
It’s Time to Declare Juneteenth a Federal Holiday - yboris
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sethcohen/2020/06/14/no-more-excuses---its-time-to-declare-juneteenth-a-federal-holiday/#60146f4850d3
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peace2all
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?

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yboris
Couple of points:

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.

