Originally Posted by
mdkowals
If you're talking about foreign travel I think the following end up hurting Americans.
1) Heavy work culture with limited vacation, with many people having only 2 weeks vacation during their working years you really have to go out of the way to travel abroad.
2) The United States is fairly big as it is, and has plenty of opportunity to travel within.
Affirmative on both points. I work for large Fortune 500 european company with really good vacation benefits - after 5 years you can get 23 working days and after >10 years you pretty much can take like 2 month paid vacation as a reward and to figure out what you really want to do in your life.
Have been with the company for >8 years and I have not seen a single person in our US office who ever took more than two weeks vacation. At the same time my european colleagues every year go for month-long vacations and this is normal.
Would add another thing to
#2 as well - getting from US to anywhere except Canada or Mexico would require at least one day travel by air in either direction. If you want fly from US to Bali/Singapore for example, you need to spend 3 days on travel only on both directions. This combined to limited vacation time really puts Americans into disadvantage.