i have few beefs with you greenie. mostly ghibli grinds my gears.
almost every study i’ve ever seen shows that subsidies to equalize women in the workplace increase overall employment. i can’t speak on business activity and wages but if overall employment is up, i’d imagine the impact is positive or mostly unchanged.
if it were up to me i would very much support seeing maternity/paternity benefits in place of other social transfers as maternity/paternity benefits have tangible returns, encourages positive behaviours and increases social cohesion, whereas something like straight-up welfare does not, except for the social cohesioin but that is arguable.
But I still have doubts about these studies that show that “subsidies to equalize women increase overall employment”.
I guess this is true, because if you tax society as a whole, give the money to working women, then working women will have more money to spend, which will increase overall employment. We seem to forget, however, that we must first take from Jack to pay Jill. So while JIll (or all the collective Jills) reap tangible rewards, the intangible costs to Jack must be, by definition, equal to the benefit to Jill. (In fact, I bet Jack’s cost are greater than Jill’s benefit, because we have to pay a bloated government bureaucracy to administer the benefits, and they system will certainly be abused.)
Eventually, the employment situation will get so bad that employers will find that they either have to lay Jill or Jack off.
What a good socialist. A government can guarantee 100% employment. Pay people to dig holes and pay people to fill holes. Just ignore that no one is better off. And the “system” crumbles. Those that fancy themselves as elites will never understand. It’s about the freedom to choose, not what studies show is best. If I want to run my company poorly, that’s my prerogative. If I want to eat poorly, that’s my choice.
TL;DR: America is too big with too hetergeneous a population and a hugely flawed system of government and electoral system, with an imported underclass that’s been marginalised for decades and can’t be assimilated as well as a haemorraging border all of which has made most of the population selfish individualists who live their whole lives angry and on the defensive and the only thing that holds them together is a bizarre patriotism based purely on a 1 dimensional notion of freedom and a deep seated need to work to exhaustion to make someone else money.
it’s not that simple in this case. you’re incentivizing a large group of people who predictably leave the workforce to stay in the workforce and retain their skills. if you plan on having any kids, paid maternity leave incentivizes women to join the workforce in the first place. if you plan on having more than 1 kid, having the incentive of building up maternity leave “credits”, ensures you return to work after your maternity leave. i support the union approach to maternity leave. pay a very high percentage of reference salary during maternity leave but demand that those funds be reimbursed to the employer if the employee doesn’t return to work for 6-12 months after maternity leave is over.
of all transfer payments, paid maternity leave “can be” one of the most effective available. and you can acheive intangible social goals as well like stimulating fairly inexpensive population growth and help create a society of people who think in “we” rather than “I”. the thing that makes westerners so different from those socially weirdo japanese is our population growth rate.
there are several studies wrt to subsidized daycare in Quebec that are definitive in their conclusion that subsidizing daycare promotes higher workforce participation. while i’m not an advocate of nationalized daycare for other reasons, its conclusion on employment levels is clear.
Why do you assume employment levels are necessarily a benefit? Increase in the workforce (labor supply) will drive down the prices of labor, thus requiring more households to have dual incomes. I would much rather have a single income household with higher labor prices.
You keep talking about the benefits to society and this concept of “we”. F off. Your Marxist views are both immoral and the wrong way to achieve the goals you try to spout. Through coordination and mutually beneficial trade, everyone is better off. It raises the floor and creates the most wealth to society, without theft and redistribution of wealth, thus reducing the class warfare that’s created via government.
Your studies you continue to stand by mean nothing. You, along with government and central planning in general, fail to consider the opportunity costs. That which is seen, and that which is not seen. Swap your Marx literature for Bastiat and stop claiming a right to my labor.
Realizing this has gone a completely different direction, just thought I’d add a data point about parental leave. As of June 1, my employer is changing from a 12 week paid maternity leave to a 16 week paid primary caregiver leave. Non-primary caregivers are also being given 4 weeks paid leave. If they add 2 0’s to the end and give me 400 weeks paid leave, I’d consider having another child.
you have the right to your labour. you can go forage with no capital whenever you want. if you want capital, it ultimately belongs to the collective and you must thus play by the collective’s rules. if the collective wants paid maternity leave, you are bound by it, unless you wish to return to foraging for sustenance.
and btw, we’re not talking about the rights of individuals. this primarily has to do with the rights of corporations. whenever taxation or government imposed employee benefits are discussed, this primarily has to do with the rights of corporations. since corporations are manmade creations with no innate rights, please stop talking about your rights. if you’re talking about yourself as an unincorporated business owner, business owners do not have rights, people do. your rights are not being violated as a business owner as this is impossible. as a business owner, you can always skirt the law if you want but there are risks obviously. or you can decide to not play by the rules and not run a business anymore. your choice given the collective’s mandate. the bottom line is that you ALWAYS maintain your personal right to work irrespective of these minor changes to government imposed employee compensation or benefits.
do you walk down the street and see other people? do you drink the same water as them? how about food? same gas? do you have a military protecting you? how about police? firemen?
even if many of these processes were private instead of public, you are part of a collective. the most primary objective of your collective is for most people in the collective to not die. there are many other secondary objectives.
it’s funny that some americans think they’re some autonomous being living separately from everyone else.
The email just says all full and part time employees will be eligible after 12 consecutive months of employment. It appears elsewhere that it is offering “100% of covered pay…”
After spending 12 seconds becoming an HR expert, i’m pretty sure that what you’ve written is correct, except that either parent could take the 16 weeks if they certified as the “primary caregiver.”
Most guys talk big like this until they have kids and then realise they want nothing to do with extended parental benefits. It actually isn’t just sitting around playing video games all day (mostly because any opportunity you have to relax, you immediately fall into a deep slumber).
I’d be for a voucher system on daycare, much as I would be on schools. The idea that the state only has responsibility after age 5 seems somewhat arbitrary. Why not start school at 3? Or 2? Or whenever? But stay at home parents would also get a voucher or some kind of tax credit to ensure their choices are respected.
choice is important wrt to daycare choices. although i would personally save tens of thousands should there be a national daycare program, i prefer to, and think that others should be able to, choose the care that best suits their need (e.g. cheap home daycare vs low quality institutionalized daycare vs high quality institutionalized daycare vs at-home caregiver slash maid). additionally, forcing every careworker who is not an at-home caregiver slash maid to go to school and get licensed to wipe butts and discipline 2 year olds would add massive costs to the entire daycare system. plus, this would result in another 2% of the working population being unionized with little or no skill. i’m fine with unionization for similar skilled workers but union protection for no skill workers is unnecessary. full disclosure: my household is currently benefitting from union protection for no skill workers. i’m still against it.