Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Really?

Politico.com reports that Alan Grayson (D-Fl) is introducing a bill that would mandate paid vacation time in an effort to "stimulate" the economy. Is he serious?

Sure more happier, rested employees are more productive, but where does the government get off MANDATING this? Paid time off should be a perk at the discretion of the company offering it, because that's what it is...an INCENTIVE to work better, not an ENTITLEMENT. Where did our country go wrong that we feel that we are entitled to being paid for time we are not actually working??

As far as stimulating the economy, what a great way to help companies keep afloat...force them to pay all their employees a week's wages and get no productivity from those dollars spent. Great formula for success. Hey why not pay me for each hour I sleep per night? That would ensure I'm fully rested and will be more productive at work.

It should be up to individual companies whether or not they can afford the perk of paid time off. They know better than anyone if they can afford it, and it should be up to them whether or not they want to provide paid time off. If you don't like it, don't go work there...0r maybe work for a living instead of feeling you should get paid for time you don't work.

Mr. Grayson should get himself out of the unions' pockets and come back to the real world and hang out with the rest of us hard-working blue collar Americans.

2 comments:

caheidelberger said...

Sorry, I couldn't find a contact button, so I'll ask here: reading your profile, I see the boilerplate about kicking your way through the "liberal mire that has become the American College Campus." Um, you go to SDSU, right? I'm an alum (1994)—do you really believe that our university, governed now by a member of Monsanto's corporate board, is a bastion of unchecked liberalism? I might recommend decoupling from the Limbaugh rhetoric (as I did after my years at SDSU) and giving more consideration to local reality.

Brandon said...

I wouldn't say it's unchecked, not in a blatant sense. But you have to distinguish between the people in charge and the professors, particularly tenured professors, most of which are decidedly liberal. In classes, a large majority of students do not care at all about politics, current events, etc. When professors just throw out some liberal idea or suggestion, lots of students just take it as taught fact rather than disputing it or offering an alternative point of view.

I've had some great liberal professors, mind you. Robert Burns was a great prof...he was liberal, to be sure, but he was very fair and looked at both sides...which is what education should be.

Even better was my Composition II instructor, Michael Hauge. All of our readings, papers, discussions etc. were about politically charged topics. Conservative/liberal/moderate/environmentalist/family values topics. Whatever it was, I could not tell what his opinions were, and I look for these things! He was pushing no agenda, and we had some great discussions in that class. To this day, I couldn't tell you how he leans...which is, how I believe, education should be...the marketplace of ideas--all ideas, and not a passive indoctrination. One of my favorite quotes, and I have it posted on my Facebook favorite quotes is from John Stuart Mill:

"But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race, posterity as well as the existing generations; those who dissent from the opinion still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose what is almost as great a benefit; the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."