I was taking my walk today when I thought about how my company should offer four weeks of paid vacation.
To an average American, this might seem excessive, but in reality, most highly developed countries provide this by law. Twenty days is the minimum paid leave for all workers in the European Union. Regardless of their income or age. Of countries with a Democracy score over 6 and a GDP per capita over 20000, the only countries with less than 20 days paid leave are Canada, Israel, Japan, Singapore, and the United States out of 27 countries.
I believe the United States should mandate 20 days of paid leave by law, but I also believe the United States is the country that needs this policy the most.
We start with 193 member states in the United Nations.
Now, paid leave is a pro-family policy. In a small country like Austria, you can drive to see your family within an evening from anywhere in the country. You don’t need to spend vacation time to see your family. So, to argue this is about keeping families together mostly applies to countries where it takes significant time and money to get from one part of the country to another. The maximum amount of time I will generally drive in a straight shot without an overnight is 8 hours, so a distance of 800 km. 800 ^2 = 640,000 km2. I want to start by narrowing my list to democracies larger than 640,000 square kilometers.
We are left with only 17 countries that fit these parameters.
I want to narrow down my list further to democracies with incomes above $20,000, which is enough disposable income for the average person to afford to travel long distances. Countries with incomes below $20k have bigger issues and are out of the scope of this analysis.
The only democracies larger than 640 square kilometers with incomes over $20,000 are the United States, Canada, Australia, and France. They all have populations of over 10 million.
France barely makes the cutoff, and the train from Marseilles to Lille, from one side of the country to the other, takes only 4.5 hours. It is totally feasible for the French to take weekend trips to any other part of their country.
Australia is huge, but most of it is empty. Over 70% of Australians live in a straight line along the coast from Melbourne to Brisbane. Most Australians can see the majority of their family on a 3-day road trip.
Canada is similar to Australia. It is gigantic, but like Australia, most of its land is practically empty. Two-thirds of Canadians live in a straight line from Windsor to Quebec City. In a 10-hour drive, you can drive past most Canadians. Ontario makes the list by itself, but most of its area is empty. For family members in BC or Alberta, most of them can fly to Ontario and meet the rest of their family.
The United States is a completely different beast. Texas alone is larger than my 640,000 km2 cutoff, and California is not far behind. We have more land area than any other country except Russia and China. Boston to Washington, DC is almost an 8-hour drive; through that area, you only pass by around a third of Americans. Americans are extremely mobile because we have more choices of places to live and work without leaving our country than any other wealthy democracy. This leads to families being spread across vast distances, from Washington to Florida, California to Massachusetts. This example is from my family. Both of my grandmothers live in Washington; my paternal grandmother had siblings in Nevada, Ohio, and Florida, among other states, and my maternal grandmother has siblings in California and Massachusetts. The ability for families to get together regularly with only two weeks of vacation is not feasible in this country, unlike any other advanced democracy in the world. It is impossible to keep families together in a country this vast and this mobile with such a small amount of paid vacation.
If you have only two weeks of paid vacation per year and want to travel once abroad, assume you only have 14 days. The first and last day will be spent flying, and the first day you land somewhere, you will lose a significant amount of time to jet lag, leaving you with only 11 quality days to explore, assuming you only go to one city. For each additional location, subtract one day of true immersion in your destination. 4 destinations then leave you with only 8 days to really enjoy a place, only two days per location. That’s not enough to get to know a place. Not enough to get to know the people and the culture, and I believe this is by design.
If you have 4 more weeks and 4 destinations, you start with 28 days of total travel time, down to 25, including flying and losing one day to jet lag. You lose 4 more days, leaving you with 21 days to really enjoy yourself, or 4 days per city, which is enough time to truly explore a city. One day for the tourist destinations, one day to explore, one day to wander aimlessly or spend time with new friends you made. The quality of time and the experience of a place is totally different when you spend at least 4 days in a location to get to know the people and culture.
That’s when American tourists might start to learn about things like modern healthcare systems and take those ideas home with them.
Even if I don’t leave the United States, with 4 weeks of paid vacation, I could choose to spend one week exploring New England with my family, one week down in Georgia with my aunt and cousins there, one week in California visiting my aunt and uncle and cousins, and one week back in Washington with my parents and grandparents.
4 weeks of paid leave is a family value, and it should be the law of the land.