This is a great step for what's really a sad state of affairs in the US.
My wife and I like to "joke" (it's not really funny) that we know enough to not take a puppy or kitten away from its mother before 8 weeks, yet we make human mothers go back to work after 6 weeks. And that's in CA, other states have lower minimums, or none at all.
To those who don't understand parental leave: it is self-evident that child-bearing is a necessary condition for the continuation of society. We also know that time spent with parents, the mother in particular, during that first year is super important for both mental and physical well-being. Just like we subsidize public schools because we recognize the importance of education for society, we should be happy to "pay for" parental leave.
>To those who don't understand parental leave: it is self-evident that child-bearing is a necessary condition for the continuation of society.
I like the "children are public goods" explanation for why the birth rate is declining. We could address this by subsidizing maternal leave or childcare services. From Augustus to modern Japan such incentives have proven pretty ineffective, as they don't scale with the wealth of the parents. Giving parents some percentage of their children's tax revenue would. This policy has the unfortunate characteristic of trigging an intense moral disgust reaction in all who hear it, including me when I first thought of it, so perhaps is best left untried. But then again, if catholics can give 10 percent to God, atheists can give 10 percent to their parents, who are, after all, their creators.
The issue with Japan isn't that maternal services are ineffective; it's that they're both underfunded (both shortages and high costs are common), and insufficient to overcome the other penalties that Japanese society imposes on working mothers.
I'd like to see a citation that subsidized childcare is ineffective. Here, for a counterpoint, is one saying that subsidized childcare _does_ increase birthrate (note, incidentally, that this comes from WSJ, which is not normally a big proponent of government programs):
http://blogs.wsj.com/juggle/2011/04/27/child-care-helps-boos...
The Japanese and Russian system of payments for childbirth haven't really reversed their demographic issues, but I'd argue that's because the obstacles go deeper than just that (like, in Japan, the money is nice, but it's much more difficult to be a working mother than it is in most advanced economies and the economy has been largely stagnant for decades).
I agree that there are a lot of other cultural issues as well. However, I'm happy to say that these cultural attitudes are slowly changing in the US, and (at least in large cities) it is becoming 'ok' to be a working mother.
That said, the payments in Japan are afaik a few thousand $ per year, whereas childcare in California (I assume it's at least comparable in urban Japan!) is ~20k per year. So to have a meaningful discussion about subsidies, the payments need to be on the same order of magnitude of the cost of childcare.
I like the idea of increasing the child tax credit to something like $10-15k per child, up from the current level of a few thousand. The increased incentive would only be fully realized by families who could scale their income up to match. Based on what I see and hear from my peers it seems like many middle class couples are on the fence (financially) in terms of having ''one more kid'' and this could help close the gap.
"yet we make human mothers go back to work after 6 weeks"
No, we don't. We don't make them do anything. They are free to pursue whatever course of action they choose to. Many, many parents choose not to go back to work - ever.
I hope it works out great for AMEX and their workers - two private entities that agreed on one detail, among many, of their compensation package. Good for them.
Yes, I do have children - three of them, in fact - thanks for asking!
I get your point but as a father of 2 kids, I can tell you that choosing to not go back to work is not as easy as you make it sound. Some people don't have a lot of financial flexibility (you can blame them for it sure) and quitting job to stay home is difficult unless you drastically reduce your financial liabilities which sometimes is just not possible in a short term.
That is called society, and as someone who pays a lot of tax, has owned businesses in the past, and plans to do so again, I fully support it. And I speak out in favor of such ideas and plans, to encourage my fellow citizens to support these as well.
Well, yes, just like taxes are a thing, and you can't drive on sidewalks or against traffic lights, and we all pay for fire, police, courts, food inspectors, and so on. Turns out the world is full of coercive behavior--if you kill someone, there's generally a consequence, and so on.
"There is a lot if hidden privilege that allows you to think for most people it is a choice."
It's not hidden at all. I am quite privileged as are all of the people in first world economies of which we speak. You (yes, you) are among the top 1% wealthiest of the worlds population.
I have no idea why the children of my comment assume a very, very false dichotomy of working through your child's childhood or becoming destitute. Now, more than ever, there is a huge swath of available and acceptable behavior between those two extremes.
You don't "choose" to give someone your wallet because you weighed the options and decided against getting shot. You were robbed.
Similarly, poverty in the US is brutal. To choose between spending time with your newborn during a crucial time period or becoming impoverished is not a real choice.
> They are free to pursue whatever course of action they choose to.
I think you're being ridiculous. Of course they can opt-out of going back to work, but in modern society, this means losing your home, lack of food, and probably, getting your child taking away by some form of social services. Unless you're in the very rich 1%.
Even as a child-free libertarian I have no problem with the state subsidizing child-bearing. Seems similar to nation defense. Without it, as you say, society, and particularly our own set of cultures and values that we have curated, will not survive.
This kind of goes along with what I've been thinking about working in general recently. Now, I'm an armchair economist at best, but it seems like as a society, several beliefs we have about work are incompatible with beliefs about the value of human life and with the real world.
I mean, we have this ideal of individual self-determinism in the United States, which suggests that anybody who is willing to work hard can get a job and become successful. I think that is becoming increasingly untrue, if it ever was true, but I think recognizing this point will be very difficult for our society. It seems like the two most obvious routes would either result in a massive welfare system, or abandoning the idea that everyone is created equal in an egalitarian sense.
On the other hand, climate change is a huge issue. It would be interesting to see how much greenhouse gas emissions are creating by work of various necessity. I mean, on one hand, you need to grow food for people, and that seems pretty important. On the other hand, the greenhouse gas emissions used to construct billboards/advertising, and then light them seems like energy that would be very easy to save. You could cut back on greenhouse gasses in food production in various ways of course, but removing entirely unproductive jobs from the economy seems like it would make a much bigger splash.
I mean, if those jobs were removed entirely, not only are you not using energy to product worthless crap, but you don't have billions of people travelling to a place where they do useless shit every day.
I really don't like this solution (especially as someone who works in marketing). I have no idea how society would even structure itself. I think it's incredibly unlikely to be implemented in a successful manner, and I think it's far more likely that we just destroy people and technology until we are back in a place where everyone needs to be industrious.
That's a really negative view, so I hope I'm wrong on all counts.
I agree. However, do you think we would start to see a wave of parents just having kids to freeload for a while? Should any and every business pay for maternal leave? Is it covered by insurance? I just see a bit of a cobra effect lying in the shadows with this one.
Only someone who has not personally witnessed child-rearing as a way to get welfare (not that this is a widespread problem -- its prevalence is blown way out of proportion) would suggest such a thing is unfathomable.
For the sake of argument, consider a person who is extremely short-sighted by nature, who sees an opportunity to apply for a shitty low-paying job right after getting pregnant in order to get paid maternity leave? Where do we draw the line for what businesses need to support this and what businesses can't feasibly do it?
It seems this kind of mandatory paid maternity is incompatible with our current capitalist / socialist infrastructure.
That's a bit circular, considering I could only produce such data if this were to become law, since my original comment was merely pondering the outcome of the law.
And why do you keep sidestepping the real meat of my question, which is where do we draw the line for which businesses must support paying 6mos parental leave?
It's not circular at all. You're the one claiming that people would abuse this en masse to get free vacation, completely ignoring the reality of the situation. Therefore, it would be on you to prove that there would actually be a threat of that happening. I'm not going to let you just claim it will happen and frame the argument that way.
Where did I make such a claim? I was merely musing -- nothing more, and nothing less. And I would appreciate if you would stop twisting my words as such.
3rd time you've side-stepped the main sentiment of my comment now. Will there be a 4th?
Yet again, people who have family responsibilities through no fault of their own (e.g., taking care of a sick parent or sibling) are ignored while companies fawn over people who (largely) choose to pop out more mouths to feed. I'm not saying parental leave is bad, but it's entirely eclipsed the other reasons why someone might need to take time off work to help family.
Saying "I want 20 weeks paid leave and $35,000 to provide hospice care for my brother" would probably result in derision and maybe a pink slip at many companies, even ones that have generous parental leave.
> people who (largely) choose to pop out more mouths to feed.
I don't disagree with your larger point, but this statement is just incorrect as a matter of economics. Your average American child born today is going to contribute a net surplus to the economy over his or her lifetime. There may come a time when robots do all the work, and human labor costs more to raise and sustain than it adds in dollar-denominated output. We are a long way from that (and we may never get there, depending on what happens in the future with AI).
> people who have family responsibilities through no fault of their own ... are ignored while companies fawn over people who (largely) choose to pop out more mouths to feed.
This is really a regrettable choice of words. There is no "fault" involved in becoming a parent. The point you are trying to get across could have been communicated so much more convincingly if you had checked your attitude. "This is a great first step, but many of us have responsibilities to other family members, also -- sick or disabled parents or siblings, for instance. It would be terrific to see benefits that support those needs as well."
EDIT: It has been (correctly) pointed out that my translation was lossy; I dropped the fact that no one chooses to have a sick sibling, and thus it might be even worthier of compensation / support than parenthood. That was unintentional, and I regret it. I still think there's a less caustic, more productive way to make that point.
A key point that I was making (and a point which your rewriting of my comment completely erases) is that parenthood can be planned ahead for (or avoided) to a much greater degree than other situations that require family leave.
I could have made some anodyne choice of words that obscures this fact, but I didn't because I wanted to make the point that if we are giving people support for voluntarily taking on extra family burdens, then it's absolutely inexcusable that we don't extend the same support to people who have had similar burdens thrust upon them involuntarily.
Pretty sure part of the point they were conveying was the irritation with society willing to do things for 'think of the children' but not willing to extend those same things to those in basically the same situation but who are not children.
So no, it could not be made by choosing words that would not offend your delicate sensibilities.
When setting parental leave policy at my company, I suggested making it available for any FMLA(1) suitable absence. This seems to be the most fair way to go about it.
(1) FMLA = Family and Medical Leave Act, a US law requiring employers to offer unpaid leave and hold jobs open for employees who have to be out for an extended period for medical reasons or to care for a family member.
> Saying "I want 20 weeks paid leave and $35,000 to provide hospice care for my brother" would probably result in derision and maybe a pink slip at many companies, even ones that have generous parental leave.
Well, that's bad! But I'm not sure why the solution should be to discontinue offering parental leave.
I am not saying it will satisfy all your concerns. It is just my experience (having worked in an HR department a while back) that most people are not familiar with what is in there. It doesn't provide mandatory pay, but it does provide a lot of protections other than that. I also find a common reaction to it is to assert that it should do more, but when faced with the question of what to do when people start deliberately gaming it, the objections become a bit more muted. (Yes, in some sense it sucks that there's a condition on how long you've been employed before it kicks in, but it's quite unclear what the alternative is that would work in the real world.)
As a parent and also someone with family members in hospice care, the problem is that the good quality care is prohibitively expensive for many, many people. People don't want to take time off to care for their loved ones just because, but because they can provide much, much better care at a lower cost.
Prohibitive medical and care costs are policy issues, that can be solved by many different methods, not necessarily requiring the same approach as parental leave.
Exactly. Parenting has significant impact on a child's development that cannot be replaced by nannying or daycare. The same can't be said for other types of care.
The difference is that children start dependent on others hand and foot.
Adults have savings, insurance, sick leave, government unemployment benefits, government disability benefits, etc. Or at least they can. There's a lot more grey area on what's necessary.
In general, different sorts of laws cover care of a relative. Besides, it would be the same sort of leave as if your child is sick.
In this case, it is more of a health issue (for women). They just gave birth. To a new human. It hurt, and people die from it. And afterwards, the infant has special needs for a while. This truly isn't the same as taking care of an elderly parent or a sibling.
People with kids are less likely to leave your company. So a company making it financially easier to become more tied down and less likely to leave is just good business sense.
Why would you assume that? In Canada and most of Europe the same system pays for both these types of care. Neither have any real negative affects on companies because:
1. All ee's have the same payroll tax rate, regardless.
2. All companies are subject to the same limitations of the leaves.
Parental care is more popular because it affects more people overall, but compassionate care will likely grow as boomers age.
(I have no idea how this comment struck such a nerve... all it does is point out that compassionate care leaves are also the norm for the first world. It seems some people are really wedded to their ideology, even here.)
It's not generous, it's normal for a first world nation, and has been for about 15 years now.
It's the US that is really, really lagging behind here. And with many corporations multi-national, Americans should really be asking themselves why that is.
The US is special in having social benefits that are so poor that Companies has to provide this.
I get 240 days with varying amounts of pay but it's tax money - my employer doesn't pay this. Same if my kid is sick, or am. Tax money, not my employer ensures I get that paid.
Enormously positive message. I hate that I have to recruit against them! The real question is will men be able to take the 20 weeks without their mid-management holding it against them. If someone in the C suite takes 20 weeks, then it will be culturally ok.
We had this exact same discussion at my workplace (Large, UK-owned engineering multinational) a while ago; turned out a lot of people expected long leaves to have a detrimental effect on their career, but no-one had anything except assumption to go on. My own experience (working in Scandinavia) suggest that at least around here, career and leave is mostly a non-issue.
I am currently staying at home with our nine-month-old daughter; my wife started working again when she was seven months old. I am now on paid leave until May next, and have the following observations:
a) While my leave is of a slightly unusual duration (Father normally takes 10 weeks of leave or so - not 28 as I did), it is not unheard of. My line manager actually claims to prefer longer leaves, and I believe him.
Reason? Much simpler to plan when you know employee such-and-such will be off work for, say, six months rather than just a couple of months. You might even get away with grabbing a temporary replacement from another department or a temp agency, whereas if I had a shorter leave, he'd just be told to split my work load on my colleagues and stop whining until I was back in the lab.
b) To the extent that the top brass ever talks to their minions, anecdotal evidence suggests envy more than derision. My leaves (this being the third one) has come up in conversation with executives on a couple of occasions, and response has been more along the lines of 'I wish I could get away with doing that!' or 'Good for you, I wouldn't last a month!' than 'WTF?'
Heck, during my previous leave, I was even promoted in my absence! (A minor one, but still...)
c) My male colleagues are supportive, though most choose shorter leaves. The most skepticism has come from female colleagues - who, while amused that I take as much leave as I do, worry about what my wife really thinks about it - after all, society is biased towards females taking care of infants, the first year or two of their lives traditionally being seen as the mother's domain. (No-one has voiced any concerns about the children, though - only about my wife...)
Whether or not parental leave affects career prospects depends on cultural and employer attitudes. Even after hearing your experiences in Scandinavia, I still think career worries are a legitimate concern for taking parental leave in eg the United States.
That's why it's so important to have tax funded (not employer funded) programs that also have allocated days for each parent, quickly making it first acceptable but soon also expected for both parents to take parental leaves. That is - if it's an explicit goal for society to have parents and men in particular take longer parental leaves.
My coworkers and managers would probably start wondering wth my values are if I didn't take at least 4 months with each kid. I'd look like some kind of stone age man to then I hope).
Agreed, which is why I mentioned where I work. However, I do work for a company whose management comes from a culture biased more against taking long leaves - or, at least, that is my impression of the UK by and large - and even UK-based managers seem to approve.
I guess once such prolonged leave gains just a little bit of traction, management are likely to be concerned that they'll be seen as being behind the times if they oppose it? Just conjecture and idle musings with nothing to back it up whatsoever.
a) I've found that I need to quit work cold turkey-style, just be OUT. Working part-time while caring for the toddler just means everyone at work assume I am at work, leading to 100% work load and only X% time to do it in. (Where X is significantly less than 100!)
Previous time around, we tried to both work part-time for a few weeks during transitioning from my wife being at home to me caring for the little one - worst mistake we ever made; totally ran both of us into the ground as we in practice wound up trying to catch up on work after the little critter had fallen asleep, trying to meet deadlines. Not good.
b) As for being at home full-time, I've found that it works very well, provided (drumroll, important part) I get enough time to interact with adults during the day. True, the little princess is as cute as they get, all smiles (and, if she's not - time for some food and sleep!) and mostly a joy to be around - but what soon gets to me is not talking to someone with a vocabulary larger than 'Da-da!' and 'Tee-hee!'.
So - every day, we go out, visit the library, shop for groceries, just chatting up random people we meet - to keep me sane. I've found that works a charm for me.
Also, we try to keep to somewhat of a schedule, though obviously allowance needs to be made for her sleep schedule - which is still somewhat of a work in progress.
We get up at about the same time every morning, eat at regular-ish intervals, I try to do some chores like cleaning, laundry &c while she's asleep, so that most of the day-to-day chores are done with by the time the older kids + missus come home in the afternoon.
That basically means we can spend a couple of hours going over the 7-year-old's homework, play a little, read, whatever until kids' bedtime - rather than having to cram in all chores inbetween or -shudder- wait until after the kids have gone to sleep, giving us a couple of hours before adult bedtime to do adult stuff for relaxing, rather than playing catch-up on keeping the house tidy-ish and clean-ish.
Tl;dr: I definitely cannot claim that my recipe will work for anyone, but for me, working in the industry I do, being at home full-time works a charm as long as I get some interaction with grownups during the day, have a schedule of sorts - and the wits to depart from it when need be.
> If someone in the C suite takes 20 weeks, then it will be culturally ok.
Given that the average age of someone in the C-suite is approximately 50 (particularly for a company of the age and type of Amex), then chance of that happening is slim to none.
Not a solution. Leaving it up to massive cashed up corporations only isn't fair. It hurts small businesses who cannot pay this. It needs to be mandated at the government level, means tested and subsidized. One more advantage to mega corporations and one more weakness for small business, add it next to the health insurance clusterf*.
You also need a huge cultural change in the American workplace, where people act like an employee taking time off will crash the whole company. Theyve hardly even heard of maternity leave contracts here.
I read a couple of comments that say this is a step in the right direction to reverse the demographic trend in most developed countries of decreased fertility.
I don't think that we will ever be able to compensate a couple and mother in particular for the cost of bearing children simply because we have made child rearing so expensive. I am not talking about education or housing costs but rather the opportunity cost.
I don't think there is any way to adequately compensate couples for the loss in career opportunities and wages that they forgoe by choosing to instead spend time raising children. The unfortunate thing is that the more financially capable a couple is to raise children the less likely they are to do so probably because of the increased opportunity cost. I am not sure even the most generous maternity leave policies will be able to fix that.
Kids are great, future of humanity and all that (at least some of them), but I cannot wrap my head around why businesses should have to fund them directly. I could understand subsidising this in some other way - maybe tax breaks/refunds, or banks providing more lucrative savings/investment options for future parents.
I get that people want everything, and they want it yesterday. They also don't want to have to make choices, and certainly don't want to have to plan too far ahead. But really, if you can't survive on one income for a year, then you're not financially secure enough to support one or more children. The problem that paid parental leave is trying to solve isn't a short-term money problem, it's a long-term, generation-wide pattern of financial irresponsibility. The old 'teach a man to fish' adage sums this up pretty nicely I think.
I'm genuinely in favour of supporting parents and encouraging people to have babies, after all I'm going to need someone to sponge bath me after I soil myself and forget who I am when I'm 80. I just don't understand why this is considered the 'right' way to do it.
This 'progress' is behind the rest of the world, sure its a good innovation or whatever, but why is the USA miles behind the rest of the world in this regard?
>Because if something has even the hint of socialism, the discussion is considered over. It's why the U. S. doesn't have universal health care.
It is a complex issue and the socialism-word boogeyman isn't all there is to it--there is more than just the vocab.
From my anecdotal experience, I can say it isn't so much the socialism that tends to bother people, but the part where socialism is given to what are considered undeserving people. Those people might be immigrants that are perceived (incorrectly or correctly) of getting an unfair share of schooling and medical services. Those people might play off the older concept of the Welfare Queen. It varies from person to person that I speak to, but very few (zero?) people have told me they're against things like health care for all without also bringing up those parts as a con to why it either can't work, or shouldn't be implemented.
(then after all that, you still have regular politics to hurdle)
This is my observation as well. I recently read a FB discussion where an American friend was generally in favour of Obamacare.
The people who disagreed did so not because they necessarily disagree with universal health care, but because they thought it was unfair that they had to spend their hard earned money to subsidise people who they view as freeloaders.
This is pretty on the nose. It has a lot to do with the diversity of America and the fact that they see most other Americans as "the other", or an out group, and don't want to support them.
I don't have the details on hand, but Robert Putnam (Political science, Harvard) did a study about Americas breakdown in civil engagement that speaks to this point quite a bit.
Most of you state applies, but what I was specifically referring to goes back to the Truman days, and the history I read specifically called a reaction to socialist policies.
I really don't mean to be rude, but wow did you miss the point I was trying to make. I was making no comparisons, other than when a Canadian hears the word "socialism" they don't go into a mouthing-foaming knee-jerk fit.
I didn't miss it at all, your point doesn't hold water, lots of companies provide great health insurance to their employees so the "socialism" thing doesn't really explain anything about them not providing other benefits.
The biggest is that asking a company to provide parental leave means asking a company to pay somebody that they hired to do a job to not be there.
That means either, your value is low enough that you can be gone for that long without your company missing you OR that they have to pay somebody else to fill in for you with the knowledge that they'll be let go once you get back. Depending on what kind of work you do, this is no small task.
The types of companies who can afford to do this type of thing essentially boil down to subscription style, giant companies where the absence of any employee won't really effect anything from a business or customer standpoint...who also happen to be rolling in money.
If they're willing and able to provide that benefit...GREAT!
But different businesses provide significantly different cash flow models. Different businesses can't have their valuable employees AWOL for 52 weeks while paying them and somebody else to fill in for them at a higher rate.
You have to be in a money printing market position to even think about something like that.
The difference is that many Americans believe (I do not) that socialism benefits only lazy people who haven't worked hard. That is why they don't see a company providing benefits as socialism, because they think those people deserve it.
Their point does hold water, given that as soon as you decide not to work for the company, you're SOL. "Universal" would imply that I get it regardless of what company I work for.
I think it is sort of relevant because it reveals a certain amount of contradictory thought. Employer provided healthcare is often provided without any consideration of the actuarial cost of providing it. A group decides that everybody in the group should have coverage and shares the cost. But doing that for a bigger group, oh hell no.
I don't understand your point. We agree that American Express should not provide insurance to people that aren't working there. I bet we don't agree that the government should provide single payer insurance to all citizens so companies do not have to do it. Unfortunately, my opinion doesn't matter in the country because the elected officials right now do not feel the citizens deserve insurance.
Well, you'd be wrong. A business has earned revenues that its owners can spend or use for benefits however they please. A business can't force people to pay for their services. A government can.
If you look at existing employment relationships, it also depends a great deal on how much leverage the employees have, not just on what pleases owners.
People who choose not to have children should not be forced to subsidize those who do.
If someone's getting 55% pay for almost a year while they're not creating value for the company, that has to come out of someone else's paycheck, directly or indirectly.
> Parents being around for their kids is important.
I absolutely agree, but that doesn't imply in any way that it's right to foist the cost of choosing to have children on other people.
People who choose to do $THING_I_DONT_DO should not be forced to subsidize those who do. Why should I subsidize roads with 16 foot lanes when my motorcycle needs on a fraction of that? Why should I...oh, you get the point.
If one cares to argue whether something that arguably betters the collective (Amex's new policy would fit from my POV) should be subsidized collectively or individually, I'm open. If one would rather discuss the merits of attracting workers with benefits that some might not use, let's open that conversation. But if it's just going to amount to a simplistic, Ayn Randian "it's not fair!", then it's not really worth the time.
> People who choose to do $THING_I_DONT_DO should not be forced to subsidize those who do.
Yes. What part of this is unreasonable?
> Why should I subsidize roads with 16 foot lanes
16 foot lanes aren't a voluntary activity, they're infrastructure that everyone benefits from. If you don't benefit from them somehow, you would have a valid complaint against subsidizing them. For example, farmers don't have to pay the gas tax on farm-use-only gas because they don't put wear on the roads.
On the other hand, I distinctly don't benefit from random people diverting what could be my income to keep overpopulation going strong.
> simplistic
Simple arguments are better than complex ones. You're right, my argument is simple; it's morally wrong to force people to pay for things they don't want, and it's especially wrong to force people to pay for things where the benefit is obviously less than the cost.
>16 foot lanes aren't a voluntary activity, they're infrastructure that everyone benefits from
So is ensuring that parents get to, you know, be parents.
>If you don't benefit from them somehow, you would have a valid complaint against subsidizing them
They did say they don't. They ride a motorcycle, and as such, don't need the full lane size.
>On the other hand, I distinctly don't benefit from random people diverting what could be my income to keep overpopulation going strong.
You would be wrong on all counts there, buddy.
>Simple arguments are better than complex ones. You're right, my argument is simple; it's morally wrong to force people to pay for things they don't want, and it's especially wrong to force people to pay for things where the benefit is obviously less than the cost.
And yet, the simple argument completely falls apart once you think about it. For example, you said they shouldn't be able to not subsidize wide roads. So why roads, and not childcare? Why roads and not police protection? Why roads and not healthcare?
People who choose not to have children should not be forced to subsidize those who do.
Why not?
If you pay tax, some of that will go to paying school teachers, regardless of whether or not you have children of your own. Is that also wrong? Like it or not, all western societies include some form of wealth redistribution.
Agreed. It's in everyone's interest (whether you choose to have children or not) that children are well adjusted, healthy, and educated. They will be our neighbors when we are older.
Possibly, but in a less odious way. Public school has at least two benefits over paying people to have children; 1) it probably doesn't incentivize people to have kids, but it does (probably) benefit the kids that already exist and 2) it might actually have a positive net value to the people being forced to pay for public school but aren't using it. In particular, public schools serve as a form of division of labor, where the adult/child ratio is much lower, freeing up a huge number of parents to remain in the workforce instead of staying home and watching the kids all day. This, I would argue, is most low-quality lower-division public schools' primary function; it's not about the kids learning, it's about freeing the parents' schedules for 8-9 hours a day.
To be clear the person you're responding to is talking about companies subsidizing those who choose to have children. That is different from a government social program.
You can be for the government paying people on maternity/paternity leave while also being against mandating the business should be the ones to pay for it.
Parents subsidize the people who don't have kids. You think investors would be willing to pour billions into companies like Facebook if they knew there wouldn't be a new crop of 18-25 year olds every year? In a developed country, each person contributes a lot more to the economy over their lifetime than the cost of raising them.
(And immigration doesn't really change the result. Then you're just externalizing the cost of raising kids to another country; you're not getting rid of it, and you're still benefiting from that investment.)
> Parents subsidize the people who don't have kids.
That's a silly argument. Just because an action (possibly) has a positive externality, like having children, doesn't mean we need to subsidize it. You also get quickly diminishing returns; dumping $10M into a kid won't get you a 100x better result than dumping $100K into a kid.
Every single form of industry that isn't already subsidized by the government, by virtue of its continued existence, has a higher value to society than what they earn in income. Should we subsidize all those CEOs to make up the difference?
> each person contributes a lot more to the economy over their lifetime than the cost of raising them.
This is true and irrelevant. Again, spending more money on children doesn't mean their economic output will be correspondingly higher. At some point (which I imagine we've already passed) you're just burning money. That is, of course, if your goal is economic optimization (which your post seems to suggest). If your goal is e.g. more effective socialization/indoctrination or accelerated education, then you could reasonably argue for increased spending to push us farther down the diminishing economic returns curve.
I've recently come the the conclusion that instead of the purpose of people being to create value for the economy, the point of the economy is to create value for people. Being able to spend time with your new kid should not be a privilege of people who have money. Overall resources in our society aren't that scarce so I don't think it's unreasonable to allocate some resources to ensuring that privilege for everyone.
> Being able to spend time with your new kid should not be a privilege of people who have money.
Ah, of course. Instead it should come at the expense of people who chose not to (or were unable to) spend time with a child at all.
"<Positively connoted activity> should not be a privilege of people who have money" is a very nice-sounding statement, but it ignores the fact that there's a reason only people who have money do certain things; because it's very expensive.
> Overall resources in our society aren't that scarce
Evidently resources in our society are scarce enough that parents can't stay home with their child 24/7 without someone else paying for it. (Either that or the parents in question are able but unwilling to decrease their expenses in exchange for time with their children.)
As a society we've decided that some things are worth it despite being an economic cost (notably giving senior citizens access to medical care through medicare is an example of a huge cost with little to not economic benefit) so as a society we've decided that some things are worth paying for other people despite cost to ourselves. You are arguing that people shouldn't pay at all for benefits that they choose not to partake in themselves and as a society we've already decided that we are willing to do so in certain situations. Really what it then becomes is an argument of "is it worth it?". It comes down to a value judgement of "is it okay for people to pay for things that they don't personally use?" and "is it worth it to pay for parental leave?". I personally think that the economic losses are outweighed by the societal good of parental leave so I think that answering "yes" to both of the questions leads to a better society.
> As a society we've decided that some things are worth it despite being an economic cost (notably giving senior citizens access to medical care...)
I'm painfully aware, given that this number is broken out on my W2 stubs.
What I'm obviously doing here is arguing that "society"'s (meaning those in charge of tax code, who nominally take some amount of inspiration from the rest of society) policies are wrong.
Your argument is just "This is how we do things right now, so that's how it should be." At the risk of pulling a Molyneux, that is, in fact, not an argument.
Most companies offer employees a bundle of benefits that have a lot of different pieces. I'm sure that, if any individual employee were designing the bundle specifically for their own maximum benefit given a specific $ pool of money, it would look quite a bit different from the one that's actually offered.
Some people would be happy to forgo benefits like life insurance. Some will want the maximum 401-K matching while others don't contribute enough to take full advantage. People trade off vacation time and salary differently.
Search for the funding status of defined benefit pensions for most government entities. Most are counting on passing on the buck to future generations to fund their promises, either via increasing taxes or decreasing the value of money.
It doesn't exactly matter if you personally paid for your pension or the state took some percentage from you paycheck or any other imaginable system, if in 40 years you want to retire and the majority of society is made up of other retirees, any form of currency isn't going to be worth anything.
No matter which way you turn it the sustainability of a retiree lifestyle hinges on a large part of society showing up at work on 9am. In 40 years, that's not going to be your peers, it's whatever children your generation produced. If you don't want to pay for benefits that ensure enough workers will be around then you are betting that we got rid of human workers in 40 years of time or investing your money into a hut in Alaska and some shotgun ammunition.
Overpopulation of planet Earth is not a serious risk. The consensus is that population will peak at roughly 11-12 billion sometime around 2100. [1]
The real danger that most have yet to come to grips with is population stagnation/decline and the multitude of economic problems that come along with it.
> population stagnation/decline and the multitude of economic problems that come along with it.
I'd be curious to know if there are any good books on the subject. It seems like this is something that we're going to have to figure out in our lifetimes.
It's pretty shocking to see how quickly and how far total population would fall if global birth rates eventually decline to the level Europe is at today.
Depending on where you live, the population might be declining, and encouraging people to have more children (and letting you country vanish) might be a good thing to do.
Right, because I'm going to commit myself to eighteen years of making sure the l'il shit makes it to the adulthood, all so I can get a year off at half pay and a trivial tax deduction every year. Damn, it's so unfair to those of us without children.
The United States culture is more pro-business than other western countries. Other governments put consumer and employee rights ahead of business interests.
I wonder if businesses and their management in Scandinavian countries, for example, feel they're getting the short end of the stick. I'm sure there's a diversity of opinion but they might very well look at the chaos of the United States and say "well, at least we don't have to deal with that shit."
I think 20 weeks is a good balance, verging on generous. 52 weeks is great and all, but what does the employer get out of it? And more importantly why is paying for babies the responsibility of employers?
It seems like this is a problem being tackled in the most inefficient and damaging way possible. The focus needs to be more on helping people fund themselves and create their own financial security rather than forcing an unrelated third-party to foot the bill.
Some companies actually top this up. A previous company I worked for had 20 weeks at 100% for females. (In Canada maternity and paternity are actually two separate types of leaves, but they add up to 52 weeks.)
Why? The majority of Americans don't see it as a big enough problem to complain about. Also getting something passed in every state takes time. Opinions need to change enough for legislatures to take heed.
Want to spend time with your kids? That's fine, just don't expect to get paid for it.
Here's my all American take on this: you made the choice to have kids. Don't expect companies to subsidize your child-rearing efforts, we owe you nothing.
If you think in longer time frames everyone was a child once and there is immense value to society for children to spend time with their parents. Maybe companies should not be the mechanism to pay for it but we as a society should find ways to help people have strong and healthy families. It makes moral and economic sense.
I think you've completely over looked the benefits to the individual, and society, as a whole when you allow parents to spend more time with their new born kids.
It's really easy to say "hey you decided to have a kid, so that's on you". But you do need children to sustain society in the future. It does them a lot of good if their parents can spend more time with them during their infant stage.
Also that attitude is really detrimental to women. Are future mothers supposed to choose over one day raising a kid or their careers? Doesn't society lose out on a lot of potential if we just say "sorry, if you want a kid then you're going to find a new job" ?
Im all for societal level support of parents, I just don't think the obligation should be on corporations. I dont think a corporation should be required to do anything but hold your position open for up to 3-6 months as a sabbatical. (I do think we should have a parental unemployment benefit, to make up the pay.)
But it seems fundamentally unfair to impose on the business's ability to function (or other people's ability to get hired/promoted) because you want to have a kid.
So if you want to incentivize parents, do it through social benefits, rather than unreasonable demands and distortions of the labor market.
The Canadian 55% mentioned above is an unemployment benefit, so there is some confusion in this thread. The obligation to the corporation is that they maintain your job (or equivalent) for some period, I forget the details.
Corporations are free to offer top up benefit, and many do as a competitive incentive.
I am all for having children, and I do support some kind of parental leave, but I think that any progressive that resorts to defend parent-friendly policies always end up suffering some kind of cognitive dissonance. You want to see examples?
> you do need children to sustain society in the future.
Do we really? A lot of the worries, especially among progressive circles, is how automation is reducing the need of manual labor and how the people in this world already are replaceable by machines.
Also, the ones that are more focus on protecting the environment always get to pull some kind of neo-malthusian argument. So, one could argue that we should not be establishing policies that encourage people to have more kids.
> Are future mothers supposed to choose over one day raising a kid or their careers?
Why do you assume that the mother is the one that will stop working? Why not the father? Or, to make it more "equal", why can't both parents switch to part-time jobs and participate in the child rearing part, equally?
I'd argue that even if you employer is fully supportive it will sideline your career. Raising kids is very time consuming. Even if you get lots of maternity leave time and child care benefits, if you plan to spend a lot of time with your kid you will not be able to make that time up at work.
Think about all the time you spend thinking about work in off work hours. You no longer really have the time. All those hobby projects that make you a better worker? What time do you have for that?
He might only appear right if you take a look at the world in a very narrow and short-term way. Ie, he can only think of children as children, rather than the adults who will sustain society once he is old and (even more) feeble-minded.
You may take the stance that we need less children due to overpopulation problems. Either way though, people having kids is what continues America's and humanity's existence.
This is the whole idea behind lower tax brackets for married couples and similar things. Making sure our population is at least being maintained and preferably growing.
In addition, if you dislike the large amount of kids that grow up in orphanages/bad homes things like this should allow people to have more time to take care of their kids during their first several weeks of life as well as potentially encourage more people to keep their kids instead of putting them up for adoption.
> This is the whole idea behind lower tax brackets for married couples and similar things.
I'm confused by that statement. From my experience, married couples pay more in taxes (in the US) than they would if each were single (and making the same amount).
Or am I misunderstanding, and you meant that there _should_ be lower taxes for married couples?
I was under the impression it was usually lower taxes (partially selection bias due to it being lower for myself). As the other commenter points it, it is complicated and sometimes lower/sometimes higher to file jointly.
Interestingly, the current tax structure somewhat encourages single income families.
Taxes for married filing jointly are usually lower than for married filing separately.
But taxes for married filing jointly are often higher than for two single filers. This is especially true for higher incomes.
As a really simple example, consider two people both with $100k in taxable income, after taking their standard deductions and personal exemptions, in 2016. As single filers they would pay $21036.75 each in taxes, for a total of $42073.50. If they were married filing jointly, they would pay $42985.50, which is more. That happens because while the first two bracket boundaries (10% to 15% and 15% to 25%) are twice as big for joint married filers as they are for single filers, after that the boundaries start to converge. At the very top, the 39.6% boundary starts at $415k for single filers and at ~$467k for married filers....
There are also nasty perverse incentives where if one member of a married couple has a high income the other one can't contribute to IRAs in ways they could if they were just filing as an individual filer.
You're right about the facts you said, but wrong about them contradicting the parent comment.
Filing as married benefits couples where only one person is pulling down an income, thus providing a subsidy for one parent to be a full-time parent but not for marriages in general.
People are replying to this remarking on the lack of compassion. I agree, but you don't even need to agree with that to find the statement objectionable.
It seems pretty indisputable that children who are raised with more parental involvement are more successful in life. Those that are less successful don't just disappear, they become a financial drain on society, be it through social security, imprisonment, etc. etc.
So no matter how little you care for other people having kids, two things are true:
1) they're going to have them whether you like it or not (and really, society depends on this)
2) if they don't have support, they're going to cost you more than if they do.
There's really no way in which increased parental involvement doesn't make sense for society.
And this is an example of everything that's wrong with America right now. There is no human compassion left. The rich get to live, the poor deserve to die. Trump appointed a guy that wants to not only get rid of the ACA, but also wants to get rid of Medicare and Medicaid.
"You should have thought about that before you became poor!"
>It doesn't depend on high-consuming Westerners having children tho'.
Right, because everyone else wasn't going to burn oil and coal? It takes an advanced society to produce energy responsibly.
Also if we never leave earth we will die, so yes you do need humans to continue getting more intelligent. People with below-average IQ's breeding are just contributing to the problem.
In the US governments (and corporations) already subsidize child-rearing in lots of other indirect ways, so it at least makes sense to discuss one of the many ways in which the US is notably different from most developed economies.
I do agree the OP could have said "different" rather than "behind"
After all, with something like this they often stem from a least theoretically similar policy goals, so it seems crazy not to evaluate implementation cost & benefits against peer systems.
This seems to be a common misunderstanding in the US.
Companies don't subsidize these types of plans (well, other than being forced to allow the leave). The government does via something (in Canada) called "Employment Insurance". It's a basic payroll tax. We pay taxes into a program specifically designed to provide benefits if you lose your job. That's been extended to pay for things like leaves for having children or caring for your dying parents, kid with cancer, etc, etc.
Considering that it's in all our best interests to have healthy, well adjusted children in our society, it's a trade-off well worth the "owing". I'd take a look at your crime rates compared to ours and think about your ideology a little. I'm no socialist, but it's silly to not take the very real advantages of living in a society. You wouldn't tell someone to pay for their own roads, or fire service, would you? And if you would, what happens to our society overall when everyone thinks like this? How does that move us forward? How does that move YOU forward?
We're a republic, and it's precisely to prevent unfair outcomes like the one you're proposing. It's not good policy just because most people want it.
The thing is that in America, there is still a barrier between the private and public sectors. While we obviously like perks like this, we don't believe that it's the government's place to mandate it. As we can see by many companies in the United States willfully offering such perks without legal mandate, companies are willing to make these accommodations on their own if they feel it will benefit their position in the market by allowing them to attract better talent.
Companies that can't afford this will be at a market disadvantage, but they won't have to be afraid to hire the workers they need when they're growing because the law would force them to pay out half of the employee's salary for up to a year without being able to derive any productive benefit from that outlay.
The most American thing about America is "it's a free country". That means that unless there is a vast social cost with allowing a certain behavior, it should be legal and people should be allowed to prosper or fail on the basis of their own choices rather than governmental policy that states "we know what's best for you".
"Companies that can't afford this will be at a market disadvantage"
I disagree entirely that this "disadvantage" is enough for them to worry or care. If the disadvantage was real, you'd see more companies sacrificing profits to do it.
"The most American thing about America is "it's a free country". That means that unless there is a vast social cost with allowing a certain behavior, it should be legal and people should be allowed to prosper or fail on the basis of their own choices rather than governmental policy that states "we know what's best for you"."
That statement ignores an awful lot about reality.
>I disagree entirely that this "disadvantage" is enough for them to worry or care. If the disadvantage was real, you'd see more companies sacrificing profits to do it.
Most professional workplaces offer some form of parental leave. My workplace offers 1 week for men (I don't know what they offer women, I assume it's much longer). It's not the 20 weeks that Amex just announced, but it's not nothing.
The disadvantage is real. I've tried to hire professionals in a place that didn't offer benefits before. They wouldn't come aboard -- not a single one (and yes, IMO, parental leave is a standard benefit). I had to draw from a pool of college kids who needed a break into the industry.
>That statement ignores an awful lot about reality.
I disagree. I think that's always been the American way. Government should be small and only interfere with specific legislation when very significant macro-level damage is likely. Other than that, the government's role is to preserve order (including both a criminal and a civil justice system) and promote freedom of conscience within the law, and free people will be free to act in their own best interests without burdensome constraints or regulation. That's how I define "freedom".
Whether you think every company should offer 20 weeks of parental leave (itself debatable from a business perspective, though obviously not a perk many employees would willfully decline) is different from whether you think they should be forced to do so.
>The disadvantage is real. I've tried to hire professionals in a place that didn't offer benefits before. They wouldn't come aboard -- not a single one (and yes, IMO, parental leave is a standard benefit). I had to draw from a pool of college kids who needed a break into the industry.
So, to the higher ups, they were still able to hire. Did they eventually decide this was a disadvantage, and try to rectify it? Or did they not change?
>and free people will be free to act in their own best interests without burdensome constraints or regulation. That's how I define "freedom".
Having to pay rent and buy food are definitely huge burdensome constraints. Hence, most of this "If you don't like it, you don't have to work there!" is ignoring much of that, and reality. You said you had to hire college kids who didn't have any bargaining clout. But people out of college have kids too. Do you honestly think that this kind of benefit is something that should only be reserved for someone who is lucky enough to be in a good bargaining position?
>Whether you think every company should offer 20 weeks of parental leave (itself debatable from a business perspective, though obviously not a perk many employees would willfully decline) is different from whether you think they should be forced to do so.
Not to me. But then there are many things I don't believe should be dependent on where one works, or how good they are at bargaining.
>So, to the higher ups, they were still able to hire. Did they eventually decide this was a disadvantage, and try to rectify it? Or did they not change?
I was the higher-up. I couldn't afford a full benefit package and decided to try the market and see who would work without them. The answer was "only people who didn't have the option". I hired two of those people instead.
I would've liked to hire someone with 20 weeks of parental leave and a full benefits package, but it was the second hire in a bootstrapped consulting company. I had to lay them off after about 14 months when two of our major clients ran out of money at about the same time (we mainly consulted with startups, obviously a bad market). I got hired by a client full-time about 2 months after that.
So yes, it was a real disadvantage, and yes, it would've been nice to rectify it. I just didn't have the cashflow for that.
>Having to pay rent and buy food are definitely huge burdensome constraints. Hence, most of this "If you don't like it, you don't have to work there!" is ignoring much of that, and reality.
Those are real-world survival constraints, not artificial government-imposed constraints. The government can't just wave a magic wand and make everything in the world free and automatic. That's been tried before and that blatant denialism results in stunning evil and poverty. The organic market that allows real-world risk and reward to be passed through with minimal artificial influence is the only system that functions reasonably well.
The people of the country do not owe you a ticket to free rent. The government's role is to not make sure that everyone is rewarded or even that everyone survives. Your prosperity is now and always will be your responsibility. The difference is that in a socialist system, that prosperity is almost impossible to attain. In our system, opportunity is everywhere for the people who want to stop whining and go out and take advantage of it.
>Do you honestly think that this kind of benefit is something that should only be reserved for someone who is lucky enough to be in a good bargaining position?
I honestly think that this kind of benefit is not something that should be forced, and it's not something that's owed, just as a job isn't owed. You have to earn these things. You have to convince someone that they need to give them to you in exchange for something else you're going to give them. I really don't understand the rules of the world you're envisioning here. Everyone should just get whatever they want because they want it? That's simply not how reality works, and it's not how it's ever going to work, even in the most ideal conditions. There must be a functioning risk-reward system or the whole thing falls apart with stunning rapidity.
>Not to me. But then there are many things I don't believe should be dependent on where one works, or how good they are at bargaining.
Personally, I think it's quite frightening that you believe that you should have the authority to force everyone in the country to do what you think should be done. That's not freedom, it's dictatorship. We only use force and compulsory means when an action threatens our social structure's fundamental operations. Everything else must be allowed to prosper or decline on its own merit, and we must allow people to do things we don't personally agree with, or the system doesn't work.
The scary part is that when most people have the perspective you're sharing, when the respect for competition and the ability of each individual as a sovereign and independent actor to make his own choices and prosper or fail by them is gone, that's when freedom is crushed. It takes a society that truly respects these principles to secure the kind of government we've enjoyed in the US for the last 200+ years, and I fear more and more that as a society, we're losing that. And once we lose it culturally, it's just a few short years until the politics follows.
>That's true, but if the issue is important enough to lots of people, those people will elect representatives to enact the policy they want made.
Yes, but it's more complicated than that. The federal government isn't legally allowed to mandate these types of things under the Constitution, except insofar as they can claim it relates to "regulating interstate commerce" (which they do for almost everything these days). Most employment law is state-level, where there is not necessarily a constitutional prohibition on this type of action (each state has its own constitution, YMMV) and where there's a reasonable possibility of jurisdictional competition to keep things healthy.
For example, there is no federal minimum wage (the term "Federal Minimum Wage" refers to the lowest amount of money that the government pays its employees, not a legally-required minimum wage nationwide). Each state has its own minimum wage.
>If it were many companies, then this wouldn't be news.
It's news mostly because AMEX paid its PR people to put this out. It's good press and may cause talented job seekers to look at their openings. There are a lot of news reports about routine things every day, because much of the news is bought by PR firms.
Secondarily, it's news because it comports with the political agenda of the news editors and gives them an opportunity to say things like "America is behind other developed nations in this area", when that's anything but an objective conclusion (because whether this policy is "ahead" or "behind" is a subjective evaluation).
After further research, I stand corrected. The federal minimum wage is a minimum wage that is applicable to workers throughout the United States, not just employees of the federal government. Constitutionally, I'm not sure how that works, but I'm sure it's not unlike other blatant abuses of Constitutional structures. I'd bet there's a case I could look up somewhere, but don't have the time or inclination right now.
That makes it a bad example of what I was talking about, but it's now a good example of how the foundational principles of the Union have been selectively permeated for political convenience. That's sad, IMO, and not something we should seek to replicate in further employment legislation.
You must not have heard that corporations are individuals who pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps with only hard work and the power of the American Dream(tm).
Every now and then I wonder if I should have stayed in the USA rather than coming back to Canada. I could have made a lot more money. Then someone like you says something like that, and I breath a big sigh of relief.
Please don't react to a comment with a bad thing in it by turning that into the entire subject and going one worse yourself. That's the opposite of civil, substantive discussion.
Doesn't matter. Saying you left the US to avoid a certain attitude that is not special to the US is nonsense and insulting to the group as a whole. It would be different if mabbo was specifically trying to avoid that single person, but that's not the case.
I left the US for many reasons, but one of them was that the "fuck you, got mine" attitude permeates US culture, and as a result becomes law. Not all Americans feel that way, but enough do that the idea of a single-payer health-care system is unthinkable. The idea of a person earning anything more than market-rate wages leads people to protest against the notion, to get angry about a livable minimum wage.
It's not special to the US, certainly. But America is where such attitudes are considered normal.
It's American Express, their money is made by a bunch of servers in racks, they could put half of their staff on paid leave for an entire quarter and the numbers would be unchanged.
It used to be a website where people posed useful counterpoints instead of redundant rhetorical insulting questions.
Of course the ability of a company like AMEX to offer these benefits hinges directly on the fact that a large number of their employees are non-essential to the value producing process.
My wife and I like to "joke" (it's not really funny) that we know enough to not take a puppy or kitten away from its mother before 8 weeks, yet we make human mothers go back to work after 6 weeks. And that's in CA, other states have lower minimums, or none at all.
To those who don't understand parental leave: it is self-evident that child-bearing is a necessary condition for the continuation of society. We also know that time spent with parents, the mother in particular, during that first year is super important for both mental and physical well-being. Just like we subsidize public schools because we recognize the importance of education for society, we should be happy to "pay for" parental leave.