With summer vacation purportedly upon us, I note with heightened interest this CNN article about America's disinclination to take a break. According to "No-Vacation Nation" by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, we are the only advanced nation not to guarantee annual leave for workers. About a quarter of American workers, myself included, receive no paid vacation. Even those who get paid vacation give up $67.5 billion of leave time for the pleasure of spending more time at the office.
But shunning vacations gives us our economic edge, right?
"There is simply no evidence that working people to death gives you a competitive advantage," said John de Graaf, the national coordinator for Take Back Your Time, a group that researches the effects of overwork.
He noted that the United States came in fourth in the World Economic Forum's 2010-2011 rankings of the most competitive economies, but Sweden -- a country that by law offers workers five weeks of paid vacation -- came in second [A. Pawlowski, "Why Is America the 'No-Vacation Nation'?" CNN.com, 2011.05.23].
Dang: we're working more days, relaxing less, and still losing to Sweden. That should worry us.
Our European friends also appear to have a better grasp of family values:
Nancy Schimkat, an American who lives in Weinheim, Germany, said her German husband, an engineer, gets six weeks of paid vacation a year, plus national holidays -- the norm. His company makes sure he takes all of it.
..."[Germans] kind of have this idea that Americans work like robots and if that's the way they want to be, that's up to them. But they don't want to be like that," Schimkat said.
"[Germans] work very hard, but then they take their holiday and really relax. ... It's more than just making money for Germans, it's about having time for your family and it's about having time to wind down" [Pawlowski, 2011.05.23].
More time with family, more rest to make more productive workers, more time to see the world and enjoy life... O! the tyranny of Euro-socialism!
Europe is nothing to emulate.
Europeans can afford vacations and family time and all that. They don't have all those expensive wars to fight.
Yet.
@Jenna: Explainy? Res does not ipsa loquitur.
Jenna,
What? Why not? I've been to various European countries. Some have been great, others not so much. We can certainly learn from things that work well there and emulate them here.
The problem with most people is they look at each European country individually, but you should be looking at them as a whole to compare them to the US. You would find that we aren't so much different already when it comes to serving our people. For every European country that is doing OK, I can show you one that is worse than us. One thing they have proven is small packages work better than one large massive one. Now think if we applied all this logic at the state level, and told the Feds to bug off? Inefficiency is our enemy when it comes to providing a service, and our fed gov't is a perfect example. State programs rarely see the waste that they do.
Now, take Sweden for Example, their population is slightly higher than NYC. Do you think policies that apply to NYC, would work for all of the US? OR would we end up with the same areas of disarray that Europe has?
Also, cutting military spending may help us, but it will hurt people all over the world. Many European countries would have never strived like they did had we not had any military protecting them and their interests the last 60 years. Case in point, Libya. To not acknowledge that loss for them would be a dishonest move.
I'd take some issue with the idea that states don't waste money, especially considering the debts a lot of states have racked up, and especially considering how much states depend on that pesky, wasteful federal government to give them $ whenever there's a disaster of any kind, to pay for roads and bridges and water supplies, to take care of things like epidemics and health emergencies, to provide block grants for almost everything under the sun... The truth is, most states could not survive without federal money. They don't have the income to maintain themselves at a post-1900 level.
Regarding military spending, of course the countries that don't go to war have more to spend on domestic items. There is nothing more prosperous than a good uninterrupted peace. The Elizabethan Golden Age (Shakespeare, etc.) came about because Elizabeth I refused to go to war. Japan's "Economic Miracle" was based on our protection of them. So yes, the Western Europeans have gotten a free ride militarily from us (for the most part, not all). But we chose to do that, because we chose to be the world's superpower and policeman. We basically told Western Europe "let us handle it", and they did.
Meanwhile, there are differences in values between Europe and the United States. For all our talk about family values, what I've seen is that it's in Europe where they put their money where their mouth is, paying child-care workers and teachers a good wage, making sure that there is paid maternity (and often paternity) leave for everyone, as well as paid day care once the mother goes back to work. Perhaps these things wouldn't work on a national scale - but it sure would be nice to actually try instead of just assuming that it wouldn't, or ignoring the problem completely.
"The problem with most people is they look at each European country individually, but you should be looking at them as a whole to compare them to the US."
In other words, "You have to lump all European countries together, or else my sweeping generalizations fall apart."
Alternately, we could compare apples to apples, and look for solutions that would work, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel or bury our heads in the sand and pretend that no problems exist. But at least we aren't like those icky Europeans, 'cuz they're all dumb and Europey and stuff!
Apples to apples would be comparing all of Europe to the US.
No, it wouldn't. Apples to apples would be comparing countries with similar economies, education levels, standards of living, percentage of ethnic homogeneity, etc. Arbitrarily comparing countries based solely on population is pointless and deceptive.
For example, it was previously mentioned that Sweden has about the same population as New York City (that counts only the city itself, not the metropolitan area, so the initial premise is flawed, but whatever--let's go with it). Sweden also has about the same population as Somalia.
Therefore, I guess, economic and social solutions that work in Sweden must also work in Somalia, and vice versa? Germany and Ethiopia have equivalent populations. So do the UK and the Congo. Japan and Mexico. Russia and Bangladesh. Using population as the first and most important criterion for analyzing countries is obviously flawed, to say the least.
Actually, it might be fun to treat each European nation like a state of the EU and compare directly to individual U.S. states... assuming we can find any state-by-state data for the U.S. Jenna, can you show me one state within the U.S. that matches Sweden or any other OECD country in paid vacation days? Or paid parental leave? Or average hours at work? Or income equality? (And yes, we can debate the merits of any of those metrics of societal well-being.)
Show me the U.S. states that beat our national averages. Show me the U.S. states we ought to emulate. Short of that data, I'm seeing a whole lot of European states that we might do well to emulate in terms of helping workers enjoy their family time.
Sounds like Jenna needs to take a vacation, lol!
Woot: CA and I have looked at the same story for once.
The sad fact is that just because EU countries have lots of vacation does not mean that they are better off because of it. Just look at the IMF's 2010 GDP per capita . Sure, 8 countries are ahead of the US, but 3 of them (Norway, UAE, & Qatar) are there largely due to petroleum exports, and two more (Luxembourg and Switzerland) are due to banking. Only five of the twenty countries listed on Cory’s list holidays have a higher GDP than the US. This is hardly proof that more vacation equates to a better economy. In fact, Germany (the nation cited most prevalently in Cory's original piece) has a GDP of 86% of the United States.
European countries have more PTO not because the governments forced it upon them, but instead because the people wanted it. Americans may simply prefer to work more than the average person. For instance, I myself am planning to take off just 1 week off of the meager 3 allotted to me this year. While this may leave me less happy than the average European, it is still my choice to store up some PTO.
Paid time off is not a fair indicator of anything. Europe is, by and large, simply much more socialist than the US. While I agree that socialist economies are better (I’m just an ol’ leftie like that), it is equally plain that the US is getting by just fine on its current vacation system.
Until Americans demand more PTO, it is unlikely that this matter will be of any real consequence in the US. While it is an interesting point to argue, it is not an open-and-shut case in my book.
Kyle always makes me go woot! :-)
You know me, Kyle: GDP isn't everything. What good is a check if you don't have time to spend it on people and things you enjoy?
You hit a good point, that PTO is a measure of priorities. Our European friends appear to place a higher priority on time away from work, with family and friends, an interesting difference both economically and culturally.
I would be curious to see how GDP aligns with economic competitiveness—I need to read through those rankings and see how they measure competitiveness.
Our Eurosocialist friends have a grasp of many things that (so far) lie beyond the range of the American imagination. For example, see ...
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/05/27/italian-scientist-charged-manslaughter-failing-predict-earthquake/
What do those folks smoke on their vacations, I wonder? Whatever it is, I don't want any.
Well, Stan, at least the Italians are pushing scientists, in a way, to do better science. Here in America, the government pushes scientists to deny science. But clearly, both governments need to take a vacation from meddling in science.
GDP isn't a good indicator of personal income. Also, I don't understand why a country's economy being based mainly on petroleum exports or banking disqualify it from the discussion. What if its main product was copper or borax or cotton? Mainly it sounds like a convenient, arbitrary way to disqualify countries that measure better than the USA in this study.
Re: PTO, if people have that option and want to store up lots of it, that's great. More power to you. However, not everybody has that option. Some companies don't offer it. Others force you to use it on a yearly basis, so they don't carry it on their balance sheets as a liability. Other companies let you bank it up, then go bankrupt or discontinue the policy, taking all your hard-earned, stored-up time with them and not giving any compensation (happened to my mom a number of years ago).
While in general I'm all for PTO and flexibility in work hours when possible, without laws that set standards for vacation and/or PTO, you're at the tender mercies of the company offering it, and their good faith in following their own policy.
You are right Chris, America is so much different than Europe. Good reason why their solutions would never fix our problems. I'll take my 4 weeks of PTO and not complain one bit. I think the rest of you should need to go on vacation b/c all you do is complain. As far as I am concerned, PTO is a perk and nothing more. No one should be forced to pay someone to do nothing. You have to earn it.
"all you do is complain"? That phrase is simply irrelevant to the debate here about working conditions and quality of life in Europe and America.
"their solutions would never fix our problems"? Jenna, you have not cited one specific policy that works in Europe that can't work in America, or why such cross-application of policy wouldn't work. Sure, countries are different, just like people. But there are plenty of policies (drinking ages, tax incentives, speed limits, interest rates, economic stimulus) that have observable and generalizable effects across national borders. Jenna, you've cobbled together a number of easy abstractions; now tell us specifically what poliies work in Sweden but not in America, and why.
The big point here is that Europeans work hard, remain economically competitive, yet still set priorities that better support family values than our labor policies do. Very specifically, individuals taking more time off work and governments requiring that companies allow workers to do so appear not to wreck a nation's economy.
I don't know if longer vacations are a real good idea or not, but it seems to me that shorter work hours that more or less follow daylight available in the winter might make sense. I suspect the same amount of work would get done.
I wouldn't mind driving to work in daylight in winter, Doug... but would that plan also mean longer work hours in the summer?
Cory, shorter winter hours don't necessarily imply longer summer working hours. My guess is we humans are better suited for winter resting than summer resting and daylight hours obviously influence our systems.
I suspect that in our climates, using daylight to set winter work hours would also reduce vehicle crashes and other problems, but I also have no idea what other impacts on economy or life might be.
A year of tests might prove something or nothing, but my guess is costs and loss of productivity would be much less than might be expected if work produced was a strictly linear relationship with work hours and daylight hours.
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We work 60 to 80 hours a week at the studio with some weeks exceeding 100. Doing what you love as a vocation makes working long hours more bearable.
My father claims that we have become soft and that we do not know what really tough times are.
Vacations are a modern concept. Our ancestors did not enjoy weeks off every year.
I grew up on a dairy farm. No days off did we take from milking. Our first family vacation lasted less than a week when I was 21 years old.
Freedom from smallpox is also a modern concept.
is everyone doing what he or she loves as a vocation?
Other modern concepts: physical privacy, daily bathing, childhood as playtime (before the late 1800's, most children worked full time by 7 years old), choice of careers (forget the idea of your vocation, your parents/family chose your career for you), and romantic love as a reason to get married (forget that, your parents/family chose your spouse for you). As an historian, I can assure you that the good old days sucked, and anyone who waxes too nostalgic should think seriously about pre-novocain dentistry, pre-anesthesia surgery, pre-antibiotic anything.