Yeah but while all you Europeans are working next month, we'll be enjoying a day off the first Monday in September (Labor day). Then in November there's Thanksgiving, and in between there's Columbus day in October. Granted we don't get the same # of holidays, but just because the dates of the holidays don't coincide with Europe don't assume we have no holidays at all.

I agree with the overall principle of the article - that the US works way too hard (a 50-60 hr. work week is very common) - but the French and southern Europeans have taken it too far in the opposite direction. Try to get anything bureaucratic done in Italy during the month of August (buying a house, getting documents from the government, getting married, getting a passport, obtaining educational certificates) and you're completely screwed. How "green" is it to have someone make a wasted trip to a government office only to be told to come back next month/week/day because the service they want is not available at that time?

Didn't we just have July 4th off? We're the only nation that gets that one. And we get the end of May for Memorial Day and we have Labor day at the end of August.

I don't think we're hurting for time off, generally. I also feel that if the employer wants to do that, then there's no reason to stop them.

We should, as a society, be taking more time off. Maybe then we wouldn't be a nation addicted to prozac. At the same time I don't think that any business should be legally required to give paid time off. Up to now the free market has decided that we get less then 2 weeks paid vacation annually, on average. If this was a priority for people they would be negotiating it into thier employment contracts or searching for jobs that offered it. If enough of that happened then businesses would start offering more vacation time to help employee retention. If people aren't asking for it then it isn't a priority to them and the government shouldn't step in and force a business to give it to them anyway.

I voted maybe. I feel that relaxing and spending time with friends and family is very important, but this should not be dictated by our government. If you don't recieve high enough pay, enough vacation time, good enough benefits, job satisfation or anything else related to your employment you can do something about it. Quit! I'm not saying to fly off the handle and quit. I'm saying to take the time to find a better job and quit. Don't complain that there are no good jobs and that the economy sucks. There are good jobs, you just need to look for them. It may take a week, a month, a year, or longer, but you can find them. If we all quit working for slave master employers and started working for nice and giving employers, the bad companies would go out of business and the good companies would prevail.
And if you truely can't find a good job, start your own business. You can make your own hours! Just remember to be a good employer and give your employees good benefits and days off!

The problem, I think, is more cultural than legislative. This may be the natural outcome of valuing economic growth over all other pursuits. People forget that on average we were just as happy a few decades ago as we are now, despite all that economic growth. People forget that while true poverty demands solutions, for those of us who already have a decent standard of living, more doesn't usually make us happier.

And quite frankly, I think that more time spent not working would get people to take more notice of the world they live in. To spend time with friends and family, but also to think about the longer-term future. Our short-sightedness is, I believe, one of the main reasons most people don't recognize and take action about climate change. We're too wrapped up in (often petty) day to day demands on our time.

how conflicted am i? - i chose other because I actually agreed with ALL the choices. . . I would love more time to just hang with my family, but there is sooooo much to do at my office, and most of it is highly time sensitive.

If you take a look at the productivity among European countries vs. the US, the US is hardly working at all. We can spend our summers at work, but most of those hours are spent fucking around. The US is one of the least productive industrialized nations, despite the way it feels.

Here's a response to all the comments about "there's just too much work to be done, etc, etc..."

If, as a culture, EVERYONE takes off a month (as in Europe), then nobody is working and therefore you have no work to coordinate, no deadlines to meet, nobody to check up on. This is why a government mandate is necessary. I work in the architecture industry and we know as a matter of course that if we need to get anything from Europe in the Summer, we better get our orders in by the beginning of July. Everyone shuts down, and that's just the way it is.

And comments that remark about having xmas, thanksgiving and the like off: you are taking for granted that your employer allows you to take the time off. They could make you work those days since there are ZERO days that have been earmarked by the government as days that businesses must be close. Have you every been to a supermarket on Thanksgiving? Those people are working.

"If this was a priority for people they would be negotiating it into thier employment contracts or searching for jobs that offered it."

Wow. At first I was chuckling, thinking the prior comments were tongue-in-cheek, but now I'm just depressed. Do you think the unemployment rate is at a four-year high because people aren't pulling on their bootstraps hard enough? Do you think people aren't taking time off because they'd rather work?

The laissez-faire approach to vacation time only results in a dog-eat-dog environment where Joe Employee takes either: A) as many vacation days as he can without getting fired, or B) the same or fewer vacation days as the guy sitting in the cube next to him so that he doesn't look lazy for taking his earned time off.

How much bargaining power do you really think the average employee has? It's a rhetorical question - the answer is zero. Especially in this economy, there are a dozen people willing to do your job for less money and fewer benefits. Oh, and for your salary, we can hire a team of workers in Mumbai. And they have graduate degrees.

"I feel that relaxing and spending time with friends and family is very important, but this should not be dictated by our government."

Perhaps I'm wrong, since I'm not European, but I think Europeans understand that in a democracy, the government does what the people want. If they want more holidays, they get more holidays, because the government is working for them. And if the government doesn't give them that they protest and protest and protest til they get it.
Here in the US, we have always had an extreme distrust of government. We take this so far that we seem to question whether the government should have the power to give us something we want. Of course they should be able to give us more holidays or free health care or whatever; that's why they are there. They work for us, not the other way around. We are citizens, not peasants or slaves. We don't need some revolution for this to be true. We won that revolution a few hundred years ago. So when we say the government shouldn't have a power, we are actually saying we should not have the power.
The American government is not a dictatorship. We should not be afraid of laws if they are our own laws.
I am really not an extremist. I don't think the government should put unreasonable restrictions on corporations. But there is a huge difference between unreasonable restrictions and getting more vacation time.
I am all for a free market, but some people act like the market is a benevolent entity smiling down on us. It is actually made up of people, who are perfectly subject to greed. Sometimes, if we let it, the government, as the voice of the people, can balance out the power of the people at the top of corporations. There is nothing wrong with that, and it is not the same thing as communism. It is just democracy in action.