What is going on in the US is nothing short of shameful.
All I wanted from this article was a table with the list of countries and the amounts of paid days off, but the chart labels only 16 countries.
The referenced source includes an image with all of the values: https://www.moorepay.co.uk/app/uploads/2025/07/01_Which-Coun...
Why does it say 0 for the US? You have Thanksgiving, Christmas, 4th of July and more? Are they unpaid days off?
The US has generally higher wages than Europe and lower taxation rates. Those paid days off are not free.
Of course, nobody really gets paid for days off, anywhere, ever. Salaries are prorated, people are paid for the days they actually work.
I guess thinking from first principles probably the ideal is neither government mandating days off nor their behind terribly hard to come by.
Better imo would be - if I personally accomplished something meaningful and valuable and 'earned' time, then I am strongly incentivized to take time. Also it taking time will help my health and wellness meaningfully then I should also be incentivized to do so.
But that seems impossible to setup if we aren't all our own business owning entrepreneurs.
I dont want to derail the conversation about the article but what's with two separate accounts posting within 5 minutes of each other both going off about America inventing transistors?
I wonder how much vacation time the people who invented the transistor took each year.
Edit: up to three mentions of transistors now. Bizarre
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The country that does not, invented more or less every modern technology (transistors, ICs, wifi, microwaves, cellular). Mayhaps there is something to it.
I’m assuming the data for Europe is largely correct, but a lot of the per country data doesn’t pass the smell test to me. Afghanistan (35 days), Libya (45), Yemen (46), etc. what percentage of workers there are getting that many paid days off?
Edit - the original source even had the audacity to label Yemen with a “smiley face” since it has the most paid days for the region.