New Zealand 2017 Election

[Starlight]

And what if, for someone and their family, they want to skip vacation(s) this year so that they get a nice check at the end of the year (their unused vacation time) and spend it on something that they think is better? I know. The gall of some people. Thinking they know what's best for them

Seriously though, maybe they want or need a new car? Or another one? What if they want to move to a better neighborhood and want to save up for a couple years to help pay for it? What if instead of going on "holiday" someone would be happier with a new TV with a bigger screen? Shouldn't they have the right to decide?

Very few people tend to want to do this. It is vastly more often the case that employers want to try to force their employees to work longer hours and for lower benefits. And unfortunately employers tend to be in the position of power over employees when it comes to negotiating terms of work. That is why the governments across the Western world (except the US who seems happy to allow employees to get screwed over) take a pretty pro-active approach to laying out basic rights for workers that employers can't infringe on and can't be 'negotiated' away (i.e. the employer can't write a nasty contract and force it on the desperate and powerless employee).

In NZ, it is totally possible for the employee to refrain from taking annual leave if they choose to do so. It simply accrues over the years and then any outstanding balance is paid out in cash when the employee leaves the job. Also the employee can ask their employer to turn one of their 4 weeks of annual leave into cash per year. (However the employer is forbidden from making any attempt whatsoever to force or encourage the employee to do this and is forbidden from even bringing it up in negotiations - if the employee wants it they have to ask for it not be 'encouraged' to do it.)

What am I thinking? Like people being allowed to decide what they want to do. How silly. Government knows what's best -- for every single one of us.

You disgust me in pretending you're standing for freedom. The Labour Unions fought for decades to get better working conditions and rights for the average worker. Employers wanted their workers to work long hours and take minimal holidays, and generally wanted to screw over their workers in every way possible. As a result of the hard work of many for decades in the labour movements around the world, employees won rights to take holidays, to take sick days etc. Those rights have subsequently been enshrined into laws across the Western world, and governments have acknowledged that actually workers having strong rights is good for society in general, and that humans need to take holidays now and then to be healthy, and that actually people work more efficiently and are happier when they work reasonable hours and have a sense of job security.

And then you come along and start attacking those hard-won rights and demanding that employers should be allowed to go back to screwing everyone over on the grounds that there might theoretically be a couple of employees somewhere who don't want any holidays. And you frame it as this being the government knowing what is best rather than these being the rights that workers fought for for decades and who managed through blood, sweat, and tears, get protected in law. I am reminded that my contempt for evil and immoral people like you is why I quit TWeb.

[Terraceth]

I disagree, and feel you are dishonestly trying to escape learning the basic lesson from this data by pretending it's the wrong data. This tells you what everyone is guaranteed by law at a minimum. That is very interesting in and of itself. Particularly it is of interest here because the minimum all across the OECD is significantly above what Americans are aware is the approximate average in the US. Sparko's description of it was that people in NZ and other Western countries with jobs "don't have to actually work".

My point is that trying to compare countries by minimums doesn't matter because that's just the minimums. Minimums are just that: Minimums. They don't tell you much about what people are actually getting, which is the proper point of comparison. Knowing a country has a minimum of 20 doesn't tell me the average, outside of the average obviously not being any lower than 20. Is the actual average 20? 25? 30? 40? The minimum doesn't tell me that. The actual average could be way higher or it might be exactly the same as the minimum. So, for example, Sweden having 5 higher than Switzerland as a minimum doesn't mean the actual average is 5 higher. A higher minimum generally means a higher average but as noted, not necessarily, and that's the point I'd be more interested in seeing compared.

[lilpixieofterror]

Bear in mind it's not as if NZ is an outlier in terms of getting these benefits, they are pretty standard across the Western world. It is the US that is the outlier for not having those kind of benefits.



Yes, on average in the US you get higher salaries, as Bill noted. But that's because you're working more hours and getting less benefits than the rest of the developed world. In other countries, people work 37.5 hours a week, and get paid for six weeks off work a year in benefits at minimum (above chart doesn't include sick leave or maternity leave), and don't have to pay for their own healthcare. Workers seem to get a pretty raw deal in the US.

[Bill the Cat]

So your pretense at being anti-socialism is a projection of the guilt you feel at being on the giant government slush-funded jobs program that is US defense spending?

It's amusing how you ask "where is that money coming from?" to pay university students before admitting that your own salary is paid by government funding... where's that money coming from? The recent increase in defense spending passed by the US congress was enough to make college tuition free in the US. That's how much money is being wasted on people like you.

See? Here's the difference. Paid college really does nothing directly for the economy. Defense spending does. It employs a sizeable chunk of people who put back into the economy.

And your regurgitated talking point about defense spending only covers public institutions. That's only 2/3 of college students.

[Sparko]

It hasn't changed much since then. I choose it because it grouped regions together in a clear way. More recent graphics I could find were less visually appealing. e.g.:

But socialist/communist and other totalitarian governments don't have to spend as much because they have basically free slave labor. China can conscript as many soldiers and worker as it wants and not pay them anything since their needs are already being taken care by the state. So you are not comparing apples to apples. Plus do you really think they are going to accurately report how much they are spending on military?

[Sparko]

Bear in mind it's not as if NZ is an outlier in terms of getting these benefits, they are pretty standard across the Western world. It is the US that is the outlier for not having those kind of benefits.



Yes, on average in the US you get higher salaries, as Bill noted. But that's because you're working more hours and getting less benefits than the rest of the developed world. In other countries, people work 37.5 hours a week, and get paid for six weeks off work a year in benefits at minimum (above chart doesn't include sick leave or maternity leave), and don't have to pay for their own healthcare. Workers seem to get a pretty raw deal in the US.

You keep confusing having government mandated vacation/sick days with actual number of vacation/sick days. The difference is in the USA, it is up to the company to offer them as a benefit to their employees. It varies across different industries and positions. Vacation days are an incentive and a benefit in the USA. Companies use them to entice workers to come work for them, like offering a company car, or company retreats. I would say that the average US company offers one week of vacation when you start, two weeks after a year, and then 3 weeks after 5 or more years. And with various number of sick days on top of that, usually 10-15 per year. On top of that you have various US Holidays, usually New Years, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, 2 days for Thanksgiving and 2 days for Christmas. If you work at a federal job you usually get various extra holidays like President's day, Martin Luther King Jr Day, and so on. Generally if you have been working for more than a few years at a job, you will have up to 4-5 weeks of days off in the USA. Many jobs offer more.

[One Bad Pig]

It hasn't changed much since then. I choose it because it grouped regions together in a clear way. More recent graphics I could find were less visually appealing. e.g.:

I'd say a ~20% decrease in the US figure is fairly significant. Again, I don't know how people arrive at these figures. The US figure almost certainly includes the US Coast Guard, which is now under the military but in most countries wouldn't be counted as defense spending (and wasn't in the US for much of its history - it used to be under the Dept. of the Treasury).

[Roy]

See? Here's the difference. Paid college really does nothing directly for the economy. Defense spending does. It employs a sizeable chunk of people who put back into the economy.

Students also put back into the economy, in exactly the same way that defence industry employees do (albeit usually to a lesser extent). They buy food, goods and accommodation.

Whether college tuition and defence spending really do anything for the economy depends largely on what that investment pays for. They can both be positive (engineering graduates designing better technical solutions or arts graduates producing uplifting sculptures and murals; military forces providing disaster relief or preventing destruction of infrastructure by invaders) or negative (theology graduates flipping burgers; buying aircraft carriers with no planes).

[rogue06]

Are you suggesting that US employers are particularly generous over and above legal limits? A particularly generous employer here would give +1 week annual leave and +1 week sick days beyond what is legally required, taking it to 7 weeks total per year plus public holidays, but that would be perhaps the 5% most generous companies.

Sources I'm seeing on google regarding the US suggest to me that ~25% of employees get no leave at all, but that most people in the US get 10 days annual leave plus some public holidays, and the military gets 30 days plus public holidays.

In spite of selling their house and preparing to move to Florida my sister-in-law is staying here until January so that she can collect on her month's vacation before quitting. My best friend gets 2 weeks vacation, the week between Christmas and New Year's and Thanksgiving week off along with 7 sick/personal days.

Personally, I'm not aware of any company that doesn't far exceed the legal minimum.

[Sparko]

In spite of selling their house and preparing to move to Florida my sister-in-law is staying here until January so that she can collect on her month's vacation before quitting. My best friend gets 2 weeks vacation, the week between Christmas and New Year's and Thanksgiving week off along with 7 sick/personal days.

Personally, I'm not aware of any company that doesn't far exceed the legal minimum.

Starlight can't seem to see businesses as anything more than greedy slave owners who only live to screw over their employees as much as possible.

If someone runs such a scrooge-like business, they won't be in business long. People will just go where they are treated fairly. Every company I have worked for has valued us employees a great deal. After all, we make them the money. Two of the companies have been small businesses and I was pretty good friends with the owners (about 100 employees in the first and 5 in the second) and while they never had a lot of money, they were not greedy and took care of me and the other workers. I then moved on to a large company (several offices in several states) but still, the CEO is friendly and knows who I am and takes care of his employees. Even to matching 401K funds, and doing profit sharing at the end of each year.

[guacamole]

In spite of selling their house and preparing to move to Florida my sister-in-law is staying here until January so that she can collect on her month's vacation before quitting. My best friend gets 2 weeks vacation, the week between Christmas and New Year's and Thanksgiving week off along with 7 sick/personal days.

Personally, I'm not aware of any company that doesn't far exceed the legal minimum.

Walmart. A lot of other service McJobs.

[One Bad Pig]

Walmart. A lot of other service McJobs.

Places which don't need to do so in order to attract sufficiently-qualified employees.

[guacamole]

Places which don't need to do so in order to attract sufficiently-qualified employees.

The poor and uneducated need time off and sick days as well. Additionally, tax payers end up footing the bill for the depredations of such employers.

[One Bad Pig]

The poor and uneducated need time off and sick days as well.

They can take time off, they just may not get paid for it. Most service jobs aren't 40 hours/week anyway (especially thanks to Obamacare's requirements), so they can usually work around their schedule to do things most people would need to take time off to do.

Additionally, tax payers end up footing the bill for the depredations of such employers.

What "depredations"? What bill?

[Sparko]

Places which don't need to do so in order to attract sufficiently-qualified employees.

Mostly because they are open 24/7 or at least on holidays and need employees to work them. They usually get paid overtime or get some other compensation if they work on a federal holiday though. At least KFC did when I worked there many many years ago.