Posted on 02/03/2018 6:51:13 AM PST by reaganaut1
Leftists have been pushing the idea of paid family leave for a long time. It was one of the big early crusades of Bill Clinton’s presidency. The notion that the government should help cover the costs of having a child springs naturally from the “progressive” mindset that government should be there to provide in case anyone needs (or merely prefers) assistance. It also dovetails with the liberal political mentality that many votes are to be won by giving people stuff.
And now, we find that people who are not on the left are nevertheless backing a paid family leave plan, with the twist that instead of forcing employers to pay the benefits, the federal government would. That idea was floated recently in a Wall Street Journal piece by Kristin Shapiro and Andrew Biggs, “A Simple Plan for Parental Leave.” The authors state that the concept of paid leave has widespread public support (no doubt true, but that is true of every proposal for seemingly free money), but they don’t like the old Democratic plan of mandating that employers pay because employers would cover the cost by lowering pay for women.
Instead of a business mandate, therefore, Shapiro and Biggs advocate a different approach. They would allow prospective parents to collect Social Security benefits for a period of time (probably 12 weeks) upon the birth of the child, but offset that by delaying their eligibility for Social Security benefits upon retirement. Shapiro and Biggs calculate that the delay needed to make this financially neutral for Social Security would be six weeks. Parents would get money now to help with the newborn in exchange for having to wait six more weeks for their retirement benefits – sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
It’s time may have come. Trump is getting ahead of the idea. The rats would have jumped on it to show how we hate women. He’s already cut enough government regulations. He can make it a win win.
No.
Coworkers have to double up on their own work and don’t get paid. Too many times, the parent takes the leave time and pay but never returns to work so that entire time of holding the position open was a waste of time for the company. It’s the parents’ responsibility for having the baby, not the company’s.
Call it building down.You heard it here first.
No.
Is paid family leave a good idea? Sure.
Is a federal mandate requiring a privately owned company to provide paid family leave a good idea? Absolutely not.
Imagine a small company with 20 employees has 3-4 women get pregnant, 2 people have death in the family and one adopts a baby. That’s almost a year and a half of full pay for one employee with zero productivity.
I daresay that many 20 person companies cannot afford that level of largesse.
If they can and choose to offer it as a benefit to encourage good employees, great.
Personally, I’ve never had to consider a family leave. We had our kids, I took a week or so vacation and went back to work. My wife was a stay at home mom.
Companies are required to keep a job open with unpaid family leave and that’s fine, but your employer should not be forced to pay your expenses of having a child.
” It’s the parents’ responsibility for having the baby, not the company’s.”
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I agree,and I’m a parent.
.
I thought the enviros said there were too many people in the world? Why would people support facilitating having children? I’m being sarcastic but people continue to invite the government more and more into their lives. Big mistake.
Don’t forget paternity leave, and leave for any couple when adopting a baby.
No!
No!
No, it is not okay, unless you want to make America dependent again.
Or unless the Princess wants it.
I'm so far Luddite that I wonder if smashing the computers (like in many SciFi movies) might be the road to salvation.
<^..^>
I think an even-handed approach would be best — the leave for a pregnant worker should be precisely equal to the leave for a male worker whose wife is pregnant.
Then the question becomes: is this a good idea?
I think fewer people would say “Yes”, and I’m sure a lot fewer feminists would say “Yes”. But any other approach is a sexist approach which picks winners and losers between the sexes. And we can’t have that.
When my wife got pregnant, she simply quit her job. That's pretty much what should happen. The company she worked for would have gladly hired her back later and they actually called her a couple times after the baby was born asking her if she wanted her job back but she decided to stay out of the workforce until our children were all in school.
I may be wrong, but I didn’t take Trump’s comment in the SOTU as an omen.
He may very well have been referencing his desire to make such an option ATTRACTIVE to employers, not a MANDATE.
There is a difference between INCENTIVES and REQUIREMENTS.
I am betting Trump would go for the former—it allows for creative applications and freedom for the entrepreneur.
Agreed. The current law allows for unpaid family leave, but men rarely use all of it, since most young families require at least one income.
But if it is paid, then more would use the full leave period, since there is no economic incentive not to.
When I proposed to my wife, she asked if she could stay home with the kids. I said yes and she said she’d marry me.
Yup. Luddite
Every benefit comes with a cost, both to the company and the employees that work there.
Is paid FMA worth every employee losing a week of vacation every year and 3 sick days?
Mostly women will be taking paid FMA, but every employee will pay for it.
I agree, buy beyond that what about all the millions of parents that toughed it out having and raising their own children over the years? Maybe the answer is to make stay-at-home Moms fashionable again, eh?
It’s simply not necessary and frankly un-American.
As the politicians like to hear themselves say, “it’s not who we are.”.
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