I think Matt tags me quite fairly here. The post I wrote on vacation:wage ratios was hastily and unclearly done, so apologies for that. That said, Matt actually needs to prove, or at least offer up some suggestive data, on both the regressiveness of mandating vacation time and the idea that increasing vacation time would produce fairly widespread employment dislocation or wage suppression. Matt writes that "[I]f I thought that mandating that all employers provide their employees with free cable wouldn't result in a proportionate decrease in their money income, I'd favor that, too. But the world doesn't work like that."
Well then, looks like we need some useful model for explaining how the world works. Because the evidence doesn't back up the claim that when you mandate small increases in total compensation (either wage or compensation) for low-wage workers, we see a large proportionate decrease in employment, wages, or benefits. The Family and Medical Leave Act, for instance, did not cause any dislocation or pay cuts that I'm aware of -- and it's pretty analogous to vacation. The minimum wage increases we've passed, which I believe Matt supports, do not exhibit the dislocation effects that the Chamber of Commerce constantly predicts. And on, and on.
At issue here is whether you think low wage workers are generally being paid what they're worth, or whether you believe their low bargaining power compels them to accept pay and benefits that are less than what they'd be capable of extracting in a world where they had the power to bargain up to their maximum worth. I think the latter, and I think a host of evidence from minimum wage bills and the FMLA and a variety of other social policy shifts and regulatory changes backs me up. Matt may disagree with that. But "how the world works" is considerably more complicated and uncertain than he's letting on.
