| Or could we get rid of ALL federal holidays and put everyone back to work? Everyone wants their pet project/idea/ideal/personal-fetish as a "federal holiday" which then all but forces States to also adopt them (or get into name-calling and finger-pointing). How about we abolish ALL federal holidays and decide that our tax payer dollars don't give federal workers (white, grey, or blue collar) automatic paid days off, or bankers and others? Then, everyone just gets five (or some magic number that makes fiscal sense) paid days off per year that they can use for whatever "interest" they have. If they want it for Christmas, or MLK, or President's Day, or "save the Great White Shark Day" or whatever, go and knock yourself out. "Holidays" will still be on XML feeds and Hallmark calendars and can be celebrated by your family, clan, tribe, city, state, or what-have-you... but no one just auto-mandates that federal workers get them off (and paid for by taxpayers) automatically. If you want to blow your allotment all at one time (and it's possible in your business to do so), go for it. WF&A is what federal holidays really are. How many federal workers take Memorial Day off to go weep over the tombs of veteran soldiers, or attend parades. Maybe 10%? The rest just go party the night before or sleep all day or mow their lawn or Netflix binge. If you aren't willing to use an allotted day off on Memorial Day, then you probably don't really care about our Armed Forces or their sacrifices. That's fine - just don't use our taxpayers dollars to watch Netflix all day; go work that day instead and take one of your allotted days off for something that matters. When is this socialism gonna end? And why is this even related to HN and being submitted here? |
0. You offer an interesting idea: providing days off that individuals can take off for whichever reason they want. Seems like a good policy. This could be implemented as a 'mandatory minimum number of days off for every full time worker'. It does not have to compete with national holidays.
1. I think holidays serve a symbolic meaning too: indicating what we as a nation value, even if not every person in the nation does. It's like an agenda: we choose to remember certain individuals or ideas. Some like Columbus day, people are fighting and trying to remove.
2. Holidays provide a day when "everyone" (obviously not everyone, but most people) are reliably free without work. This makes family gatherings easier (4th of July). I think it's a tragedy that election day is not a national holiday.