Not the government’s job

Ezra Klein sees something else besides a whine for government run healthcare in Moore-On’s Sicko.

That American’s work too hard and he wants the government to do something about it.

The most astonishing revelations in Michael Moore’s “Sicko” have nothing to do with healthcare. They’re about vacation time. French vacation time, to be precise.

Sitting at a restaurant table with a bunch of American ex-pats in Paris, Moore is treated to a jaw-dropping recitation of the perks of social democracy: 30 days of vacation time, unlimited sick days, full child care, social workers who come to help new parents adjust to the strains and challenges of child-rearing. Walking out of the theater, I heard more envious mutterings about this scene than any other.

“Why can’t we have that?” my fellow moviegoers asked.

The first possibility is that we already do. Maybe that perfidious Michael Moore is just lying in service of his French paymasters. But sadly, no. A recent report by Rebecca Ray and John Schmitt of the Center for Economic and Policy Research suggests that Moore is, if anything, understating his case. “The United States,” they write, “is the only advanced economy in the world that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation.” Take notice of that word “only.” 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.

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. You would think that we’d take advantage of the fact that we can create more wealth in less time to wrest back some of those hours for ourselves and our families.

What Klein fails to notice is that art of the reason we are the richest is that we work our asses off. We also appreciate our vacation days more than those who get them handed to them. I work for mine and I make sure that I earn them.

If the fed were to come in and mandate that I get 30 days off a year, I’d be pissed off because that is only six weeks. I currently get seven. I’ll max-out at eight next year. That was what I negotiated with my employer, along with my pay structure, which I took a lower bid on so that I could get the paid days off.

I may have over done it though because the past couple years I haven’t ever take it all. Mostly it is because me being out of the office equals me answering four or more phone calls from either my customers or coworkers per day off. Usually I either cash out right before Christmas or burn through it taking every other Friday off at the end of the year.

It is not the government’s job to tell businesses how many days off employees will get, just like it isn’t government’s job to tell my employer what kind of health care plan I deserve.

Even after whining about how much more time we’d be able to spend with family if the government would mandate paid leave instead of individuals or unions, and about how that is what is the best thing we could do with the fed doing so, Klein goes on to state that even part-time employees should get a mandated number of days off.

If they’re not working full time, don’t they already have the option of hanging out with “The Fam”?

Not that any of this whining for government mandated vacations and administered healthcare surprises me. Hell if you ask a leftists what “Promote the General Welfare” line in the preamble to The Constitution means, they’ll tell you that it mandates the redistribution of wealth.