Say what you will about Sweden (I mean, unless you run an entire country), but their elected officials do a bang up job of putting their civic and sexual energies to use in a relatively appropriate, productive manner.
Take, for instance, Per-Erik Muskos, a councilman from the Swedish municipality of Overtornea, who introduced a proposal this week that would subsidize one weekly hourlong sex break for the town’s 550 employees. His justifications for the proposal, according to a New York Times article published on Thursday, include improving employee morale, and, honestly, his plan puts communal coffee machines and free Chobani to shame.
Muskos notes in the Times article that municipal employees already get an hour off every week to pursue fitness activities, and “sex is also a great form of exercise,” ergo why not just go home and have sex? This is where he loses me. I may have only thought about government-subsidized sex breaks for, like, five minutes at this point—whereas I get the feeling that Muskos has been dreaming this up for most of his life—but why do the people of this Swedish township require the blessing of their councilpersons to spend their paid recreational time fucking? This already seems like a no-brainer, you know, for people who want to do that.
For Muskos, though, it would appear that incentivization is key—because there’s nothing sexier than your job funding an extremely rushed sexual encounter (I’m factoring in commute time). Except, maybe, this further explanation from Muskos: “We should encourage procreation. I believe that sex is in short supply.” Seriously, this is like something out of Helen DeWitt’s Lightning Rods, only it also might help reverse Overtornea’s dwindling population trends. Critics fear it will actually just encourage more midday Tinder use.
For once, I think everyone is right.
[via The New York Times]