Is this Healthy & Sustainable for the US Economy?

7 comments

1. The United States is pretty much the only country in the world that doesn’t guarantee paid mandatory vacation.

   With so many other nations ensuring time off for workers, why is the U.S. lagging behind? How does this affect workers’ well-being and productivity?

   Should the U.S. follow the global standard and enforce paid vacation for all workers?

2. Everyone is getting gaslighted into believing in the “market will figure this out”. Just like trickle down economics. Or that a strong economy is the most important thing to strive for at all.

3. Obviously it is sustainable as it has been sustained since America began

4. I’ve never had a job where I didn’t have paid PTO.

   And who gets to mandate this? Oh yeah, government. Let’s just give them more overreach. That always works out

5. And you let them…………

6. This isn’t really a question of economics, nor should everything be a question of economics.  There may be studies out there that suggest guaranteed paid vacation actually pays for itself with increased productivity, but I didn’t bother to look.  I think the most likely outcome is that it has a negative effect on productivity, and therefore GDP, at some completely tolerable level.  

   But who cares?  Preventing businesses from working children 16 hours a day ALSO has a negative impact on GDP, but we aren’t going to suddenly allow that because economics is not the only lens which we can, or should, process our policy questions through and we very, very much seem to have completely lost sight of that.  Money and getting rich has become religion in the US, we don’t dare make a decision or policy which might harm the almighty economy; we have no balance or consideration of tradeoffs or any other value.

7. Seems to work fairly well for governments and the rich.