{"id":64219,"date":"2025-08-12T14:59:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T14:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/64219\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T14:59:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T14:59:07","slug":"golf-for-them-grind-for-us-trump-vance-and-the-hellish-us-holiday-divide-arwa-mahdawi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/64219\/","title":{"rendered":"Golf for them, grind for us: Trump, Vance and the hellish US holiday divide | Arwa Mahdawi"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know what the problem is with the US? Nobody wants to work any more<\/a>. People feel entitled to cushy jobs with fat salaries and unlimited holiday time. And by \u201cpeople\u201d I mean American politicians, who seem to treat public office as an excuse for endless vacations<\/a>. Because the president and vice-president are technically always on duty, there\u2019s no official holiday policy \u2013 and it rather feels as if they are taking advantage of this.<\/p>\n

Take the vice-president, JD \u201cOOO (out of office)\u201d Vance. When he\u2019s not inspiring memes<\/a> or threatening to deport menswear influencers<\/a>, he always seems to be off on a jolly. So far this year, the man has been skiing in Vermont<\/a>, shut down bits of Disneyland for his family\u2019s use<\/a> and apparently raised the water level of a river in Ohio for a kayaking trip<\/a>. Now, the Vances are summering in the Cotswolds<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Vance, who unsuccessfully tried out for his high school golf team<\/a>, can also occasionally be found hitting balls<\/a> with his boss. Which is actually pretty hard work, since we all know Trump is a gifted sportsman; in April, the White House doctor cited the president\u2019s \u201cfrequent victories in golf events\u201d<\/a> as evidence of Trump\u2019s excellent health. And Trump should be good, considering he\u2019s so far spent 25% of his second term golfing, according to the online tracker Did Trump Golf Today?<\/a>. Lovely for him; expensive for the taxpayer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Trump was once very critical<\/a> of Barack Obama\u2019s numerous golf outings. \u201cI\u2019m going to be working for you, I\u2019m not going to have time to go play golf,\u201d Trump said in 2016<\/a>. He managed to find the time: a 2021 Washington Post analysis found that Trump probably played 261 rounds of golf<\/a> in his first term \u2013 a round every 5.6 days. This term, he\u2019s on track to surpass that number<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Trump has also complained about work-from-home policies<\/a>, saying that people will take advantage and \u201cplay golf\u201d<\/a> instead. It\u2019s different when he plays golf, though. A workhorse like Trump can be productive anywhere! On Sunday<\/a>, for example, while being driven from the White House to his golf club in Virginia, Trump (or one of his minions) snapped a few photos of homeless people, which he posted on social media<\/a> with his typically nuanced analysis. \u201cThe Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY,\u201d Trump stated. \u201cBe\u00a0prepared! There will be no \u2018MR. NICE GUY.\u2019\u201d Not everyone is capable of crafting complex policy proposals on how to reduce homelessness while being chauffeured to a tee time. It\u2019s a skill set such as this that separates the wheat from the chaff.<\/p>\n

Speaking of the chaff: guess how much paid time off (PTO) normies in the US are entitled to? The answer, if you\u2019re looking at federal law, is none<\/a>; it\u2019s up to your employer. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average amount of vacation private sector workers get after one year<\/a> at a company is 11 days. For government workers, it\u2019s 13 days. (PTO often increases over time, but median job tenure in the US is less than five years<\/a>.) What happens if you get sick and need more time off? You\u2019d better hope that your colleagues are nice\u00a0enough<\/a> to\u00a0donate their sick days<\/a> to you. By contrast, in the UK, most full-time workers<\/a> are entitled to 28 days of paid annual leave from the get-go.<\/p>\n

While US vacation policy may seem miserly to outsiders, Trump thinks it\u2019s far too generous. On Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved people<\/a> in the US, the president complained that, despite the fact that private-sector companies don\u2019t have to give employees the day off for federal holidays, there were too many holidays in the US and \u201cworkers don\u2019t want it\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Like many things the president says, this is nonsense. On the contrary: Microsoft\u2019s 2025 work index report<\/a> found that, because of the always-on nature of technology, many workers are struggling with \u201cinfinite workdays<\/a>\u201d and burnout. How is Microsoft combating that? Glad you asked! They recently teamed up with Mercedes-Benz to bring \u201cin-car productivity to a new level\u201d<\/a> by making it easier to take meetings while driving<\/a>. Behold the American dream: nonstop work for the masses and endless golfing vacays for the guys at the top.<\/p>\n

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist<\/p>\n

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You know what the problem is with the US? Nobody wants to work any more. People feel entitled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-64219","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}