Vidmantas Janulevičius. A simple suggestion to politicians: Or maybe you don’t need to work at all? | Business

But I can agree on one thing – a longer, continuous vacation allows a person to rest better and is of better quality. This is much better than a day off, which neither allows for good rest nor often has any meaning, and of which we have more than most European countries.

Days off are extremely expensive for business, because production is stopped, the work schedule is unbalanced, and people still don’t get time off. Therefore, in the opinion of employers, if the Seimas sees the need to increase the number of vacation days, then we must give up two days off. There really is a lot to choose from.

How much does one day off cost the Lithuanian economy? There are different estimates, but between 68 and 130 million euros. And if you don’t stop production, you pay twice. Therefore, it is definitely time to reduce the number of days off, we have suggested this more than once, without even thinking about longer vacations. Because let’s not forget that we will have to increase defense spending, and this is an important decision for each of us. We can take vacations, but the defense budget will not raise itself.

And somehow we forget the essential thing – competition. And our competitiveness is not the best at the moment, for many reasons: the geopolitical situation, energy costs and still extremely expensive loans. And at that time, some European countries had already legalized 6 working days. So how will we compete? If we want to be not a museum for tourists, but a producing and exporting country, we must pay close attention to our competitiveness and protect the economic growth we have achieved at a time when neighboring countries are stagnating.

And when proposals for a 4-day work week and longer vacations are being made with a light hand, and at the same time there is talk of an additional redistribution of 3 billion, let me ask: what will we distribute if no one works?

It is not politicians who bring money to the budget, it is brought by business through the most diverse taxes: VAT, labor, profit, income and others. If the conditions for business deteriorate and not only foreign but also our own capital does not want to invest in Lithuania, we will not have the money to cover even the current public services, which are lacking. I’m talking about doctors, teachers, the police. Everyone says with one voice that more funding is needed – and from what? From the fact that they will tax the “rich” additionally? I won’t expand on this idea, but the fact is that it really won’t be enough.

If we want to have better education, better medicine, more effective police, we need to work, not vacation.