Last weekend I saw the movie “Where to Invade Next.” It was a playful film about claiming good ideas from other countries as American and bringing them back to America. The film featured several countries, mostly in Europe, and Micheal Moore, the writer and director would talk about one aspect of the country that we could claim for America.  Slovenia has free college, France has fantastic food for school children, and Tunisia has progressive women’s rights, etc.

A few of the countries that stood out to me were Italy and Norway. In Italy they have up to 8 weeks of paid vacation time, as well as 3-5 months of paid maternity leave. When interviewing Italian workers, Moore said that Americans do not get any paid vacation time, and the workers jaws dropped. And when interviewing Italian bosses, they said that their workers happiness was a priority, and that they were happy to give paid vacation time. This complete opposition of the two views is just so shocking to me.

In Norway they have outlawed the death penalty, and the longest time one could spend in jail is 22 years. The jails have minimal security, and the prisoners live like normal people. they even have cells with tvs and individual bathrooms. At first the thought of a 22 year sentence for a murder frightened me, but the interviews with the prisoners showed that norwegian methods are effective and that prisoners want to return to normal lives after their sentences.

The most shocking thing was that most of the countries leaders said that the ideas were originally American. I think maybe all we need to do to better our country is to take a better look at the ideals on which we are founded and reform our laws and practices to better adhere to the original american ideas.