally correct.

Always interesting to read your comments on subjects where something like morality meets a business decision.

I don't think this is a tradeoff between morality and business. If I believed it was, I'd opt for morality every time. I'm not certain mandatory vacation day policies actually leave employees better off.

And no guaranteed health care. Makes for a "wonderful mess" where if one person gets sick, it wipes out the workplace, because they cannot afford to not be on the job.

But hey they are trying to bring back indentured servitude so these are the least of the average person's worries.

> if one person gets sick, it wipes out the workplace

This is on my "if I was in charge, I'd fix this" list; I spent most of this January sick, I attribute this to coworkers who couldn't take time off.

You really need to get a lot of sick days and then management needs to keep you out of the office until you are well. That includes stay-in-bed time where you get better instead of attempting to work, plus working from home for a few days.

The cost of having an office full of sick people is huge, it's a massive moral and productivity problem, ignoring the health implications. The policy of having combined sick and vacation days as "PTO" is broken.

Another reason to not miss a day on the job: half of your income is confiscated by your government for the "social good" + massive regulations prevent a lot of people from getting work, so it's much harder to change employer or start a business than would otherwise.

And of course, 80 bln dollars printed per month raise prices making every USD holder poorer everyday.

Definitely, we need more welfare mess on top of it.

Just to correct you a little, its nowhere near half of the your income. Marginal tax rate is 39.6% for a single filer for income in excess of $400k. Of course the majority of states have sales tax, and there's other taxes (state, property, petrol, etc) down the line as well. For some people, it may approach a total of 50% taxation, but that is a tiny tiny minority. And its not like most people making over $400k actually pay that tax rate on all their income, given that we have exceedingly generous deductions and other classes of tax (capital gains, which is a favorite of the rich) that are significantly lower than the marginal rate on standard income.

I'd like to know more about regulations preventing people from working (especially those in the top tax bracket).

I, for one, enjoy our decent roads, overall stability, and "social good" programs. I pay a pretty decent amount in taxes, but its really never bothered me one bit.

> Just to correct you a little, its nowhere near half of the your income. Marginal tax rate is 39.6% for a single filer for income in excess of $400k. Of course the majority of states have sales tax, and there's other taxes (state, property, petrol, etc) down the line as well. For some people, it may approach a total of 50% taxation, but that is a tiny tiny minority. And its not like most people making over $400k actually pay that tax rate on all their income, given that we have exceedingly generous deductions and other classes of tax (capital gains, which is a favorite of the rich) that are significantly lower than the marginal rate on standard income.

Math, personal experience, and observation tells me otherwise -- for a human living in California, at least. Between Federal income tax, Social Security tax, State income tax, the various (un)employment taxes, sales tax, excise taxes of one type or another, property tax, etc. I suspect that most people give 1/2 of their income to one government entity or another.

Whether that is an acceptable amount is another matter entirely. That's a normative judgment call. But the raw math seems to indicate a massive haircut.

And don't get me started on the financial burden of the friction of the tax system (aka paperwork and complexity).

(Disclosure: I am an international tax lawyer and it is my job to think tax laws are evil).

50% is as much or more than the percentage of tax that most Western Europeans pay and US government entities seem to provide less services compared to their European counterparts. Perhaps part of the reason is the huge portion of the Federal Budget that goes toward military spending?

Military spending isn't exactly a large part of the GDP in America either. And much of that spending is to support international treaty obligations that go toward ensuring the security of Allies in west Europe and in the Asia-Pacific region, so perhaps your comparison of west European budget isn't entirely apples:apples here.

> "Another reason to not miss a day on the job: half of your income is confiscated by your government for the "social good""

Taxation is not spread evenly. The portion of the population most at-risk (i.e., lowest levels of health insurance, lowest levels of paid leave, etc) pay little to no taxes. Tax rates only become high in populations that can afford to take a day off (i.e., good health insurance coverage, paid sick days, etc).

So no, the people who are afraid of missing a day of work do not have "half their income" confiscated by the government.

In fact, I'd be interested in seeing anyone in the US who pays an income tax rate of 50%. This seems like an interesting feat, considering the highest marginal rate is 40%.

He is not saying "income tax rate is 50%". Please pay attention. The half of the income comes from the estimates of how much you pay taxes in total. Including property, sales tax, various fees and tariffs, and, most importantly, portion of corporate and other taxes that the consumer pays as part of the prices of goods and services.

You could probably get there in NYC, which has both a high state tax and a city tax.

We haven't had any significant change in inflation after QE.

We need more stimulus on top of it!

Half? If anything is half, it's half the budget is going towards war and military welfare.

No, war is mostly funded from printed money. No amount of taxation would fund such a waste of capital.

Makes for a "wonderful mess" where if one person gets sick, it wipes out the workplace, because they cannot afford to not be on the job

So is everybody that is getting sick and bringing it in the workplace got the plague?

But hey they are trying to bring back indentured servitude so these are the least of the average person's worries.

It sounds like you're another victim of indoctrination from somewhere.

  | It sounds like you're another victim of
  | indoctrination from somewhere.

To be fair, that are probably a good number of people that would vote for such a thing if they felt it would increase the value of their stock portfolio.

And when you are lucky enough to get paid vacation, it is usually 1 - 2 weeks less than the norm for many european countries.

Yeah, during my stint at NASA I was looked at funny because I said "I am going home for Christmas as per tradition, and I will be back on January 7th" whereas they wanted me to be back on the 30th. According to that logic I'd have spent almost more time on airplanes than being home.

> And when you are lucky enough to get paid vacation

Luck has nothing to do with it. Learn how to demonstrate the value you bring to the table, then negotiate for the salary/vacation combination you want.

Believe me, it's a lot more empowering than waiting around for Big Brother to beat up the mean old corporations for you.

So those who can only add little marginal value shouldn't get a break or be allowed to stay home when sick for a couple of days? Like it or not we have an enormous population of working age people and, as the chart shows, only about the 40th percentile and above are adding enough value for that. Those below do not have any negotiation power (they only have ever had a little because of heavy unionization in the past).

Increasing it may not help that much- don't we have a chronic problem of people not actually using their vacation?

We have the problem here in the UK and the likely rest of Europe. Some employers just aren't interested in treating their staff well, but for those who are, having a better standard to follow is nice.

That's where labor boards come in: companies can get fined if employees don't take their vacation.

Even if you get the same amount, there is no guarantee management will approve it.

It's interesting that most of the countries with the higher levels of paid vacation and holidays have some of the absolute worst economies. Portugal? Spain? Italy? France? Greece?

Yeah, how's the guaranteed vacations and holidays working out for them?

You're comparing one extreme to another in order to say that your preferred extreme is better? Based on the logic that you're trying to put forth paid vacation should be made illegal. Then the economy would increase 10-fold, right?

I don't know how someone can even attempt that tone without having a clue on what one is on about.

"The 28 days statutory (UK) leave compared with 25 in Greece, France, Austria, Sweden, Luxembourg, Finland and Denmark, 24 in Malta, 22 in Spain and Portugal, 21 in Norway and 20 in Italy, Belgium, Germany, Cyprus, Ireland, Switzerland and Holland."

Germany? Norway? Sweeden? Finland? Ain't that interesting...

How's the US economy doing the past few years?

FYI here's the original report: http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/no-vacation-updat...

"The United States is the only advanced economy in the world that..."

The United States, like the past, is a different country. We do things differently here.

The United States didn't become the most powerful country by following others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism

We're also one of only three countries in the world with no mandatory maternity leave and the only "developed": http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/labor/news/2013/03/08...

Interesting, does China have mandatory paid vacations and holidays?

Why when the US is being called out on anything (torture, limiting free speech, illegal searches, no paid holidays, shitty minimum wage ... the list goes on) people immediately try to compare the US to nations where the situation is much worse. (China, North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, and others).

Not only is it annoying, it doesn't add anything to the conversation. Yes, China doesn't have free speech, and they may have a totalitarian government, do you really want to compare the US to them like the US is somehow doing better?

Shouldn't the US be holding itself up as the poster child for how it should be done? Aren't the rights granted by the constitution something that should be upheld as something other countries in the world should take note of and follow?

Oh look the US is torturing prisoners of war, well China is too so it isn't all bad, is it? Oh look the US is wiretapping all of its citizens and with a heavy hand censoring the Internet as it sees fit (domain seizures) ... Well at least we don't have to deal with the Great Firewall like China.

How about the US once again shows how it is done... you know, stop the illegal wiretapping, set proper minimum wage so that people can live off it, get a proper healthcare system, increase funding to schools and scientific research, stop the needless wars, uphold the citizens rights to free speech, disallow the police force to take money from private corporations, don't make the police jackbooted thugs, instead make them people who are there to protect the people, not someone we need protection from.

Let the US once again thrive, so that in the future it can become a comparison with "Does France have X", "Does Sweden have Y".

China hasn't got free speech either. What is your point?

Well I didn't think China did, and they are certainly a 'developed nation' so saying the US is the "only" developed nation without it was false on its face. So that made me wonder what subtext the headline was trying send.

As at last check China was on track to be the #2 economy in the world and perhaps the #1 economy (replacing the US). If you wrote the article title "All the top economies of the world don't have mandatory vacation" its a much different message is it not?

One headline seems to advocate that the US is barbaric for not allowing vacation, and the other headline seems to advocate that you can't become a top economy by giving away GDP.

China is not a developed nation by modern standards. It still has very high levels of poverty and a low average income compared to what is typically called 'The West' (Western Europe, North America, Japan, etc.).

Can you say more about why you base the definition of 'developed' on per capita income rather than economic capability? I ask because my definition is 'capable of providing all needs of the citizens caveat raw materials' so by that definition China can build pretty much anything it needs if it has the raw materials to do so, it doesn't depend on any other economy for transforming or upleveling those materials into economic inputs.

I agree with you that its people do not benefit equally from its economy but I don't tie that into 'developed' or 'not developed'.

On the other hand, IT salaries are way higher in the US than they are in Europe. When I see people here talking about $100k a year like it's normal thing to have I feel that difference.

Those salaries are only common in a few areas with an outrageously high cost of living. In the rest of the country, the salaries aren't much higher than the ones in Europe.

Austria have 35 days off guaranteed (almost 2 months if you throw a few days off because of sickness) while the us have 16 on average and the GDP per capita of the two countries is almost the same.

Ample amounts of rest does not seem to increase productivity in the rest of the time.

Fun fact - in Boleslaw Prus Pharaoh one of the main economic measures what the pharaoh declaring every seventh day a rest one instead of every tenth for the peasants with the argumentation that they will work better the rest of the times.

    GDP per capita of the two countries is almost the same.
    Ample amounts of rest does not seem to increase productivity
    in the rest of the time.

GDP per capita is a per annum figure - so productivity (economic output per days of work) would actually be higher for Austria in the above case.

My 25 days "paid" vacation a year was no more "paid" (when I had it) than my 52 "paid" weekends a year.

It's simply non-discretionary time available for me to not come into work, the cost of which has already been deducted from my salary.

That's not to say I didn't value the generous amount of time off, and that's not to say Americans will find it easy to negotiate such an amount of unpaid leave. But let's be realistic about what "paid" vacation is.

It is best to boil it down to one variable, in this case, money and let the employee decide.

We have a tendency to overwork because relative status matters to our well-being. In short, it's a massive prisoner's dilemma and income tax can be seen as a corrective on this.

So mandatory holidays are in fact a great idea because they overcome a coordination failure.

(Discuss...)

"U.S. is the only developed country not poisoned by socialism"

fixed

Dog eat dog is so much better, right? I still don't understand how John Rawls was born in USA, his views were so un-American.

Dog eat dog is much better... if you view yourself as the alpha dog. The funny thing is that were push come to shove, you might find out that your views and reality differ.

In the 21st century, the U.S. isn't a First World country. That's not a dig. It's just the new reality.

20th century defintions:

    First World: liberal, capitalistic democracies
    Second World: totalitarian leftism (Soviet bloc)
    Third World: poorer countries "in play" (Afghanistan, Korea, Vietnam).

This isn't very useful anymore. S. Korea is not "third world" and totalitarian leftism died.

21st century definitions:

    First World: Nations with established social democracies (welfare states). 
    Second World: Nations sacrificing well-being for other motives. 
    Third World: Poor countries that don't get to choose.

Most people would think of the BRIC countries as "Second World", then. These countries are sacrificing equity and, in many cases, democracy in order to have rapid economic growth. The Arab petrostates are also Second World: rich, but through social and political sacrifice. But the U.S. is doing the same thing; it's just that the U.S. isn't seeking rapid growth (difficult when already in the lead) but the maintenance of military supremacy (hence the gigantic war budget).

It's not all bad news. Second World countries tend to make it a lot easier to get individually rich.

Could you go any more left-liberal in your new definitions of countries?

That's incredible how the "third world" concept has gone a long way. It was a word play on the Third State of the French Revolution (long story short, the Third State lost a vote by order against Nobility and Clergy, took the Bastille, and it went downhill from there). In the sense that those countries were the majority in number but their voices were ignored. Then they created a "First World" to designate the rulers of the world (Nobility I guess?) and now I discover some "Second World".

You don't get to make up the definitions.

I didn't; that's how they seem to be used in the 21st-century world. To be honest, though, the "Nth World" classification is of questionable utility.

Especially since your 20th century definitions aren't correct, it brings into question that your definitions of the 21st are near correct or widely accepted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World

He does, if enough people agree.

The United States is the only advanced economy in the world that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation.

You can guarantee it yourself when you accept a position somewhere. But once again we have leftists in the media assuming that everybody is completely incompetent without the government intervening in every aspect of society. You can just see those so-called journalists over at the Washington Post looking at the "social democracies" like a starry-eyed school girl.

You are being completely ignorant.

My girlfriend, who has a college degree, works for Delta as a flight attendant. After the North West merger, her colleagues collectively voted against a union because of perceived corruption and expectedly high union dues. In the year since the failed vote, there have been substantial adverse changes to vacation and sick leave rules, increased abuse of duty days by crew scheduling, and decreased medical benefits.

That's 20,000 people who thought they had guarantees on paid vacation who suddenly need to spend more of their own money to get a doctors note on holiday weekends. By the way, if you need a doctors note at 4am before going to work: You need to go to the ER... which is expensive. Meanwhile, they are being forced to work longer and longer hours for depreciating pay.

The ~9,000 people who knew to vote for collective bargaining power should not be punished by the ~11,000 short sighted ones. Furthermore, government exists to provide for the common welfare. That's its role. Those 20,000 people already pay their taxes, why should they also have to pay union dues to get basic protections for their working conditions and compensation?

This story happens over and over again in many industries.

These people aren't incompetent, yet you're suggesting that they'd have to be in order for someone to believe that they need government to protect them. In the common case, they are hardworking, educated, friendly people who are being screwed by people like you. Wether you and our elected officials are ignorant or malicious, I don't know. But what you are saying is bullshit.

There are numerous issues involved in here. You're assuming that with a union you guys will be able to get everything you want.

Don't forget a few things. The merger meant new look at the books. If Delta was doing something inefficiently, now the merger forced them to reconsider. If things had continued as they did, you have no guarantee that your gf would have kept her job if Delta just went bankrupt instead.

Unions only benefit one group of people at the cost of another group which you usually fail to see.

The only way workers' salary/benefits go up when their real productivity goes up, which only goes up as capital accumulation goes up.

In most of the cases, unions actions either make non-union member suffer, or more experienced members benefit at the cost of less experienced members. Some people get fired, and the new union numbers suggest that overall wages went up.

Not only that, many times the hours are cut for some workers, so they have to pick extra jobs in other industries so the wages are depressed in other industries. Take for instance almost all struggling actors/actresses work as a bartender or waiting jobs in NY/LA, because of heavy unionization they just don't have enough work to work full time as an actor. So they suppress wages of waiting industry.

Nepotism is very heavily promoted in unionized industries, because if wages are artificially pushed up, then the industry entrants, cannot be chosen for a job based on how cheap they come, so other factors can be considered(like relationships with existing union members, etc). In hollywood, this is precisely the whole conspiracy about people of one specific religion/ethnic group control everything. Or this is why you have to sleep with someone to get your big break.

> The only way workers' salary/benefits go up when their real productivity goes up, which only goes up as capital accumulation goes up.

LOL. No, if productivity goes up the most likely outcome is that some executives will put all new money in their own bonuses and salaries. This is the country where CEOs earn >350x the common worker.

> The ~9,000 people who knew to vote for collective bargaining power should not be punished by the ~11,000 short sighted ones.

Whoa! This is a very dangerous mindset - "if election doesn't go as per my wish, majority must be stupid".

Delta ran a substantial anti-union campaign during the union vote. The popular opinion of the majority was "Why should I pay for a union? I like my working conditions and benefits. How could a union help?" Management worked very hard to bolster that message.

Now, there is another union establishment effort occurring. There is significant evidence that the popular opinion has swayed dramatically in favor of a union. I'm not saying that the majority is stupid, I'm saying that they decided they didn't want to pay union dues and assumed that things would stay the way they are. They didn't understand that the threat of a union was one of the few things eliminating their need for a union. That's ignorance of business realities, not stupidity in general.

My mindset isn't "the majority must be stupid". My mindset is "post-election events have proven the majority to be shortsighted."

Wouldn't that indicate that she should find another position?

In an idealized, theoretical economy where skills are highly liquid and exchangeable, yes.

Real life doesn't quite work that way. Many people develop skill tracks that do not easily (or at all) adapt to another skill track. When one (or a few) players monopolize the demand for said skill track, there are frequently few choices.

We, as software engineers, are fortunate in that we live in an age where people are practically bashing down our doors to give us jobs in a wide array of subfields. Not everyone is as fortunate, and indeed, it is impossible to create a population where this is the case for everyone.

It is extremely easy for us to say, to another programmer, "man that sucks, you should get a new job", the reality fo the vast majority of the population is much, much harder.

Where?

She could go to a totally different industry, but she'd be starting her career over again at the bottom.

She loves flying & traveling, so she'd probably want to go to another airline. However, Delta (one of the largest airlines) accepts a only few thousand new flight attendants per year out of many tens of thousands of applicants. Smaller airlines would be even more difficult to get a job at. All the airlines are also seniority based, so she's have to start her career over again at the bottom. Experience at other airlines wouldn't contribute one iota to her standing in a new airline.

College put her (and everybody else) in substantial debt, so she can't start a business or do anything really risky like that.

This is a story you have all heard over and over again...

If you're a well paid engineer, it might be hard for you to understand: Educated, hard working people, are constantly screwed by the system and consistently ignored by people who don't understand their plight.

"All the airlines are also seniority based..."

That's probably something that's dictated by the union contract, just as it is with school teachers and other unionized workers. If it was up to the airline, they'd probably promote based on how well people did their jobs rather than seniority. So in this way, the unions are decreasing the ability of employees to look for jobs elsewhere.

> If it was up to the airline, they'd probably promote based on how well people did their jobs rather than seniority.

How does an airline know how well people do their jobs?

There are thousands of flight attendants based in NYC alone. It's not uncommon for the flight leader to never lead a particular team member a second time. How are you going to have peer reviews?

The best they can do is find bad people via complaints and the best people via complement cards. Finding the best people by process of elimination isn't really a good strategy. And complement cards are only really provided by frequent flyers and in first class, which is predominantly staffed by more senior crew members.

But this generalizes too: What does it mean to be the best factory workers? For some employers, the definition would be "doesn't get sick and/or complain".

The best flight attendants are only twice as helpful and friendly as the pretty good flight attendants. Should they get paid double for something so subjective as "friendly and helpful?" Meanwhile, the best engineers are (some say) 10X (or even 100X) more productive. Yet they only make what 3X to 6X the pay on average, but only if they know how to negotiate... oh and by the way, they work in the field with the lowest supply and highest demand. Unlike effectively unskilled labor that most of the world has no choice but to do.

"There are thousands of flight attendants based in NYC alone. It's not uncommon for the flight leader to never lead a particular team member a second time."

Just because this is the way that flight crews are scheduled today doesn't mean that it's the only way it can be done. Why can't the schedule be arranged so that the same crew and leader stay together (as much as possible) on subsequent flights? Of course, there's no reason for the airlines to try any new approaches as long as unions won't budge on seniority.

We're now way off topic into the details of a particular industry, but I'll entertain your comment anyway. I just want to stress again: These problems generalize to many many many other industries.

> Why can't the schedule be arranged so that the same crew and leader stay together (as much as possible)

Because...

1) Flights get delayed or canceled

2) Crew member get sick or stuck elsewhere around the world

3) Planes are of varying size with varying size crews

4) Destinations change seasonally

5) Holidays and events alter flight schedules

6) People quit

7) People move and transfer bases

Never mind that flexibility to travel is the #1 job perk that they have to offer as career bait. Flight attendants trade flights, full trips, and destinations all the time. They are in that line of work so that they can go to interesting locations, if only for a short while. You could half their pay and they would still complain much more loudly if you halved their destination flexibility.

How much responsibility do you place on her for choosing a career with low mobility and high competition?

Not every profession has high mobility and low competition. In fact, the overwhelming majority of professions, even highly skilled ones, have medium-low mobility and high competition. Even doctors and lawyers have pretty low mobility these days, thanks to crushing debt.

What do you think would happen if the > 90% of workers in low mobility jobs just magically got high mobility jobs? There would be no one left doing the sorts of critical jobs that make civilized life possible for us pampered engineers.

> There would be no one left doing the sorts of critical jobs that make civilized life possible for us pampered engineers.

I don't think so. If a job is critical for a functional society, "market" will ensure that it will be done. Right now, lots of critical fields have low paying jobs because there is high supply of labor.

Are you refuting what I'm saying? Or are you making an additional point in my favor? I'm not sure...

Because if high supply of labor means low paying jobs, then you're suggesting that if everybody suddenly became skilled enough to get a high paying job, then those jobs would become low paying jobs due to labor surplus.

Either side of the hypothetical makes it clear that it is absurd to think that everybody can magically be more mobile via shear force of will.

I was commenting on "There would be no one left" part. I don't think that is ever possible for critical jobs. If a job is essential for the society, usually there are enough workers to do it. You are right about this point - if too many people have skills to perform "high paying jobs", those jobs won't remain "high paying" for long.

She could go to a totally different industry, but she'd be starting her career over again at the bottom.

She loves flying & traveling, so she'd probably want to go to another airline.

So why didn't your girlfriend research the industry she was going into? Just because she loves flying and traveling doesn't mean she had to make a career out of being a flight attendant.

And it's not like she was a the top of her "career" anyway as a flight attendant, so what's the big deal.

Your sense of entitlement is disturbing, but pretty common.

You're missing the point. She was treated very well at Northwest pre-merger and at Delta until the union vote failed. She's have to take a major pay cut to reboot her career. I'm not saying that due to a sense of entitlement. That's a fact. But other than the recent changes, she likes her job, so she's started volunteering for the union and otherwise actively working to improve the situation for her and her coworkers.

Your willingness to parrot the party line (specifically the word "entitlement") is disturbing, but pretty common.

Sure, but most US companies would start her at 0 or 1 week of vacation and she'd need to work there for years to accrue what she might have already had. For average people, businesses aren't going to give an inch.

I have a friend who is a fantastic programmer at a telecom in Texas. He was a contract employee before they decided to bring him on full time. They invented a position specifically for him in order to pay him what he wanted. What they would not budge on? Vacation time. One week, non-negotiable. Of course, now he's worked there for several years, and he's earned a couple more weeks.

The ~9,000 people who knew to vote for collective bargaining power should not be punished by the ~11,000 short sighted ones.

Are you even capable of understanding that people have differences of opinions regarding the role of unions, government, etc.?

Yeah that darn minimum wage and pesky anti-slavery laws. Who the heck does the government think it is anyway. And why do responsible drivers need traffic lights.

Who made slavery legal to begin with? And your typical leftist tactic of acting like we're calling for anarchy is boring

Don't go away, next up on HN: Long Weekend Edition, we throw back to the 60s and start calling each other commie pinkos. Join us at 4pm for a live reenactment of the McCarthy hearings!

Seriously though, ad hominems aren't cool. Can we keep things at least slightly civil?

The people who made and insured slavery was legal appear on every form of currency in your wallet (except the penny and $5 bill).

The very motive of capitalism is to make as much profit in any way possible. The only thing holding it back is law, which is made by government. The problem is the government which should be run by the people but more often than not is run by lobbyists who are owned by the corporations looking to push for more capitalism.

The answer is not less laws, it's less lobbyists.

IIRC, it was the Founding Fathers who were critical in allowing slavery to be legal. I wasn't aware that they were considered to be particularly left-wing.

Sure about that? Compare their policies to British equivalents at the time.

So you're saying that the United States is right and every other developed country is wrong?

Morals aside, that seems like a bit of a stretch.

Whatever the mess US is in, its a mess that produces high number of entrepreneurs and innovation. Try duplicating Silicon Valley, Europe.

Try duplicating Silicon Valley, United States.

If the US were some magical recipe for innovation and entrepreneurship, then I would expect Silicon Valleys to pop up in every major metropolitan area. Certainly, if you think that the world is big enough to support more than one if only the laws changed, then it's not much of a stretch to think that the US could too.

Perhaps New York would be a good choice. It's on the coast, at a similar latitude. It has a large, educated and diverse population. It's got access to oodles of financial capital (probably more than the Bay Area). It has the same federal laws and (I presume) similar state and municipal laws.

Why aren't tech giants popping up in New York just as much as the Bay Area?

Edit to clarify my point:

This leads to one of two conclusions: either the US is not so exceptional and Silicon Valley is an historical accident, or the world is not big enough for more than one. In either case it doesn't make sense to accuse the rest of the world of dropping the torch of innovation and entrepreneurship.

Silicon Valley and New York or any place in the US are in the same country. Its much easier for entrepreneurs to move to Bay Area and work on their projects than stay in their home town and try to duplicate it. So the reason I think there exist only one Silicon Valley in the US is less friction to move there. While citizens of other countries have very high friction (visa, culture etc) to move to Silicon Valley. So yes I believe if you can make your country's laws entrepreneur friendly you can too create something equivalent to SV. But the laws don't exist independently, they are mere reflection of the values and culture of the country.

Considering those jobs all get paid vacation, you are missing the point entirely. It is the some-high-school educated, sick guy at Subway that they are talking about.

Seattle (just the city) recently mandated 3-days sick leave for all employees in businesses in the city. The sky has not fallen yet and it remains to be seen if there is less flu because the cooks and waiters aren't coughing in your $30 tech worker lunch.

Again this is not a particularly useful comment. It prioritises one metric ('startups' and some undefined notion of 'innovastion') over all others.

The 'Europe' you are talking about is characterised by much lower levels of violence/crime and poverty than the United States. One could argue that these are more important metrics.

But in either case, the argument deserves more than the jingoistic rebuttal you offered.

Of ALL the things that are unique about this country, the idea that having pathetically low vacation days is a contributor is ridiculous.

My point is that low vacation days is a symptom of capitalism which has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Have you ever considered that vacation might not even be possible without capitalism? After all, how else would employers allocate capital to make up for the employee's absence, and the employee allocate savings to make up for the additional costs of travel and lodging? I suppose a central planner could allocate these limited resources, but history has adequately demonstrated individuals and freely associating groups are much better suited for that task.

And you're saying that there is a right answer?

The article actually goes on to address this specific point:

  Of course, in practice, richer workers are able to negotiate for both paid vacation and paid holidays. It’s poorer workers who can’t take any time off. This table shows how it actually works out across the economy.

While the top wage earners seem to be able to negotiate comparable number of vacation days as most other nations, it's the bottom wage earners that seem to have absolutely no negotiating powers.

Bottom wage earners can and do create Labor Unions to allow for negotiation.

While the top wage earners seem to be able to negotiate comparable number of vacation days as most other nations, it's the bottom wage earners that seem to have absolutely no negotiating powers.

So when McDonald's offers you a job, you can't ask them about vacation time?

You can ask, but you probably won't get it.

Some people don't have the luxury of choosing which job they take. Sometimes there's only one.

It's a factual claim. Whether you think of it as a positive or negative is entirely up to you.

I sincerely believe that there is a better way to have discussions like this than to resort to name-calling ("leftists," "starry-eyed school girl"). The fact remains that the United States' economy does currently have the $guaranteed_paid_vacation flag set to "false." Making snide comments and throwing ad hominem labels around does nothing to advance the discussion regarding whether or not this is a right/proper/just/correct state of existence.

I think it is safe to assume that for any skill you can think of, like negotiating holidays, there will be a group of people who are (in your words) incompetent.

The question is, what should happen to that group of people?

Obviously, the people that are better than them at negotiating holidays should live a life of leisure while those that are lacking should live a life of toil and strife. </sarcasm>

Did you even read the source http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/no-vacation-updat..., or did FoxNews send you over to troll this site?

Everyone on this site can guarantee it because we are highly skilled workers or entrepreneurs and most of us make a very decent living. In fact, the higher I've climbed the more vacation I have received.

There are many in this country cannot guarantee it.

Rather than resorting to name calling ('leftists') you could perhaps engage with some of the many arguments presented in this thread for why it is sensible to have a minimum guaranteed holiday period.

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