The calendar used by the modern day United States could stand to be improved in a number of ways. My suggestions are listed below.
There are 10 federal holidays per year plus an "Inauguration Day" once every 4 years. Most of these holidays are arbitrary, but serve to keep federal offices closed. Keeping federal offices closed is important because it saves the government money.
Columbus Day, Martin Luther King Day, and Washington's Birthday celebrate the accomplishments of individuals. They were good people who did important things, but there are other people who did things just as important.
Columbus Day should be replaced by Explorers' Day, which celebrates all kinds of exploration. It would include Columbus sailing to the Americas (albeit after the Vikings already had), but it would also include space exploration. Schoolchildren could learn not only about Columbus but about other famous explorers as well to honor Explorers' Day.
Martin Luther King Day should be replaced by some kind of Ethnic Diversity Day. You can't have an Ethnic Diversity Day without mentioning Martin Luther King Jr., but now you can mention Rosa Parks as well.
Washington's Birthday should be, and usually is, replaced by Presidents' Day.
Christmas is a 100% Christian holiday, even though religious nuts complain that they keep buying junk for eachother. All religious holidays must be eliminated because of the separation of state and religion.
Thanksgiving is kind of a fake Christian holiday created in the early days of the European invasion of America. Aside from being pseudo-religious, it is insulting to some Native Americans and serves little purpose. It should be eliminated.
These 2 holidays should be replaced by non-religious holidays. Religious individuals can use their vacation days for days that are holidays in their particular religions. That's what non-Christians already do.
Instead of celebrating Christmas, it would make more sense to celebrate the Winter Solstice. That's a date that means something to everyone. It is also likely that the date for Christmas was chosen to replace Winter Solstice festivals. It may seem strange to celebrate the coldest and shortest day of the year, but that's what has been done historically. The Winter Solstice occurs on December 22.
Thanksgiving should be replaced by Environmental Action Day. It would be one day every year where you take action to try to protect the environment. Every day should be an environmental action day, but that's too much to ask our populace for.
Presently, January contains 2 holidays: New Year's and Martin Luther King Day (or Ethnic Diversity Day. November also contains 2 holidays: Veterans Day and Thanksgiving (or Environmental Action Day). November even has a "bonus" holiday in the form of Election Day, but that's not an actual federal holiday. March, April, June, and August have no holidays at all.
I propose transferring Ethnic Diversity Day to April and Environmental Action Day to June to rectify this inequity. This spreads out the holidays as much as possible so that they're evenly distributed among the months.
Ethnic Diversity Day can be on April 21, and Environmental Action Day can be on June 21. June 21 is the first of day summer, making it an excellent candidate for a holiday.
Most work is useless. Traveling to a restaurant to obtain food takes longer than the time it would have taken to prepare food at home, so the restaurant industry serves little purpose. If we consider Dilbert comics to be a reliable source, managers at businesses produce very little. The FCC regulating the usage of "naughty" words on television and radio does nothing for anyone.
I consider any work that produces a good that people can't produce more easily themselves to be useful. Work that just moves money around is useless. The service industry is useful only in so far as it converts "bad" goods into "good" goods. Medical and dental care can be thought of as services that improve the body (a type of good). I consider stock brokers to be useless, but video game programmers to be useful. Stock brokers just shift stocks (which are arbitrary measurements of money) around, while video game programmers produce video games.
Arguably, video games aren't especially useful. I say that they produce entertainment, spread information, teach the young, improve reflexes, and do any number of other things. Regardless of whether you approve of video games are not is irrelevant. Video games are something that people can enjoy, while stocks are just an alternative to money. Stock brokers do not produce any kind of good that can be consumed. Instead, they increase arbitrary values representing the wealth of some individuals, while decreasing arbitrary values representing the wealth of other individuals.
People could better spend their time doing something other than "working". They could perform home maintenance or care for old/young relatives. People doing less work might lower the GDP slightly, but many people do work that contributes little except to move money around. When I'm not at my useless job, I can work on providing myself with the education I wasn't provided with in school and try to move to a profession that marginally improves the cultural development of the world.
In the next section of this article, reducing the number of work days in a year is considered.
In the United States, the standard work week is 5 out of 7 days. This means that 71.43% of days are work days for most people. This means that "standard" people work 260.71 days per year.
A better option would be a 10 day week. People would work 4 days, take 1 day off, work 3 days, and then take 2 days off. This is a little bit more complicated, but not overly so. This method would mean that only 70% of days are works days for most people, resulting in 255.5 work days per year.
In both scenarios, leap years are ignored, but the result is similar in either case.
The 10 day week has another advantage. People don't have to work for more than 4 days in a row, so they won't be as susceptible to stress. Their days off are paced out a little bit more.
Months are screwed up right now. There should be 7 30-day months and 5 31-day months (with an extra 31-day month for leap years). There should be no 28- or 29-day months. It would be too much effort to fix this since the benefit would be negligible.
It is tempting to switch to a 9-month system so that the numerical representations of dates can be shorter, but that would just result in having more double-digit days, eliminating the gain. It would reduce the number of digits required in a limited digital display area, but that would be a negligible gain.
The current 12-month system is more useful than a 9-month system because the year can be separated easily into sixths, quarters, thirds, and halves. It is the lowest number that can be split up so many different ways.
It would still be possible to reduce the number of digits required by the date by using a dozenal number system (a.k.a. base 12). This is preferable over using a different number of months. The dozenal number system has many advantages for a variety of applications.
Most government employees should work the 10-day weeks described above, and the rest of the country will have to follow sooner or later. The federal government will save a little bit of money from not having their offices open as much.
Additionally, employees shouldn't be paid holiday pay. This is a waste of money. Government employees pay taxes too, so they are, in a way, paying themselves for time in which they aren't working.
Copyright (C) 2007 Steven Fletcher. All rights reserved.
