>>>As opposed to those ever-so-generous socialists who lavish their "wins" on the people? ;)
>
>Do you mean the ones in Germany or in Switzerland if we're focusing on those?

It was a direct response to this:
history shows that the privateers have tended to jealously guard their wins against other Americans

You offered this in context of a Harvard fund-raising effort. Since I'm not certain what this had to do with the discussion of mandatory time-off, I decided to toss out a quick rejoinder.

Back to the topic at hand.

From Tamar:
the world has passed us by in this regard

Note : the world

From my original response:
An admittedly quick scan of those countries' unemplopyment rates might lead one to suggest that "passed us" is quite subjective. Who benefits from the leave if there's less chance of being employed in the first place?

There's more to "passing us by" than simply mandating more and declaring it better. To focus on Germany and Switzerland would be to improperly assess the effects of mandatory time-off on employment.

There's another discussion going on about older employees at traditionally entry-level jobs. I see a correlation there to job mandates as well. If I as a business owner need an employee and I am forced to pay more than a job is worth then I'd rather have an experienced older person than an unexperienced kid doing the job. Thanks to the present state of the economy there are plenty of older people in the market.