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Just reading through the first four pages of this thread left me with elevated blood pressure.
The thought that this mandate would represent "big government" to so many is precisely the problem with (right wing) framing of collective-interest movements. This would be coming from the people -- the WORKERS -- who collectively demand better conditions of work. The government is the MEANS because, under contemporary political structures, it is the only viable means. Ethical, collectively accountable action does not necessarily have to take hold through government; today it is done so because it is the only "legitimate" mode of resisting corporate hegemony.
I absolutely support such a mandate. It is absurd that the USA is so behind in labor issues.
Of course you support it. It doesn't cost you a dime and you can continue to be a mediocre employee. All the benefit and none of the hard work.
Now that would be downright cruel and sadistic to the number of knock-down-drag-out workaholics in this country! Forced to even take a week off, they'd end up shooting themselves on Day 2 of their enforced vacation!
Right there on their website is all the data you need and it shows that almost 90% of full-time workers are doing pretty well. You must be in the 10%?
And yet we poll last when compared to other developed countries. Americans work longer hours and have almost no vacation time when compared to others.
And there are people on this thread that are proud of the fact that they work 60 hours a week with no vacation to advance the interest of the employer. In the meantime the employer has little interest in the quality of life of the employee.
Actually, it does cost. It costs all of us every time government mandates business rules.
It costs all of us ALOT every time the big money donor class get their will (and their working class shills) and weaken the rights of workers, pushing the society and economy just a little more towards a feudal banana republic. The costs come in the form of skyrocketing stress levels, broken families, health care costs, crime and on and on it goes. That is the SOCIETAL costs of treating society like it doesnt exist, and seeing people as mere economic units and pawns to be abused. I dont expect far right libertarians to understand this though, because I believe many of them simply are sociopaths and the terms like society and community is alien to them. Its me, me, me, me.
Exactly when in history did people just sit on their tails and food and shelter magically appeared in front of you?
You are stuck in the distant past and fail to see the historical changes in working hours and leisure time.
In the 1800s folks worked 80 hors a week. In 1900 the average was 60 hours.
In Germany and the Netherlands folks are already working less than 30 hours a week
We are now on the verge of entering the era of automation. Actually, this started years ago when machines replaced farm workers and the telephone operators were replaced. IN any event, there will come a day when there is simply NOT ENOUGH work out there and most humans will have NOTHING to do. If technology and human ingenuity does not deal with this issue we can end up in a massive revolution. At some point folks will get paid a salary to do nothing or to just work less than 10 hours a week.
Actually, it does cost. It costs all of us every time government mandates business rules.
The "we need to tax business more" crowd will never understand how costs are passed on.
When businesses figure out what they can pay for most positions, it's based upon production time. Businesses only make money from most employees when they are actively involved in production. There is this thing called math, and companies use this "math" to find out that they can pay up to $x in labor and still make their margins on that product. For many jobs, this will translate to the lower the amount of time an employee is producing, the lower they will pay for that employee. Employees do not produce while on vacation; therefore, if an employer knows an employee will be paid for 30 days with zero production time, they will factor this into the pay scale for that position. The employee may think he/she is getting paid for that vacation time, but in reality the employee is not because their pay scale is lower than it would be if they had less vacation time.
You can argue until you are blue in the face that businesses don't calculate the cost of labor and base pay upon that, but it's simply not true.
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