Hacker News

https://www.bls.gov/charts/employee-benefits/paid-leave-sick...

Could be better for sure, but a graph showing the US as having 0 days of paid days off because the federal government doesn't mandate anything is misleading at best. Average US worker after 1 year of employment earns 7 sick days and 11 vacation days. And likely has some state and federal holidays off as well, and could very well qualify for state required PTO and sick time. But that doesn't get clicks and attention.

More data, if one is curious:

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs2.t06.htm

I've never worked at a job that didn't offer some form of PTO, only exception is when you are doing contract work and not a full time employee, you simply take time off when the rest of the company does for no pay during those windows of time.

Shameful? The country that invented transistors and the internet is getting roasted by people who need 40 days off just to recover from existing.

Work is a privilege.

You're assuming that's due to more days off? I have my doubts. I think the US could offer more paid days off, and it would retain its higher wages and lower taxation rates.

Switzerland has all that and paid days off on par with the rest of Europe.

You talk as if you believe low taxation rates are good for low earners.

And the US has the lower life expectancy.

This comment needs to be pinned.

> lower taxation rates

eh.. many western countries have comparable taxation rates. That's not true.

Regardless it would be nice to have the choice to work 75% the hours for 75% pay. Not many jobs offer that, though.

Everything in the US is built around maximum value extraction for corporate profits, and I believe this is just another cog in that system.

The areas with the highest wages are disproportionately more expensive, and the personal risks forced on both workers and the unemployed are far dangerous. (Esp lack of healthcare.)

Depends on the company. The US maintains no requirements, federal holidays are a suggestion, not a mandate.

A few states inside the US upgrade federal holidays to state holidays to required paid time off. Most don't.

In the US paid holidays are a corporate "tradition" more than a regulated common good.

Even US federal employee holidays vary between agencies and branches of government.

I think they're technically not federally mandated. Businesses can be open on Christmas at their discretion and require workers to come in.

Holidays are on top of vacations so they shouldn't be counted .

It depends on the job and is not mandated to be paid, or even given off.

Because it gets more attention if they ignore reality and treat a lack of a federal mandate as meaningful information.

The rest of the world seems to believe that if the government doesn't mandate it, it doesn't happen.

Of course not, but there is a strong default option effect.

And more often then not an employee _has to_ take the exact amount of vacation that's mandated in their country.

From the first principles, I suspect it’s an attitude thing, management-to-individual-contributors relationships. If management treats ICs as equals and tries to form a healthy human-centric culture, you get unlimited PTO. If the management treats ICs as tools to do the work and tries to squeeze maximum performance per dollar out of that biomass, you get sweatshops with zero time off. Incidentally things correlate with ICs replaceability - the more replaceable an individual is, the less reasons to care (see a work-performer as a human with needs and problems and ) business owners have. Plus, the wellbeing of the business is a likely factor - the more breathing space it gets, the more it could afford (unless greed and lack of long-term planning kills everything) to be less financially optimal short-term for long-term prosperity.

Regulations are means of pushing the bottom line back at scale. They should be unnecessary in ideal humane society, but that’s not a thing. I wonder whether there’s a way to shift the culture somehow… but there seems to be no political will for that, because it’s certainly not any popular agenda point.

You didn't invent microwaves. Well, your lot invented the klystron. Know what a klystron is? No? Well there you are.

But I bet you know what the cavity magnetron - invented in Scotland - is. You probably used one today already.

Cellular phones were invented in the UK and Finland. The US didn't even have them until the first couple of generations were obsolete here.

Transistors were invented in Germany, although they were made practical in the US, I'll them that.

This can be spun ad infinitum: You wouldn't have all of these technologies without machines from the Netherlands and mirrors from Germany. So yeah, whatever.

Most of those things were invented by a company granted a government monopoly on communications and not allowed to directly profit off of any of those advances.

AT&T threw money at smart people and said, "Do stuff. Then we'll see if we can use it"

No one does that anymore.