Give American workers more vacation time

I've decided to run for president.

Mind you, there are a few things I'll have to take care of first, such as forging a birth certificate to show I'm 35 instead of 26. Also, I'll need to quit the newspaper field and raise hundreds of millions of dollars to finance the campaign. But, hey, if I can score the right papers on the black market, the rest is easy. Right?

I plan to run as neither a Republican nor a Democrat. I'm going to form my own party: the Workers' Freedom Party.

And once I convince people that the name has absolutely nothing to do with communism, I'll start raising funds by the trainload.

Here's my platform, plain and simple: American workers of all skill levels, wage brackets and career paths will all get more vacation time.

You know how much vacation time I get?

Three weeks. Fifteen days away from the office. Of those 15 days, I'll spend 12 doing chores on behalf of my wife, and the other three with ice packs on my knees and shins recovering from the other 12.

And at the end of the road, I'll be standing there, filling out the standard blue company form for vacation time, wondering why I'm actually looking forward to going back to work. (Here's a hint: My job is usually more relaxing than cleaning gutters and painting walls.)

So what we need here is one of two things: (1) Spouses who demand less of our vacation time, or (2) More vacation time.

The easy choice is "2."

In fact, the only choice is "2." (As if my wife is really going to let me off the hook any easier.) In America, the average worker gets 14 days of vacation time. What do workers get in other parts of the world?

In Italy, they get 42 days.

In France, the average is 37.

Germans get 35.

The Brits get 28.

In Japan, of all places, they get an average of 17.

Remember when everyone here used to make jokes about how hard Japanese businessmen worked? About how they devoted themselves so passionately to their professions that it killed a few of them?

Guess what? They take more vacation than we do.

Congratulations, America. We officially work harder than the guys we joked about for working too hard.

An even more stunning revelation: Americans don't even use up the sparse amount of vacation time they squeeze out of their employers. Hundreds of millions of days go unused every year.

So, between the rampant work schedules, lack of exercise and general poor eating habits in this country, there is coming a collective moment in America where, all at once, we suffer a massive, group heart attack. We will die at work, slumped over our keyboards, jackhammers and filing cabinets.

The world economy will screech to a halt. Though for a moment, a few European nations will get a smug sense of satisfaction -- that "I told you so" vibe you and I get when we see a Corvette whip past us on the interstate at 100 mph, only to see it get pulled over by the cops 10 miles ahead.

So there's the plan, America: Increase the vacation time. Take whatever you get now and double it.

I'm not quite sure how corporations will pay for it, but since when have we ever relied on politicians to tell us how they'll foot the bill for their crazy schemes?

Ryan Reynolds is an editor at the Evansville (Ind.) Courier & Press. E-mail: ryanr@evansville.net

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