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 ...
“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.”
OK. Never mind.
Anyone, please help a poor computer illiterate: how do I get my cursor to stop automatically increasing or decreasing print size when I scroll? It’s annoying and I see nothing in Settings that helps.
That was Ivanka’s idea. She’s a bleeping liberal and her dad is throwing her a bone so she’ll go back to New York.
You are entirely correct.
I have worked since I was 16 & I still work doing bookkeeping for 2 clients at age 78.
Not only do the rest of the co-workers have to fill in the slack—MANY of those co-workers do not have any kids & never did or will.
This places the burden of discrimination into the picture. One employee-—able & willing to keep having kids gets preferential treatment & their ‘job’ is held open for them for a number of weeks. The rest of the staff has to fill in the gap.
Perhaps, as an employer, I can find that I can run the office/business with fewer people all along ???
Then, after the kids come along, those employees get to take time off for doctor’s appointments, etc. They might get docked the pay, but that doesn’t change the work burden or the time frames in getting that work done one little bit.
I worked many a job where the daily work was just that——daily. It had to be cleaned up at the end of each day because a new load of paperwork was coming in the next morning. When someone was missing, the rest of us had to squeeze in that person’s work along with our own duties & workload.
Giving ANY kind of preferential treatment to a woman who chooses to have kids when they have a job they want ‘held’ for them is just plain wrong.
Either have the job or have the kids. IF you have to lose a job to have your kid——so be it. Otherwise. these women are getting the best of both of their worlds——while many of us never even had kids.
As you can tell, this has been a burr under my saddle for a very long time.
Incentives are and always will be part of tax policy. Realpolitik.
Leftists may want to look how things turned out in France Greece Italy.............
Make a correlation between paid family leave and the breakdown of the family.
I’m for months of parental leave for the father and the mother from the birth of each baby forward.
Paternity leave should be available for all fathers to the exact same extent that maternity leave is available for all mothers based on an equal right to parenting time.
It isn’t if you are the one paying for it.
1. Decide how much parental leave you feel that mothers should get starting at the birth of each baby
2. Realize that fathers getting the exact same amount of parental leave starting at the birth of each baby doesn’t mean the mother getting any less
They should both get the same amount of parenting time.
Anything else is government-enforced disenfranchisement of fatherhood.
If there was gov’t mandated paid leave for up to 12 or 16 weeks, you would see a lot of small companies hire only men or very very few women of child baring age.
You would also see a lot more H1B visa applications if the company is primarily in the STEM industry.
Using Social Security for yet another non-retirement program is bad. The idea will never be “revenue neutral” no matter what number you try to run out into the future. Expenditures now for promises in the future NEVER workout.
The company hires people, not parts.
If they want to treat their employees like parts, install a robot.
It encourages a woman to stay in the work force instead of plan on staying at home while children are growing up. I'm speaking from logic, not study. Logic is that society is better off when work doesn't overwhelm life.
Agreed.
Logic is that society is better off when work doesn't overwhelm life.
If true, as I would agree that it is, it applies to men as fathers too.
“Logic is that society is better off when work doesn’t overwhelm life.”
That’s not logic. That’s your opinion.
“or staying at home while children are growing up”
Now that’s logical.
Society is better off when woman stay at home and raise their children, instead of working to make extra money to buy a bunch junk the family doesn’t need. (Single mothers and the cost of living, let’s not go there.) That’s my opinion.
The topoi/topic here is the workplace, not `social engineering’/society. Saying people are treated as parts or robots otherwise is bad rhetoric and unhelpful to the discussion.
Workplace productivity and employee morale suffer when women can take off one-quarter of a year, leaving their coworkers to do their jobs.
Even worse, their jobs are held for them; then, as someone above pointed out, they decide they like not doing what they wouldn’t do if they weren’t being paid and turn in their notice after three months of leisure. That happened where I worked.
Paying them while they are vacationing—like furloughed federal workers—will only make this invidious treatment of workers worse in its effect on the world of work as a subset of society.
Another feel-good law? Fewer laws and regulations, not more!
“If they want to treat their employees like parts, install a robot.”
I take it you’ve never had to sign the front of the paycheck.
Why, does it impede basic human decency and concern for ones closest associates, or were you deficient in that area beforehand?
Attitudes like yours are why unions exist.
Hogwash. There is no medical recovery required for a man whose wife has a baby. She should be allowed a reasonable recovery period, the same as she would be if she suffered an injury. Then she can use her accrued vacation time or sick leave if she needs more.
He, on the other hand, can use vacation time right away or just stay on the job.
If it must exist, paid family leave must require one of the two spouses work contributing to both fed and state.
Also, a percentage of earnings should be held in escrow, and should the employee fail to return, the escrow is forfeited back to the company.
On the hand, the Country needs babies born into responsible families. We can’t be trading abortions/delays for illegals.
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