TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/082090/0820640.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.2 KB | 129 lines

                                                                                ESSAY, Page 82

You Must Be Very Busy


By Michael Kinsley


    It wasn't enough, was it? Millions of Americans are coming
to the end of their annual summer vacations. You've enjoyed a
couple of weeks off from work -- maybe three if you're very
lucky. You're right to want more. The American chintziness
about vacations is absurd.

    In Washington, at least, the easiest way to flatter someone
is to say, "You must be very busy." (And the most disconcerting
answer is, "No, not really.") It is today's ritualistic form
of obeisance. It means, "You must be very important." We've
come a long way in the century since Thorstein Veblen wrote
about "conspicuous" or even "honorific leisure" as a way of
displaying social status. "Gosh, you must have nothing at all
to do all day," would not be considered a compliment.

    The equation of busy-ness with importance may help to
explain Americans' queasiness about vacations. The Washington
Post reports that two days before Iraq invaded Kuwait, when
troops were already massed on the border, someone tried to
reach the head of Kuwait's civil defense, only to be told he
was on vacation for the next three weeks. Go ahead and laugh.
But is that any more absurd than Dan Rather, who was on
vacation in France, spending the day of the invasion desperately
scouring the Middle East for a place to broadcast from and
ultimately settling for London -- rather than permitting a war
to occur while he was off-duty?

    Last year I worked for a spell at the Economist in London.
The attitude there was a revelation. They take pride in their
work, and can be as self-important about it as any group of
American journalists. But they also take five weeks of vacation
every year, plus nearly a week at Easter and nearly two weeks
at Christmas when the office is shut, plus the usual holidays.
And it would take more than a mere war somewhere to get an
Economist editor to cancel his or her summer "hol."

    American vacations compare poorly with those of most other
advanced countries. According to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, the average American full-time worker puts in a
40-hour week, gets 11 official holidays and 12 days -- slightly
more than two weeks -- of paid vacation. That's typically after
five years on the job. Among major industrial countries, only
the U.S. doles out vacation time primarily as a reward for
seniority rather than as a basic job benefit.

    The British on average work 39 hours a week, get eight paid
holidays and enjoy 25 days -- five weeks -- of paid vacation
a year. The French by law work a standard week of 39 hours,
have eight holidays and get 25.5 days of annual vacation. The
Germans -- the Germans! -- work a 38-hour week, get 10 holidays
and have 30 days, six weeks, of paid vacation.

    Yes, yes, you say. But what about Japan? As they reluctantly
phase out Saturday work, the Japanese are down to an average
of 42 hours a week. They are entitled to an average of 16 days
of paid vacation, but characteristically use only nine of them,
though the government is urging them to use more. However, the
Japanese get another 20 days off a year that are labeled
holidays, only 11 of which are national celebrations. The
others are, in effect, vacation days bunched at high summer and
year's end. In short, although many Japanese still work on
Saturday, the typical Japanese worker gets more actual vacation
time than the typical American. While the Japanese move toward
more days off, the U.S. is moving toward fewer. The BLS finds,
unsurprisingly, that vacation policies tend to be more generous
in unionized companies and in manufacturing, both of which are
declining.

    As they become more affluent, individuals and societies face
the same choice. They can enjoy the increased value of their
labor in the form of more goods and services, or they can enjoy
it in the form of less work. It is humbling, for an American,
to note that the war-wrecked societies of Europe and Japan have
made their remarkable comeback while devoting an ever greater
share of their productivity to "buying" themselves time off.
The standard-of-living statistics, which still usually show the
U.S. ahead, do not include the value of an extra two or three
weeks of leisure every year.

    Of course the notion of a trade-off between productivity and
leisure assumes that if people work 50 weeks a year, their
output is greater than if they work 46 or 47. For the
prototypical assembly-line job, that might be true. But fewer
and fewer jobs are like that. For most "brainworker" jobs,
there isn't such a clear relation between time put in and what
comes out. (Any writer can tell you that.) At some point, the
relationship reverses itself. That old businessman's saw, "I
can do a year's work in 11 months but not in 12," contains a lot
of truth. But who admits, these days, to taking a month off?

    At the upper reaches of the American economy, where official
vacation time is more generous anyway, there is a lot of "work"
that would look like vacations to most people: entertaining
clients at golf tournaments, boards of directors meetings at
luxury hotels, conventions in Hawaii, conferences of the
Trilateral Commission, and so on. Dispensing with a couple of
weeks' worth of these frivolities would do the American economy
no harm.

    Time off is not always a function of affluence. Sometimes
it takes the unwanted form of unemployment. If we are heading
into a recession, it would be more sensible as well as more
compassionate for employees to share the reduced available work
and increased available leisure, rather than imposing more
leisure than anyone wants on an unfortunate few.

    One of the most admirable things about Ronald Reagan as
President was his freedom from time snobbery. There was a man
who didn't worry that his importance was measured by the number
of hours or days he spent at his desk. George Bush seems to
have inherited the same healthy attitude. (He does suffer from
a related preppy affectation of taking leisure activities such
as games and sports terribly seriously.) Let the nation learn
from its leaders.