Actually you are mistaken. I do not have a "post 1980 attitude", I have the attitude that USA was built upon or pre-1908 attitude (before the Sherman act, before IRS, before Fed, before Medicare and Medicaid and SS and minimum wage and labour laws and all the departments and business regulations and income taxes, before the insane levels of inflation due to government defaulting on the gold dollar).

You shouldn't be worried about 'business practices', you should be worried about individual freedoms. Business practices in a free market deliver what the market wants. Without individual freedoms we get nothing we want at all.

Any way you want to measure it, there's never been a more secretive administration in the US. And this from a president who promised "the most transparent administration in history".

I apologize to everyone here for having voted for them a second time.

Or China? Or the US?

There has never been a warhead that "provided" any freedom, not in my lifetime, and not in yours.

And Dwight Eisenhower was president when I was born.

Oh, to live in a physical world, where the laws of conservation of energy cannot be broken.

Fixed that for you.

No, it's not false. Government can force paid vacation days (or whatever) to be part of your total compensation but government cannot force anything to be added on top of your salary. Please, start thinking for yourself before continuing on this topic.

That is not the problem of your employer, that's your own problem. You should be worried about maintaining your own health, your employer shouldn't be in the picture even for this. This is what you should take into account while negotiating if you can afford to do that in the economy the way it is.

Well of-course you should be able to negotiate how you want to get your compensation, but that's the point. What if government came out with a law telling you that you absolutely cannot negotiate the terms, you cannot be paid in medical insurance but instead you have to always be compensated in government bonds?

The reason that it was a good deal for your father was because the part of the total compensation that was the medical insurance was not taxed the same way as money. Income taxes didn't apply to that part of the compensation. The other reason was all the changes that government introduced related to health care and insurance, especially (if this was the USA) in 1965, with the introduction of Medicare, the prices went up because of government money in health insurance. The last reason is of-course inflation. The government likes to pretend that there is no inflation, but the reality is quite different. Inflation is rampant, so getting the same good (as a percentage value of the total compensation package) today as 60 years ago for example means that you are able to escape the horrific effects of inflation as well.

I didn't say you shouldn't be able to be paid in vacation days or in insurance or in gallons of milk. All I am saying is that you should be able to make those choices for yourself and not have government dictate to you how to get paid.

"I can't imagine how demoralizing it is to spend years working on a project that would ultimately succeed"

None of NASA's major manned spaced projects are even remotely likely to succeed, they are not intended to do so any more. They are just a place to blow money, create jobs and put money in Lockheed and Boeing pockets. More importantly they buy votes in the critical swing state of Florida.

They are designed to run 4-8 years, produce nothing except votes, paychecks and contractor profits, then they get cancelled and start over. It is way easier and less risk than actually making anything that will fly.

It is not the political process that is broken, it is NASA and the political process.

Get a clue, and spend a few billion on SpaceX to help finish Falcon Heavy. I'm not sure why SLS is even on the table at this point, it isn't remotely competitive.

Lockheed and Boeing also need to be completely removed from the process. They are making a mint milking DOD contracts, they don't need to be in middle of the civilian space program fleecing NASA and taxpayers there too. They do not use money wisely, they devour everything thrown their way and produce as little as possible in return.

Again, in a system where there is a law mandating some minimum paid vacation days your hourly wage is lower than in an equivalent system where this law doesn't exist. Your employer already took the law into account when offering your compensation package, the market has taken your minimum paid vacation days into account while discovering price for your hourly labour. You are getting paid in vacation days, that's all it means, and the government dictated to you that you have to take part of your compensation in vacation days rather than in money or whatever you might have negotiated yourself.

But of-course it matters, what it does it lowers your expected salary across the board. Sure, it's market rate on top of a government mandated minimum but that's a mandated minimum that is not supplanted by a higher wage (like the minimum wage law is irrelevant from point of view of your rate if your rate is higher than the minimum wage, though it is not irrelevant if you realise that minimum wage pushes many prices of products you buy up and thus robs you of your purchasing power all in the name of hiding inflation created by the government in the first place) but in fact the minimum mandated vacation days are actually part of your total compensation.

My point is that in a system where government sets minimum vacation days your hourly wage is lower than it would have been otherwise. If a government comes out with another law that increases the number of paid vacation days your employer will likely not reduce your salary directly right away (though I would) but instead most employers will work this out by reducing your bonuses / raises and by attrition, where the new employees would start with a lower hourly wage and/or other benefits and/or with fewer raises, etc.

Basically again, money doesn't come from nowhere, the law of conservation of energy still applies. Your productivity commands your total compensation and your government mandated vacation days are paid to you in lie of hourly wages.

I am correct in both, theory and practice not because of what you may or may not be able to negotiate with an employer but because your vacation pay is part of your total compensation.

Without laws and regulations it is up to you to negotiate. With the laws and regulations it is already negotiated for you, you have no choice but to accept part of your compensation in vacation/sick days rather than in hourly wage.

Before you make another comment on this, think, where is the money coming from to pay for your vacation? You think it's coming out of your employer or out of your own productivity? Obviously (well, it should be obvious) that it is coming out of your productivity. That means that you are compensated in those vacation days rather than any other form of compensation that you might have negotiated with your employer.

Your vacation days are just your wages that are not given to you as money.

The point is that you are getting fewer dollars / euros and under the guise of giving you 'something for nothing' the government is actually forcing you to accept payment in form of vacation days as opposed to anything else you might have negotiated on your own with the employer.

You are mistaken about money, prices and business in general. Money doesn't come from vacuum, it is generated by the business that produces something. Any business that has employees has to consider the total cost of labour, not only a salary, so when you are hired by a business you are paid a salary and if there are any other 'benefits' that come with that salary that is just part of your salary, this includes your vacation pay.

Business is not there to pay your wages, it is there to make the most money for the investor(s), this means that no business will be overpaying its employees above their market rate, and in cases where there are laws that raise labour prices (wages) with various laws and rules and regulations then all of these costs are counted towards your total compensation.

Your total compensation is just it. You can negotiate to be compensated in dollars, pieces of silver, gallons of milk, condoms or paid vacation days, but all of these are part of total price of your labour and where you get something, you lose something somewhere else.

Why this goes above the heads of average /.ers (and moderators here) I have no idea.