7 ms·

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

by dharmon 10y ago

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.

Moshe_Silnorin 10y ago
>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.
- azernik 10y ago
  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.
- Naritai 10y ago
  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-boost-fertility/ http://blogs.wsj.com/juggle/2011/04/27/child-care-helps-boos...
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    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).
    - Naritai 10y ago
      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.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - emodendroket 10y ago
        OK, but the fact that the countries with the worst aging demographics are, like, Italy, Korea, and Japan illustrates a certain pattern.
- nugget 10y ago
  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.
nugget 10y ago
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.
Declanomous 10y ago
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.
rsync 10y ago
"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!
- paulddraper 10y ago
  > We don't make them do anything. Agreed. I don't make parenting decisions for your family. Please don't make them for mine. I'll be responsible for my decisions, not yours. Thanks. (Parent of two)
- emperorcezar 10y ago
  There is a lot if hidden privilege that allows you to think for most people it is a choice.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    And there's a lot of hidden choice that you are ignoring. A government mandate requiring companies to provide paid leave forces (i.e. opposite of choice) everyone else to pay for it.
    - Frondo 10y ago
      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.
      - paulddraper 10y ago
        And once you have enough citizens supporting such ideas and plans, you can force the rest.
kakarot 10y ago
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.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  Only someone who has never had kids would suggest such a thing. Newborns are a LOT of work. This time isn't going to be a leisurely vacation.
  - kakarot 10y ago
    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.
    - st3v3r 10y ago
      I'm not going to let you use it for the "sake of argument" unless you can show evidence that it is a significant enough problem.
      - kakarot 10y ago
        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?

by dharmon 10y ago

Moshe_Silnorin 10y ago

>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.

azernik 10y ago
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.
Naritai 10y ago
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-boost-fertility/ http://blogs.wsj.com/juggle/2011/04/27/child-care-helps-boos...
- emodendroket 10y ago
  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).
  - Naritai 10y ago
    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.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - emodendroket 10y ago
      OK, but the fact that the countries with the worst aging demographics are, like, Italy, Korea, and Japan illustrates a certain pattern.
nugget 10y ago
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.

nugget 10y ago

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.

Declanomous 10y ago

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.

rsync 10y ago

"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!

paulddraper 10y ago
> We don't make them do anything. Agreed. I don't make parenting decisions for your family. Please don't make them for mine. I'll be responsible for my decisions, not yours. Thanks. (Parent of two)
emperorcezar 10y ago
There is a lot if hidden privilege that allows you to think for most people it is a choice.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  And there's a lot of hidden choice that you are ignoring. A government mandate requiring companies to provide paid leave forces (i.e. opposite of choice) everyone else to pay for it.
  - Frondo 10y ago
    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.
    - paulddraper 10y ago
      And once you have enough citizens supporting such ideas and plans, you can force the rest.

kakarot 10y ago

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.

st3v3r 10y ago
Only someone who has never had kids would suggest such a thing. Newborns are a LOT of work. This time isn't going to be a leisurely vacation.
- kakarot 10y ago
  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.
  - st3v3r 10y ago
    I'm not going to let you use it for the "sake of argument" unless you can show evidence that it is a significant enough problem.
    - kakarot 10y ago
      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?