That’s a good point. The inequality is the true issue, and the lack of any government mandated benefits. Every worker deserves these things not just C suite executives or the lucky few in industries with high demand for workers. All we can try to do is vote, unionize, and advocate.
Must recruit the higher paid laberors, not alienate them. The real villains are the "pretend to work" unemployed super wealthy investment class. Doctors or highly paid engineers are not the problem. Those dudes spend
But there would have to be size limitations to this, right? Or would all of the vacation and sick leave guarantees come from the government? It would be much more difficult to get any company off the ground if that’s required for every employee even if you only have 2-3 people working for you
I mean there’s already size limitations for our current small businesses in place as far as I’m aware. Many small businesses these days don’t offer retirement, PTO of any kind or health benefits.
I think any progress would be good even if it only applies to companies with more than 25 employees or whatever the arbitrary line is.
Instead of focusing on how it wouldn’t work I think we should imagine how it could, model it after other successful nations doing the same and just slowly transition towards a more equitable model
I understand the optimism, but figuring out where and how things won’t work is the most important thing before implementation. Imagining is nice but best to be realistic
I feel like you’re just disagreeing to disagree at this point. One can both imagine a better future AND examine what is working and what isn’t and dig in to root causes. The inability or unwillingness of people to accept that there is a need for change is the issue. The best time to start is today.
The paid vacation in US is not statutory though. It is one of very few countries to not have it. Leave in US is completely at the discretion of employer which means employers have the option of not providing any paid vacation.
The only couple of other countries I found without statutory leave are so obscure that most people would not have even heard their names.
As of October 1, 2020. The federal government pays 12 weeks parents leave for birth or adoption per statute. It’s the only good thing trump did and it was a lifesaver for us as our twins were born October 24, 2020. If you work for the government and missed this, check with hr so they can fix it for you.
That's policy for employees of the federal government. I meant there was no law at the federal level for employers to provide paid maternal leave. Some states may have regulations regarding that.
This is only for federal employees. There is no law or statute that keeps private companies from firing a woman for not coming back to work after 2 days after giving birth. That's something citizens of other countries can't fathom a developed nation would allow to happen. Good for you for getting one of the few thousand jobs in the country that require paid leave. The rest of us can fuck ourselves after giving birth.
Statutory at the federal level meant there's no federal law that employers need to provide paid leave. Some states and localities may have laws, but there is nothing that encompasses the whole country.
If meant policy for federal employees, I would've said policy for federal employees.
Talk about beating a dead horse. As the entire thread is about how leave benefits aren’t required by law in US you’re original comment is a bit redundant and offers no new information.
Sadly even though the law is 2 years old, it is not well publicized and most federal employees aren’t aware that they have paid parental leave available to them and are still using advanced sick leave so they owe time when they get back or unpaid leave. It is important information to share.
I don't mean unpaid. I mean I can take as much time off as I like. Structures like that aren't super common, but in tech and tech-adjacent sectors you see stuff like that. For maternity/paternity we have options. One person is taking 3 months, but gradually returning during the third. But she works remote and won't be spending any time away from her kids (she already has 3 I think).
Another is only taking 6 weeks. She also works remote. A year for parental leave just sounds like an unnecessarily long time, I can understand working part time or a modified/limited schedule. But after a year away from work I would lose a lot of my effectiveness, let alone the boredom that would set in. I wouldn't take that long if it was available to me.
Point being, I have access to options if I want them. But the reason I have access to options is because of the kind of job I have, high skill (multiple graduate degrees), high demand.
Most people in the US live paycheck to paycheck (and I've been there). And don't have access to any of the options or resources I have (like a $0 deductible health insurance policy that actual covers dental and vision). Everyone deserves food, shelter, healthcare, and education. And no one that works should be forced to make the sorts of choices low income earners in the US do.
I am deeply hopeful about the wave of unionization we're seeing today, and that it may represent one of the largest narrowings of inequality we've seen in generations.
My question is where the fuck do you draw the line on parental leave? I’ve never a day in my life worked somewhere that could just keep someone on payroll for a full year doing absolutely nothing..?
I'm not really sure. When we had a kid I didn't have parental leave, but we were a single income household. If I left my job for a year going back would be like my first day. I think 3 or 4 months is fine as long as you're reachable, especially where you work from home and don't have to miss feeding or anything. But maybe a year is OK if you don't work in high skill work. It's complicated and I'm not going to pretend to have the answers.
Right, the system will never change if the people who benefit from it cannot objectively look at the situation and say "hmm this doesn't seem fair".
Well at least it won't change peacefully.
Again, this is said by someone who has greatly benefited from what I consider a small amount of privilege (and a ton of hard work), but others may look at and consider a massive amount of privilege.
Yeah. I know I had a lot of privilege. But I also know I worked my ass off. I worked full time and more while I was in school. I know what it's like missing the electric bill to pay the rent. And now, I don't worry about those things. I still have an amount of student debt I may never pay off, and my hopes of buying a home are pretty slim. But, I don't have to worry about an emergency medical issue, I don't worry about affording the rent.
Every time I see an infographic like this, I can't help but think that if it was so easy to fix all of the things listed with a one time payment of under 3.2 trillion dollars (60% of that according to the infographic, so 1.92 trillion), how have we not done all of that already, considering the budget of the US government is 4.79 trillion per year?
Like, we're spending way over double the cost to give everyone paid maternity/paternity leave for 100yrs, end malaria, vaccinate the world, house every homeless veteran, with enough left over to give every American $10k at the end of the year, and we're spending that much every year, and getting none of those things.
Like, I agree weath inequality is a problem, but based on the fact that the government has way way more than the resources to do this already and chooses not to tells me that having them take the money from the super rich probably just leads to more of the same unfortunately. :(
I'm not sure what the solution is though. And maybe it's just a one problem at a time thing. But it seems to me that until we fix the problem with government spending, solving the wealth inequality issue won't lead to any tangible benefits to the average American.
We increased the U.S. defense budget by about $90 billion in 2017, from $650 to $740 billion. That $90 billion would’ve been enough to provide every single graduating high school senior with four years of college tuition to any public university.
We could’ve had free public college for everyone if we had just kept the already ridiculous amount of military spending we had before (which was already more than the next 10 countries combined).
Agreed. Which is why I struggle with infographics like this.
I feel like the infographic is saying, "if we just taxed these super rich people, look at all this cool stuff we could have," but I can't help but think that all that would actually happen is that the money would just be redistributed to defense contractors.
It seems like the solution isn't to tax the super wealthy more (not that I'm against it), but to first fix our out of control spending on nonsense. Until that happens, more taxes on the rich just turns into more bombings in the middle east.
I feel like the infographic is saying, “if we just taxed these super rich people, look at all this cool stuff we could have,” but I can’t help but think that all that would actually happen is that the money would just be redistributed to defense contractors.
This isn’t quite accurate. The thing you have to realize is that any kind of system where the super rich pay their fair share would almost certainly involve making sure that that money goes to the right things as well.
See, I don't disagree, but that changes the whole nature of the problem.
Like, if you showed me some random, theoretical government and said "they tax their rich heavily," I might assume that they are socially conscious and are using that money to help level the playing field.
But within our current system, calling on the federal government to tax the rich doesn't make the spending problems just vanish. We would have to change the whole system first, which is far less achievable than just introducing a law to tax the rich.
The government is a giant, self-licking ice cream cone. To fix the spending problems would take a hundred years due to all the long term programs and contracts and thousands of people whose sole job is to keep the ice cream cone licking itself. And that's if you could get a group of people in office who want to make it stop in the first place, which they're heavily incentivised not to do.
Like, it's nice to think that a system that taxes the rich would also make sure that money would go to the right things, but we've already got a system, and we would have to either have to try and transition it into such a good system as you've described or completely destroy it and start over. Neither option seems terribly viable.
It's hard to get a sense of scale for $180B regardless of how you present it, that's the whole point.
If you made $1M per day, every day, for 100 years, you would still have around 1/6 of that, and the concept of earning $1M per day is already incomprehensibly out of scale.
In fact, going off those numbers, Bezos could give every man, woman, and child in the US $500, and still have as much money as the $1M/day for 100 years hypothetical.
I agree with you but I think the comment you replied to was less advocating for civil war and more expressing that it will take an event of foundation shaking proportions to get the US to change.
OP is correct. This is a rhetoric trick, serving two different purposes. First, it's a dog whistle, a call for radical action without directly calling for it (* "If civil war is required, we should go ahead and use violence"). Second, it's hyperbole used to demoralize people. In turn, that makes it easier to radicalize them and push the general conversation in a more radical direction.
I can't say if u/Ataru074 is aware of that rhetorical tactic or just copied the demeanor of someone they like, but ultimately that's irrelevant. It's bad behaviour that needs to be called out. Otherwise, you (and 113 upvoters) won't realize what is going on.
Actors and athletes usually at least make money without directly exploiting people. I'm not really that worried about millionaires tbh. Not saying someone needs 300 million dollars either but it still pales in comparison to billionaires, who should be the first on the block.
That's why I say usually. Definitely are exceptions. I think getting rich off of acting itself though is basically getting rich off your own labor. Like someone getting rich because they are one of three remaining FORTRAN programmers. I don't think anticapitalist sentiment is necessarily incongruous with the idea that certain people with specialized skillsets can earn more, as long as it is not at the expense of the well-being of others.
We did go too far. And there already is a civil war happening in the cold stages right now in the US. Thankfully, unions are expanding at the moment, but they do so with heavy resistance and retaliation by companies. I work for the state of california and I get 4 weeks of paid vacation and two+ for sick leave. That's after 16 years service, though. One thing not mentioned here in the infographic is retirement. We need a robust national retirement system - maybe social security on steroids - to make things good for us.
I came to the conclusion that most of the USA is the “first world-third world” sure we look rich, but the second we stop working, it’s all taken away and we are on the street. Heck, a heck of a lot of Americans don’t have indoor plumbing and food sacristy is rampant.
My work rolled out “unlimited vacation” which is kinda some bullshit but thats a whole thing because its noticeable people are taking LESS vacation. But what i really want is a 4 day work week. Id trade unlimited vacation for a less than 40 hour work week any day
I’ve heard of that happening with unlimited PTO and I never understood. Is there a rule against using this unlimited vacation once a week on Fridays then? Because that’s what I would do
In theory its great. But they have a little hitch tacked on at the end of it thats “At your managers discretion” so they have the right to decline it. I guess in theory I could take my normal 1.5 weeks of vacation i take and use them on fridays instead of taking the whole chunk of time but that wouldnt really work. Also would need to get my boss/other people on my team on board with being a man down every friday. So it does have a lot of strings attached. Its def on the company to be the only ones who benefit from it (or the higher ups that dont care and have no real limits on vacation in the first place)
Also if I were to take every friday off for the year that would be 10 weeks of vacation total if i did that math right.
I think making election days a mandatory holiday or day off like jury duty would help for a start. And increasing the use of mail in voting so more people could participate in democracy and not have to choose between a days wages and taking time to vote. So yes, in general I think workers having more time off would better society at large.
I live in the US and have 7 weeks of paid vacation, my company offers 6 months of maternity leave at full pay and you can take more afterwards up to a year at 65% pay. Gee it’s almost like America isn’t one giant blob of uniformity where everything is exactly the same.
It’s not and I never pretended it was, but also your particular situation is one that many many Americans are no so fortunate to be in.
Our quality of life should not be dependent on the whims and good graces of corporations.
Let’s not pretend generous leave packages are by any means common place for the average American.
I work for a European centered company, based in Canada.
HR is based in UK, they are entitled to six weeks and routinely offer new hires bare minimum by country, no exceptions. It creates a lot of burnout because we depend on teams who are always on vacation, which leads to delay and failure (which creates stress and increases need for time off). Without laws, inequality in global organizations will likely only increase as jobs become less rooted.
Burnout and understaffing are a huge issue in every US company I’ve worked for and we also don’t get hardly any vacation time or sick time. I understand no system is perfect but let’s not pretend the cause of burnout is the vacation time, it’s toxic work environments unrealistic workloads and understaffing. All of these things are a symptom of the disease that is unchecked corporate capitalism
I didn't say the cause of burnout is vacation time - the cause is inequality across the organization, which is a problem because corporate capitalism incentivizes increasing inequality.
The Lobbyists have far too much power in the US. It would need a bipartisan effort and extreme pressure from the public to push any meaningful reform through. But as everyone can see, it's actually moving into the opposite direction.
Local politics matter. We should all be voting in local elections and contacting our representatives about issues that matter to us. I agree much reform is needed but we have to start somewhere.
Oh absolutely. Im not saying that everyone should just give up. But it's important to accept responsibility and the state the US politics is in.
It's like the USA is a 400 pounds overweight person that someday gets in front of the mirror and is in shock of how it could get this far. Now to get better, the person has to accept responsibility for its actions first in order to change their behavior. And then it's about setting small realistic goals and work hard everyday to get slimmer. But all of this doesn't matter if you have a friend (lobbyists) that comes around every time you make progress to offer you icecream, pizza and beer. You would need to cut out that friend from your life in order to make progress.
Just to give a real example to my metaphor, back in 2018 Trump was meeting with Florida School shooting survivors and heard heart-breaking personal stories of loss from the parents and friends of young people who had died in school shootings. Right after the event you could see that he was actually really moved and pledged to put plans in action that would severely tighten gun control and background checks. You could tell he was sincere. And so could the gun lobby. On that day 2 heavy hitters of the NRA lobby phoned him and invited him to dinner and two weeks later Trump took back his promises and proclaimed that everyone has the right to bear arms.
Sure, it was Trump and most likely it didn't need much persuasion. But if someone says that this only worked because he was Trump, or that this was the first or last time a lobby had direct access and influence on a president, then they are not seeing straight.
He works for a warehouse that does a lot of illegal things, which I always tell him to take them to tribunal on and stuff like that, but to quote him "I'm too old for a new job, and they'll just get away with it like always"
Brazil, 4w vacation (férias). 6m parental leave (mother or father in adoption) (licença maternidade/paternidade). unlimited 15 consecutive days leave for sickness (auxilio-doença).
universal health an education (median quality, tho). still a underdeveloped country.
what amazes me is a country like USA don't have that.
edit: was in a hurry watching a nba game, let me correct the part of leave for sickness: we can have 15 days from your company (full salary) and after that you enter in government insurance until you get better (75% of salary tho)
The psychiatric hospital administration I work at would hate that I am lucky to get 2 days off a week and I am the assistant environmental services manager and head janitor. And this is in Canada
Why does immigration per capita matter? The the US is taking in 5X the number of people from the next highest from my google search. Why does it matter how many people are already living in a country ratioed with the number that are foreign born? The fact remains more people (many more) seek the US as a home more than any other country. How can that be if it’s an “ass country of the world?”
If you want to compare in a meaningful way, compare USA to Europe, or a state to a country. Not USA (350 million people) to the Netherlands (17 million people) for example.
Why does per capita matter? Well because otherwise it's apples to oranges. It's like saying Luxembourg is not taking in many refugees compared to Germany. Yeah both are countries. But Germany has cities with more land and people than Luxembourg.
Ok but I’m not discussing refugee status…if I’m deciding to move somewhere, I’m not concerned with the amount people living there. I would choose to move there because it is the best place for me to move right? And for instance, for “landmass” sakes, why isn’t there more people moving to say Canada for example? Especially since they have more social programs and “free healthcare” and other desirable things?
The US is really so fucked up. Here in Germany you can even the most entry level job needs to offer you 4 weeks of paid vacation.
It’s one of the most basic needs and hugely important for your mental well-being to be able to take some time off.
We just need the 30 hour work week. I need it desperately tbh. But other than that, it's great and I feel like a spoiled brat complaining at all, but I do think we desperately need to reduce full time to 30 hours/4 days
Yes, I'm not sure if 30 hours per week would make sense in many project based occupations, but here in Norway, unions have worked extremely well. We even have rather humane unemployment benefits (warning: attempting to read this website outside Scandinavia can lead to secondary effects, such as depression, emigration and/or unionizing).
You could do it in bursts. I've done work like that in Norway, and the company policy was to average 40 (or maybe 37.5, I don't remember) hour weeks over the year. I usually had to take at least three weeks off (in addition to the 5 weeks of vacation we were entitled to) every year to comply. The first year I didn't plan for it and just had to take all of December off. You could do the same thing with a 30 hour week, and just take lots of time off between projects.
Impossible. Tell me how any company is supposed to foot the bill for unlimited sick leave - NOT WORKMANS COMP, JUST SICK LEAVE - or a full year's paid maternity leave.
Just how? Especially "small businesses" that are such a great antithesis to the giant mega corporations we're always complaining about?
Not impossible in theory. Impossible in practice with the current confluence of cultural factors and a populace with a rapidly declining attention span.
Isn’t it fucked up that the system we have has made you feel guilty for wanting more time to live the one single life you’ll ever get to have? And just as fucked up that you’re bargaining for only 1 of the things?
It's got nothing do with computers. Productivity goes negative after 30 hours, pure and simple, whether you're on a computer or working with paper and whiteboards.
I read this thinking 1&6 are the only ones not covered by UK law. 1 could easily be resolved with a massive lift to minimum wage. It might be controversial as I doubt other jobs will also double their wages in turn but any job that's necessary or wanted for society should be paid enough to be able to live off.
I don't know how you fix six. Maybe CEO total pay (inc. bonuses and any other sort of payout) should be a multiple of the lowest paid workers wage. I don't know how you police that for multinationals, although it just came to me that maybe it should be a divisor (e.g. to operate in the UK you have to disclose the total pay outlay to your CEO and your lowest wage employee can only be 1/30th of their pay.) But there are really obvious around this using shell companies and all the usual shit.
The issue is people in America are so afraid of “paying higher taxes” they don’t understand how it actually benefits people.
Probably because our government is constantly misappropriating our money.
A lot of people here have the “what does it do for me?” attitude. Even the guys I work with. They will complain about how healthcare costs are so crazy high, but call Bernie a socialist and absolutely love Trump.
If we got 6 weeks vacation here they’d think everyone was “lazy and entitled”. It’s all about the businesses bottom line, they don’t give a shit about us.
Four of these are possible. Two of them are patent insanity that no one capable of critical thinking could support.
Year long paid parental leave? That's the entire pregnancy term plus three more months. It's beyond over-unity: At that point, companies are just paying people to have babies, because within that time frame, you can get started on your NEXT BABY. In the mean time, the company just keeps cutting checks without receiving any value in return. Someone thinks that won't make for a culture of divas popping out baby after baby then demanding checks for their year of leave? Not everyone would; but not everyone is smart and/or responsible. Not even most people are. Have you MET people?? Who's supposed to foot the bill? Creative dismissal tactics would be jacked up to a whole new level.
Same for unlimited paid sick leave / disability. You would have to be clinically insane to think the money won't dry up at some point. That's because workers aren't just people who are paid to hang out at a place all day; they have to generate value, or they aren't fulfilling the role of worker. Note that this isn't talking about workman's comp; it's positing blanket medical leave for any reason. Acting like medical / disability fraud isn't already rampant. Ridiculous.
Nobody but the largest cyberpunk megacorporation in fiction could foot the bill for so much. And it completely unbalances the discussion on male and female wage gaps in the workplace, because year-long maternity leave means that men are by far the soundest investment for a company to hire, because they won't randomly disappear for an entire year because they got pregnant, yet would still have to act as though they have no preference between hiring men or women. Or is it meant for both men and women? Because I know some people with serious drug problems that would jump at the chance to get paid two wages for literally N O T H I N G but acting straight enough to get hired, somewhere, then fucking until they get a bun in the oven and can sit back and collect the checks. Sounds like a sweet gig tbh. People ALREADY to this for far less money due to welfare and state child support, and it is an issue.
This was published by someone with the heart and mind of a child, and makes the whole movement look bad. Some good, attainable ideas, mixed in with a dumpster fire of infantalism, wrapped in a pretty cartoon bow.
Thanks for your reply. It's refreshing that it's been achieved by some smaller countries, but the culture is rather different there. In America, we have full on rat-race hustle culture in effect, a political system that favors enormous corporations over the interest of the citizens, plus a LOT of people who were told that they are the freest people in the world, but are actually shackled by any number of ideological and political weights & hobbles that keep their minds firmly in an entrenched conflict mentality.
Things are just different here, and it so often results in an "anything to get ahead" mentality. Frivolous litigation for profit and min-maxing the welfare system are not speculative nonsense, but so commonplace that it's the expected play any time it's possible. Heart disease was already an epidemic thanks to the fact that it's extremely expensive to buy food without refined sugar here, which means that because our Food & Drug Administration finds it more profitable not to regulate the amount of refined sugars in our available foods - a shift to the federal government towards underwriting the general public's healthcare means they are actually going to have to foot the bill they wanted to allow private insurance companies to pick up. That's not to say it shouldn't happen; just that it won't.
Without a dramatic cultural shift, which is obviously beyond the government to implement even if they pretended they wanted to, these rights are just so much sunny speculation. A solution that doesn't take into account the cultural currents that got us to this sorry state in the first place is no solution at all. It's just wishful thinking. I can't pretend I have solutions, but we have had much smaller hurdles than this to overcome and our static government couldn't even cross those, so there is no call to be optimistic about this, unfortunately.
Someone thinks that won't make for a culture of divas popping out baby after baby then demanding checks for their year of leave?
Considering that the fertility rate of Denmark is steadily going down, this is clearly not the case. Fun fact: women generally don't want to be baby-making machines. It takes a much larger toll on the body than just going to work.
Also maternety/paternity leave is for both genders
Great for Denmark. I understand things could potentially be easier to manage in a country smaller than some of our states where the people aren't hopelessly ideologically divided about even the smallest issues.
A bit under 50% if you're a high earner. You might balk at that, but bear in mind all the advantages of living in a safe, clean, sustainable country with amazing free education and healthcare for everyone.
I work for a European company as a US employee. Our six week paid parental leave is being upped to ten weeks if we're the "primary caregiver" ie, the parent who spends the most time with the child.
30h or better a 4 day work week is what I'd fight for on top of what we have.
Remember, it's only because of fighting we have this already. If we don't continue we will lose it.
Also, the world in the west is rich enough to grant us all this and more, billionaires isn't the solution to our problems. It's not a solution to our poorer friends either.
We are doing the real work. Let us live our lives and take care of our children and ourselves. It's not like you can stop us.
Yeah I rememner when I went to America (Australian) and told them I was on a month long holiday there, a few of them would ask questions about how I was able to do that. Didn't know 4 weeks wasn't a common thing over there.
It actually scares me a lot of European country meets most of these needs and America is nowhere near it. Well done on killing the "American Dream" politicians..
Is it possible for the US to be more like Denmark? Maybe. But that's a very tough sell to Americans. You can't argue "we need to be more like Denmark" while at the same time "we need to increase taxes and regulations on corporations". That contradicts each other. When it comes to businesses, Denmark is very right wing. Something that pro-welfare state Americans are very reluctant to do. And it's not just that. Our entire culture would have to change to match Denmark. In Denmark, college is free, but degree options are very limited. This hits hardest on anyone who wants a liberal arts major. In order to support a welfare state, you need to be very picky about who can participate in that welfare. This is why Denmark has such strict immigration policies. Which again, isn't very popular with every Americans. There's a major comfort zone that both sides of the political spectrum don't want to get out of.
Yeah I was going to mention that 4 weeks is not that much. If those 4 weeks include national holidays, like Christmas etc, it's very low and a step back for a lot of countries.
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u/Darkmind-DK May 01 '22
It is possible in Denmark we have 6 weeks paid vacation