Maybe, just maybe, if businesses were willing to let us take a reasonable amount of time off each year, this wouldn't be a problem.  Working class Americans are in a Catch22 a lot of the time.  They have to work 9 to 5 (or 8 to 4:30, or whatever), which just so happens to be the exact same time that most doctor's offices, banks, lawyers, etc, are open.  So what happens if your child is sick and you need to take him/her to the doctor?  What happens if you need to see a bank manager to fill out a loan application?  What happens if you need to talk to a lawyer for whatever reason?  You either "call in sick" or you get fired for skipping work.  Unless they're unionized, working-class jobs rarely accrue more than a few days a year vacation.  My mother works an office/secretarial job, and she's both proud of and worried that she's taken THREE full days (plus a few half days) off since she started working there four years ago.  Proud, because she thinks that's pretty good, but worried, because she thinks it might not be good enough.  Is that any way to live?  We need to collectively use this software to forge a prescription from the Europeans, and mandate at least two weeks of guaranteed paid leave for every worker, every year.  There are any number of good reasons to expect that the cost will level out, too. Sick workers are less productive, and yet we force them to work - which just spreads the illness, making more people sick, making everyone less productive.  Ditto for stressed out workers - how productive can you be when you're worrying about whether you'll get fired if you take a day off to file a mortgage application?

Maybe, just maybe, if businesses were willing to let us take a reasonable amount of time off each year, this wouldn't be a problem.  Working class Americans are in a Catch22 a lot of the time.  They have to work 9 to 5 (or 8 to 4:30, or whatever), which just so happens to be the exact same time that most doctor's offices, banks, lawyers, etc, are open.  So what happens if your child is sick and you need to take him/her to the doctor?  What happens if you need to see a bank manager to fill out a loan application?  What happens if you need to talk to a lawyer for whatever reason?  You either "call in sick" or you get fired for skipping work.  Unless they're unionized, working-class jobs rarely accrue more than a few days a year vacation.  My mother works an office/secretarial job, and she's both proud of and worried that she's taken THREE full days (plus a few half days) off since she started working there four years ago.  Proud, because she thinks that's pretty good, but worried, because she thinks it might not be good enough.  Is that any way to live?  We need to collectively use this software to forge a prescription from the Europeans, and mandate at least two weeks of guaranteed paid leave for every worker, every year.  There are any number of good reasons to expect that the cost will level out, too. Sick workers are less productive, and yet we force them to work - which just spreads the illness, making more people sick, making everyone less productive.  Ditto for stressed out workers - how productive can you be when you're worrying about whether you'll get fired if you take a day off to file a mortgage application?

Randy Cohen, who writes "The Ethicist" column for the New York Times says it's bad enough to call in sick when you're actually fine,

Fine?  Define, fine.  Oh sure...you might not have a cold or sore throat or cancer or something...but what happens when you wake up in the morning and physically you feel "fine", but have a soul-crushing despair over what you have to do to survive...is that fine?

I think not.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine