Golf for them, grind for us: Trump, Vance and the hellish US holiday divide | Arwa Mahdawi

You know what the problem is with the US? Nobody wants to work any more. People feel entitled to cushy jobs with fat salaries and unlimited holiday time. And by “people” I mean American politicians, who seem to treat public office as an excuse for endless vacations. Because the president and vice-president are technically always on duty, there’s no official holiday policy – and it rather feels as if they are taking advantage of this.

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

Vance, who unsuccessfully tried out for his high school golf team, can also occasionally be found hitting balls 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’s “frequent victories in golf events” as evidence of Trump’s excellent health. And Trump should be good, considering he’s so far spent 25% of his second term golfing, according to the online tracker Did Trump Golf Today?. Lovely for him; expensive for the taxpayer.

Trump was once very critical of Barack Obama’s numerous golf outings. “I’m going to be working for you, I’m not going to have time to go play golf,” Trump said in 2016. He managed to find the time: a 2021 Washington Post analysis found that Trump probably played 261 rounds of golf in his first term – a round every 5.6 days. This term, he’s on track to surpass that number.

Trump has also complained about work-from-home policies, saying that people will take advantage and “play golf” instead. It’s different when he plays golf, though. A workhorse like Trump can be productive anywhere! On Sunday, 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 with his typically nuanced analysis. “The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump stated. “Be prepared! There will be no ‘MR. NICE GUY.’” Not everyone is capable of crafting complex policy proposals on how to reduce homelessness while being chauffeured to a tee time. It’s a skill set such as this that separates the wheat from the chaff.

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

While US vacation policy may seem miserly to outsiders, Trump thinks it’s far too generous. On Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved people in the US, the president complained that, despite the fact that private-sector companies don’t have to give employees the day off for federal holidays, there were too many holidays in the US and “workers don’t want it”.

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

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist