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There's something that has always nagged at me in these discussions, and I've always been somewhat afraid to bring it up lest I misconstrue, but I want to try a

There's something that has always nagged at me in these discussions, and I've always been somewhat afraid to bring it up lest I misconstrue, but I want to try and figure this out. What's a state of affairs we can reach such that people don't become preemptively discriminatory for lack of being able to examine factors that would impact workplace performance? We agree, societally, that we shouldn't discriminate against parents. However, we don't live in a world where a business is spared the cost incurred by that. That's just not the pragmatic reality of employment in the US at this time, and my fear is that if unable to ask "do you have a good track record or gameplan for keeping up with the unique obligations of childbearing" we'll err on the side of paranoia in hiring, and the discrimination will occur in seeking to AVOID potential conflict or discrimination. A govt stipend was one way I could see this, in that the business doesn't have to bear the cost and can offload work. I'd still be concerned that a business might be afraid about context switching/onboarding, but it's a step forward. Unfortunately, I don't even see that becoming a reality in a country where paternity leave is still the exception and not the rule. There almost seems to be a "psychological game theory" question lodged in there, apologies if I was rambly in stating it.

tptacek 8y ago
I am very much the wrong person for you to recruit in an attempt to apply the axiomatic method to discrimination laws. Discriminating against pregnant women is wrong because it's wrong, full stop.
- existencebox 8y ago
  Your statement of "recruit" is exactly the sort of misconstruction I was hoping to avoid. threatofrain got it right. This is a problem we need to address, but the solutions I've seen thus far don't take unfortunate pathologies of human psychology into account, and when we don't do that, we get very surprised at the lack of results down the line. You're more than willing to try to live in a world where you say "Because we said X this is what's going to happen" but I find that to be far less proactive than trying to ask what actual responses are, as distasteful as they might be, and ways to address them. My concern is that Rayiner's response, "we prohibit it because we made it a law" is still ignoring the key point. _it's too goddamn easy_ to discriminate and paint it as something else, too many reasons I could turn down ANY applicant, for me to just brush it off as "a law is sufficient." I believe that if this is a problem we _really_ want to fix, it's going to involve delving into some unpleasant trains of thought that aren't really "acceptable conversation" right now. I just worry that by ignoring it, the problem goes unaddressed, and we potentially foment resistance against it. It feels naive to me to think that just because a law is "full stop necessary" in our moral frame of reference, to think that's sufficient to implement it effectively such that it generates the outcome you want in the long run.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    I'm not interested.
    - existencebox 8y ago
      I can't say anything in response but that I believe you're willfully misreading my posts as to construe me to be fighting against your end. I'm disappointed that we're not able to engage in better faith.
  - giantsloth 8y ago
    Ug you're such a logic lord. I bet you're a huge Sam Harris fan. You're simply kowtowing to the normative, a non ideological centrist operating inside the confines of reality as it is prescribed currently in the name of "being realistic". Grow a backbone and operate from the stance of what's moral and what's ideologically correct and work back from there. Obviously companies have all the power, and we need to fight a guerrilla style war against corporate hegemony, and we obviously have to take strategic consideration of these facts. But your idea that, "oooo the companies are going to fight back, and ultimately we're going to lose and be even further punished", is essentially arguing that we should do nothing and "not be so hasty", even if you have plausible deniability in "not exactly saying that" or "you're misrepresenting what I'm saying", but that is ultimately actually what you are suggesting, which makes what you're suggesting worthless, spineless and lacking any morality.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - leetcrew 8y ago
      > Obviously companies have all the power, and we need to fight a guerrilla style war against corporate hegemony, and we obviously have to take strategic consideration of these facts. virtually no one who posts on this website will be better off after the revolution. why dedicate your life to screwing yourself?
      - 8y ago
- bobcostas55 8y ago
  Murder is wrong yet we don't spend infinity $ on trying to prevent it. There's a point where we go "we could spend more to prevent more murders but it's not worth it". Everything is ultimately subject to the constraints imposed by reality and therefore the economic costs and benefits related to certain behaviors. Therefore, designing policy based on willfully blind moralism is a terrible approach. If you're not even willing to consider the idea of regulations to deal with the matter pragmatically (such as the govt stipend suggested by the person you were replying to), then the situation is just going to continue unchanged.
  - posterboy 8y ago
    > we could spend more to prevent more murders but it's not worth it that's a contradiction in terms. What's "it"? What could you spend and why is it worth less than it's supposed to? I'd argue that it fails because most direct attempts to stop murder involve more murder. Which is to say, no, we could not, or we would've done it, but of course the reasons are very difficult. An easy solution is to restrict the definitions, which is necessary, because death is awfully complicated for the mind to process, but therefore also subject to abuse. And, individually we have less interest in our neighbor procreating. But in a benevolent reading, tptacek's quoted question could be reduced to "how will you be able to care of young children, given that we require a high degree of commitment to the company?"
- cortesoft 8y ago
  I don’t think the person you are arguing with is disagreeing that discrimination against pregnant women (or mothers) is wrong. I got the sense they are trying to figure out how we combat it. Yes, we can make it illegal, and enforce strictly, and yes we should do that. However, as long as their is a cost to companies when women take maternity leave, you are going to have to keep fighting the battle because companies will find new and creative ways to discriminate to save money. What we need to do, in addition to enforcing anti-discrimination laws, is to have maternity and paternity leave mandated by law, and paid for with taxpayer dollars. The cost of having and raising the next generation should be shared. We can all agree that the discrimination is wrong, full stop, but we need to be pragmatic and realistic in how we combat it.
rayiner 8y ago
> However, we don't live in a world where a business is spared the cost incurred by that. We also live in a world where the stock market ceases to exist if there isn’t a new generation of consumers and workers. (Facebook’s stock price is predicated on the idea that 1 years from now there will still be young people to advertise to.) Children create internalized costs (to parents, to businesses that hire parents), but large positive externalities. We address that situation by categorically prohibiting discrimintion. Yes, businesses aren’t spared the costs of dealing with peoples’ parental obligations. But it doesn’t matter because that is a cost all businesses have to accommodate (just like the cost of providing for bathroom breaks and lunch breaks and other accommodations for human needs).
- threatofrain 8y ago
  One interpretation of existencebox is that he has already assumed the moral position that shielding pregnancies is wholesome for society, but he's asking the policy question of where the money should come from, or if government should get involved in evening out the burden. On a tangential matter, I think many people would agree that society should consider financial help for children in poverty. But who should pay? The potentially poorer neighborhoods where they reside? The businesses in the area? Or the national government?
  - Barrin92 8y ago
    >but he's asking the policy question of where the money should come from, or if government should get involved in evening out the burden. From the businesses. Paid paternal leave is already a legal mandate in just about every country. The US is very lacking in this regard.
    - alasdair_ 8y ago
      >From the businesses. Paid paternal leave is already a legal mandate in just about every country. The US is very lacking in this regard. Yes, and in those other countries, the vast portion of the cost (just like the cost of health insurance) is borne by the government, not the business. For example, in the UK, 92% of the mandated parental leave costs are paid by the government (technically it's a refund but you can get an advance on it). Employers can (and often do) offer more if they wish. source: https://www.gov.uk/shared-parental-leave-and-pay-employer-guide/help-with-statutory-pay https://www.gov.uk/shared-parental-leave-and-pay-employer-gu...
ensignavenger 8y ago
Everyone has to juggle various demands on their time. You could just as easily make the question more generic, and ask everyone "do you have a good track record or gameplan for keeping up with personal obligations and balancing them with your professional obligations as an employee?" Of course my answer to that question would be 'yes'.
- giantsloth 8y ago
  This is an awful suggestion. Next you're going to be suggesting employers ask where on the Andre Walker Hair Typing System potential recruits fall so they don't have to ask whether or not they are black.
  - ensignavenger 8y ago
    I have no idea what the "Andre Walker Hair Typing System" is or what it has to do with being black, but if it has anything to do with hair, it would seem completely irrelevant to how good of an employee one is (As is ones skin color). Further, the question I propose is a simple yes or no question, with the option to elaborate. And if you couldn't tell by my last sentence, I don't actually expect the response to be particularly meaningful in most cases.
AFNobody 8y ago
> We agree, societally, that we shouldn't discriminate against parents. However, we don't live in a world where a business is spared the cost incurred by that. The policy solution is: - A per-child negative income tax sufficient to cover the risk/impact of employer discrimination. - Give mothers and fathers equal leave. - Limit the compulsory work week to 50 hours for salaried (or overtime hourly) employees. - Penalties for violating the above sufficient to convince lawyers to take the case on a speculative basis if the client has a legitimate case. That balances out the differences between genders and parents/non-parents sufficiently that anyone with sense wouldn't take the risk.
- gnicholas 8y ago
  > A per-child negative income tax sufficient to cover the risk/impact of employer discrimination. Wouldn't this just lead to employers discriminating, on the grounds that "hey, you already got your tax benefit to make up for it"?
  - AFNobody 8y ago
    Not if the penalties harsh enough that a decent lawyer will take an average case on spec. You need to remember the effectiveness of a law is penalty * odds of getting caught. You just need to make discrimination unattractive financially and provide some incentive to the parents to cover the risk.
- ryanobjc 8y ago
  Other solutions, since we aren't going to see policy solutions in the US anytime soon, might include: - insurance to help companies pay for parental leave - state level policies (eg: California, but it only has 6 weeks which is hilariously short) - stronger enforcement of current laws
  - AFNobody 8y ago
    True, I agree under an ideal framework including a form of insurance for parental leave could also work in place of the negative income tax.
banku_brougham 8y ago
The world must be peopled!
- marssaxman 8y ago
  Why?
sunir 8y ago
The economy exists to serve the people not the other way around. The purpose of life is to preserve and develop life. If the economy is making it hard to live and reproduce the economy is maladaptive and will fail.
- Mirioron 8y ago
  The problem is that the people refers to a group as a collective. The economy deals with individuals that make up a group. Individuals always triumph in the long run, which means that if you set rules where you discriminate against individuals that want to be different for the benefit of the group then you end up with a system that will eventually collapse.
- christophilus 8y ago
  Reminds me of a time when G.K. Chesterton saw a banner that asked, "Should store clerks be allowed to marry?" To which he retorted, "Should store clerks be allowed to be store clerks?" We do tend to forget the proper order of things at times.
SerLava 8y ago
Now that you mention it, a government stipend in some form seems like the only good solution. Without it, we're automatically punishing good nondiscriminatory businesses and rewarding discriminatory businesses who do get away with it. It's spreading out the costs to everyone instead of focusing it on the one company that suddenly happens to have 10% or 30% of its workforce suddenly gone. It seems much fairer to all parties involved.
eanzenberg 8y ago
It's stories like these that makes me thank God my wife (and mother to a 1.5 year old) doesn't work in tech. In her field of pharma there isn't a stigma associated with women of child-bearing age and when they announce they're pregnant. What a field we're in when ranked output is all that matters at the cost of being human with human needs. I needed a kid as much as my wife. I guess I shouldn't expect any different by a field dominated by a bunch of male douchey autists.
deltateam 8y ago
> That's just not the pragmatic reality of employment in the US at this time Correct, look at the German approach. I'm not sure if the government subsidizes the companies for the lack of production, but the state mandates 1 year paid leave, and up to 3 and ability to get the same job back. Now I know that is totally impractical for the tech sector, taken verbatim. The US can learn from it anyway.
victor106 8y ago
The corporate tax rate has been reduced to something like 20%. Most companies in the US pay much less than that. The state is already subsidizing a lot for big corporations. Companies are nothing but made up of people. The irony is at one time or another these same people would have wanted the exact same benefits for themselves but they don’t like extending those same benefits to others. If they can’t act in the larger national interest on a few of these occasions then they won’t have a population to sell to.
- stealthmodeclan 8y ago
  If they can’t act in the larger national interest on a few of these occasions then they won’t have a population to sell to. Apple sells globally, should Apple also pay for the welfare of the countries where it sells its product? The corporate tax rate has been reduced to something like 20%. Most companies in the US pay much less than that. The state is already subsidizing a lot for big corporations. Some part of which flows to investors who purchase securities. Capital gains and dividends are taxed. Companies can't earn record profits without government running deficit (by healthcare/infra expenditure) and without people running out of savings (by spending on the goods and services being produced) Part of the value produced will be taxed in the US while the individuals and governments all over the world run out of saving and run into deficits respectively. All that flows to the US. Stopping this is much worse for the US.
  - pg314 8y ago
    > Apple sells globally, should Apple also pay for the welfare of the countries where it sells its product? Yes. And they do in countries which charge VAT. They should arguably be taxed on the profits they make in the territories they sell in, but that is much harder to do in practice without international cooperation. > Some part of which flows to investors who purchase securities. Capital gains and dividends are taxed. Capital gains are only taxed when they are realized. E.g. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway hasn't paid a dime in taxes on the 15.4 billion dollar capital gains on its 16.7 billion dollar stake in Coca Cola (a position he initiated in 1987). Since Buffett has indicated he isn't planning on selling Coca Cola ever, those capital gains won't ever be taxed. > Companies can't earn record profits without government running deficit (by healthcare/infra expenditure) and without people running out of savings (by spending on the goods and services being produced) Of course they can: by becoming more efficient or by growing GDP. > Part of the value produced will be taxed in the US while the individuals and governments all over the world run out of saving and run into deficits respectively. All that flows to the US. Stopping this is much worse for the US. Nonsense. If you had looked at the OECD government deficit data [1], you would have known that the US is running one of the biggest deficits in terms of % of GDP (4.94% in 2016 vs 1.546% for the EU as a whole, or a surplus of 1% for Germany). Similarly, personal savings are 2.8% in the US [2] vs 10% in the EU [3] or 50% in Japan [4]. Of course, this has little to do with the balance of trade, as you seem to be thinking. The US runs a trade deficit: it imports more than it exports. This is offset by capital inflows from abroad, meaning that a bigger and bigger share of the ownership of productive assets are being owned by foreigners. Returns on those assets will accrue to foreign investors. [1] https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-deficit.htm https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-deficit.htm [2] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/indicators https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/indicators [3] https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/indicators https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/indicators [4] https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/indicators https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/indicators
dragonwriter 8y ago
> What's a state of affairs we can reach such that people don't become preemptively discriminatory for lack of being able to examine factors that would impact workplace performance? Make the penalties for such discrimination large enough that, even when factoring in the uncertainty that they will be applied in each case, they outweigh any conceivable benefit.
awinder 8y ago
So insurance actually is the vehicle that most companies utilize to protect against shortish-term disability (which does cover pregnancy). Second, tax credits exist for FMLA leave, which stack on top of normal favorable wage tax treatment. The financial burden is being collectivized already. If you’re talking about the general time treatment that parents have vs non-parents, then I don’t know what to tell you. 40 hours a week is pretty attainable especially with flexibility around work day, which a progressive workspace like google should be able to support. If the problem is that google is set up to expect people to work themselves to death, that’s not smart and they should focus on that problem instead.
scarface74 8y ago
I agree. You can't have it all - a man with one butt can't dance at two weddings. You have to make a choice between aggressively getting ahead in your career and family. I think more couples should think about the effect that thier (not just her) career will have on thier family and choose to make the necessary lifestyle choices accordingly. I married my wife in our mid thirties and she had two kids she was raising by herself - in a good neighborhood (meaning they weren't struggling). We've made plenty of career limiting choices to put our marriage and our family first. She took a pay cut to work a job with fewer hours and less pay and I gave up all of my side hustles and refuse to work a job that requires extended frequent travel, long hours, or a long commute. I don't expect a business to accomadate my family choices or to reward me as highly as someone who is willing to put in 70 hours a week. On the other hand, a business shouldn't expect me to sacrifice more than 40-45 hours a week with my family for their benefit. I'd much rather lose my job than lose my wife.
ThrustVectoring 8y ago
You look at workplace performance directly, that's how. Employers fundamentally aren't entitled to the residual value of workplace performance above and beyond the standards they demand for the renumeration they provide. Possibly you can create an option that allows employees to self-discriminate. Say, "drop down to 30 hrs/wk with some work-from-home flexibility" for a significant drop in pay. You'll get roughly the same level of performance in many creative arts like programming, but since it's the employee's choice to take the company isn't responsible for "discriminating".
DoreenMichele 8y ago
You seem to assume being a parent (as an employee) is all downside and no upside (for the company). Let me suggest this unstated assumption is not accurate. You learn a lot when you have a family that you aren't likely to learn any other way. My ex was a really smart guy, but not much of a people person. He once told me that most of what he knew about being a good manager he learned from being married to me. Otherwise, he would be good at the technical parts of his job, but he wouldn't be any good at dealing with people. Part of what I knew about dealing with people came from being a full time parent. I'm also much more of a people person than he was, but potential gets developed by practice and real world experience. It doesn't happen in a vacuum.

tptacek 8y ago

I am very much the wrong person for you to recruit in an attempt to apply the axiomatic method to discrimination laws. Discriminating against pregnant women is wrong because it's wrong, full stop.

existencebox 8y ago
Your statement of "recruit" is exactly the sort of misconstruction I was hoping to avoid. threatofrain got it right. This is a problem we need to address, but the solutions I've seen thus far don't take unfortunate pathologies of human psychology into account, and when we don't do that, we get very surprised at the lack of results down the line. You're more than willing to try to live in a world where you say "Because we said X this is what's going to happen" but I find that to be far less proactive than trying to ask what actual responses are, as distasteful as they might be, and ways to address them. My concern is that Rayiner's response, "we prohibit it because we made it a law" is still ignoring the key point. _it's too goddamn easy_ to discriminate and paint it as something else, too many reasons I could turn down ANY applicant, for me to just brush it off as "a law is sufficient." I believe that if this is a problem we _really_ want to fix, it's going to involve delving into some unpleasant trains of thought that aren't really "acceptable conversation" right now. I just worry that by ignoring it, the problem goes unaddressed, and we potentially foment resistance against it. It feels naive to me to think that just because a law is "full stop necessary" in our moral frame of reference, to think that's sufficient to implement it effectively such that it generates the outcome you want in the long run.
- tptacek 8y ago
  I'm not interested.
  - existencebox 8y ago
    I can't say anything in response but that I believe you're willfully misreading my posts as to construe me to be fighting against your end. I'm disappointed that we're not able to engage in better faith.
- giantsloth 8y ago
  Ug you're such a logic lord. I bet you're a huge Sam Harris fan. You're simply kowtowing to the normative, a non ideological centrist operating inside the confines of reality as it is prescribed currently in the name of "being realistic". Grow a backbone and operate from the stance of what's moral and what's ideologically correct and work back from there. Obviously companies have all the power, and we need to fight a guerrilla style war against corporate hegemony, and we obviously have to take strategic consideration of these facts. But your idea that, "oooo the companies are going to fight back, and ultimately we're going to lose and be even further punished", is essentially arguing that we should do nothing and "not be so hasty", even if you have plausible deniability in "not exactly saying that" or "you're misrepresenting what I'm saying", but that is ultimately actually what you are suggesting, which makes what you're suggesting worthless, spineless and lacking any morality.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - leetcrew 8y ago
    > Obviously companies have all the power, and we need to fight a guerrilla style war against corporate hegemony, and we obviously have to take strategic consideration of these facts. virtually no one who posts on this website will be better off after the revolution. why dedicate your life to screwing yourself?
    - 8y ago
bobcostas55 8y ago
Murder is wrong yet we don't spend infinity $ on trying to prevent it. There's a point where we go "we could spend more to prevent more murders but it's not worth it". Everything is ultimately subject to the constraints imposed by reality and therefore the economic costs and benefits related to certain behaviors. Therefore, designing policy based on willfully blind moralism is a terrible approach. If you're not even willing to consider the idea of regulations to deal with the matter pragmatically (such as the govt stipend suggested by the person you were replying to), then the situation is just going to continue unchanged.
- posterboy 8y ago
  > we could spend more to prevent more murders but it's not worth it that's a contradiction in terms. What's "it"? What could you spend and why is it worth less than it's supposed to? I'd argue that it fails because most direct attempts to stop murder involve more murder. Which is to say, no, we could not, or we would've done it, but of course the reasons are very difficult. An easy solution is to restrict the definitions, which is necessary, because death is awfully complicated for the mind to process, but therefore also subject to abuse. And, individually we have less interest in our neighbor procreating. But in a benevolent reading, tptacek's quoted question could be reduced to "how will you be able to care of young children, given that we require a high degree of commitment to the company?"
cortesoft 8y ago
I don’t think the person you are arguing with is disagreeing that discrimination against pregnant women (or mothers) is wrong. I got the sense they are trying to figure out how we combat it. Yes, we can make it illegal, and enforce strictly, and yes we should do that. However, as long as their is a cost to companies when women take maternity leave, you are going to have to keep fighting the battle because companies will find new and creative ways to discriminate to save money. What we need to do, in addition to enforcing anti-discrimination laws, is to have maternity and paternity leave mandated by law, and paid for with taxpayer dollars. The cost of having and raising the next generation should be shared. We can all agree that the discrimination is wrong, full stop, but we need to be pragmatic and realistic in how we combat it.

rayiner 8y ago

> However, we don't live in a world where a business is spared the cost incurred by that. We also live in a world where the stock market ceases to exist if there isn’t a new generation of consumers and workers. (Facebook’s stock price is predicated on the idea that 1 years from now there will still be young people to advertise to.) Children create internalized costs (to parents, to businesses that hire parents), but large positive externalities. We address that situation by categorically prohibiting discrimintion. Yes, businesses aren’t spared the costs of dealing with peoples’ parental obligations. But it doesn’t matter because that is a cost all businesses have to accommodate (just like the cost of providing for bathroom breaks and lunch breaks and other accommodations for human needs).

threatofrain 8y ago
One interpretation of existencebox is that he has already assumed the moral position that shielding pregnancies is wholesome for society, but he's asking the policy question of where the money should come from, or if government should get involved in evening out the burden. On a tangential matter, I think many people would agree that society should consider financial help for children in poverty. But who should pay? The potentially poorer neighborhoods where they reside? The businesses in the area? Or the national government?
- Barrin92 8y ago
  >but he's asking the policy question of where the money should come from, or if government should get involved in evening out the burden. From the businesses. Paid paternal leave is already a legal mandate in just about every country. The US is very lacking in this regard.
  - alasdair_ 8y ago
    >From the businesses. Paid paternal leave is already a legal mandate in just about every country. The US is very lacking in this regard. Yes, and in those other countries, the vast portion of the cost (just like the cost of health insurance) is borne by the government, not the business. For example, in the UK, 92% of the mandated parental leave costs are paid by the government (technically it's a refund but you can get an advance on it). Employers can (and often do) offer more if they wish. source: https://www.gov.uk/shared-parental-leave-and-pay-employer-guide/help-with-statutory-pay https://www.gov.uk/shared-parental-leave-and-pay-employer-gu...

ensignavenger 8y ago

Everyone has to juggle various demands on their time. You could just as easily make the question more generic, and ask everyone "do you have a good track record or gameplan for keeping up with personal obligations and balancing them with your professional obligations as an employee?" Of course my answer to that question would be 'yes'.

giantsloth 8y ago
This is an awful suggestion. Next you're going to be suggesting employers ask where on the Andre Walker Hair Typing System potential recruits fall so they don't have to ask whether or not they are black.
- ensignavenger 8y ago
  I have no idea what the "Andre Walker Hair Typing System" is or what it has to do with being black, but if it has anything to do with hair, it would seem completely irrelevant to how good of an employee one is (As is ones skin color). Further, the question I propose is a simple yes or no question, with the option to elaborate. And if you couldn't tell by my last sentence, I don't actually expect the response to be particularly meaningful in most cases.

AFNobody 8y ago

> We agree, societally, that we shouldn't discriminate against parents. However, we don't live in a world where a business is spared the cost incurred by that. The policy solution is: - A per-child negative income tax sufficient to cover the risk/impact of employer discrimination. - Give mothers and fathers equal leave. - Limit the compulsory work week to 50 hours for salaried (or overtime hourly) employees. - Penalties for violating the above sufficient to convince lawyers to take the case on a speculative basis if the client has a legitimate case. That balances out the differences between genders and parents/non-parents sufficiently that anyone with sense wouldn't take the risk.

gnicholas 8y ago
> A per-child negative income tax sufficient to cover the risk/impact of employer discrimination. Wouldn't this just lead to employers discriminating, on the grounds that "hey, you already got your tax benefit to make up for it"?
- AFNobody 8y ago
  Not if the penalties harsh enough that a decent lawyer will take an average case on spec. You need to remember the effectiveness of a law is penalty * odds of getting caught. You just need to make discrimination unattractive financially and provide some incentive to the parents to cover the risk.
ryanobjc 8y ago
Other solutions, since we aren't going to see policy solutions in the US anytime soon, might include: - insurance to help companies pay for parental leave - state level policies (eg: California, but it only has 6 weeks which is hilariously short) - stronger enforcement of current laws
- AFNobody 8y ago
  True, I agree under an ideal framework including a form of insurance for parental leave could also work in place of the negative income tax.

banku_brougham 8y ago

The world must be peopled!

marssaxman 8y ago
Why?

sunir 8y ago

The economy exists to serve the people not the other way around. The purpose of life is to preserve and develop life. If the economy is making it hard to live and reproduce the economy is maladaptive and will fail.

Mirioron 8y ago
The problem is that the people refers to a group as a collective. The economy deals with individuals that make up a group. Individuals always triumph in the long run, which means that if you set rules where you discriminate against individuals that want to be different for the benefit of the group then you end up with a system that will eventually collapse.
christophilus 8y ago
Reminds me of a time when G.K. Chesterton saw a banner that asked, "Should store clerks be allowed to marry?" To which he retorted, "Should store clerks be allowed to be store clerks?" We do tend to forget the proper order of things at times.

SerLava 8y ago

Now that you mention it, a government stipend in some form seems like the only good solution. Without it, we're automatically punishing good nondiscriminatory businesses and rewarding discriminatory businesses who do get away with it. It's spreading out the costs to everyone instead of focusing it on the one company that suddenly happens to have 10% or 30% of its workforce suddenly gone. It seems much fairer to all parties involved.

eanzenberg 8y ago

It's stories like these that makes me thank God my wife (and mother to a 1.5 year old) doesn't work in tech. In her field of pharma there isn't a stigma associated with women of child-bearing age and when they announce they're pregnant. What a field we're in when ranked output is all that matters at the cost of being human with human needs. I needed a kid as much as my wife. I guess I shouldn't expect any different by a field dominated by a bunch of male douchey autists.

deltateam 8y ago

> That's just not the pragmatic reality of employment in the US at this time Correct, look at the German approach. I'm not sure if the government subsidizes the companies for the lack of production, but the state mandates 1 year paid leave, and up to 3 and ability to get the same job back. Now I know that is totally impractical for the tech sector, taken verbatim. The US can learn from it anyway.

victor106 8y ago

The corporate tax rate has been reduced to something like 20%. Most companies in the US pay much less than that. The state is already subsidizing a lot for big corporations. Companies are nothing but made up of people. The irony is at one time or another these same people would have wanted the exact same benefits for themselves but they don’t like extending those same benefits to others. If they can’t act in the larger national interest on a few of these occasions then they won’t have a population to sell to.

stealthmodeclan 8y ago
If they can’t act in the larger national interest on a few of these occasions then they won’t have a population to sell to. Apple sells globally, should Apple also pay for the welfare of the countries where it sells its product? The corporate tax rate has been reduced to something like 20%. Most companies in the US pay much less than that. The state is already subsidizing a lot for big corporations. Some part of which flows to investors who purchase securities. Capital gains and dividends are taxed. Companies can't earn record profits without government running deficit (by healthcare/infra expenditure) and without people running out of savings (by spending on the goods and services being produced) Part of the value produced will be taxed in the US while the individuals and governments all over the world run out of saving and run into deficits respectively. All that flows to the US. Stopping this is much worse for the US.
- pg314 8y ago
  > Apple sells globally, should Apple also pay for the welfare of the countries where it sells its product? Yes. And they do in countries which charge VAT. They should arguably be taxed on the profits they make in the territories they sell in, but that is much harder to do in practice without international cooperation. > Some part of which flows to investors who purchase securities. Capital gains and dividends are taxed. Capital gains are only taxed when they are realized. E.g. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway hasn't paid a dime in taxes on the 15.4 billion dollar capital gains on its 16.7 billion dollar stake in Coca Cola (a position he initiated in 1987). Since Buffett has indicated he isn't planning on selling Coca Cola ever, those capital gains won't ever be taxed. > Companies can't earn record profits without government running deficit (by healthcare/infra expenditure) and without people running out of savings (by spending on the goods and services being produced) Of course they can: by becoming more efficient or by growing GDP. > Part of the value produced will be taxed in the US while the individuals and governments all over the world run out of saving and run into deficits respectively. All that flows to the US. Stopping this is much worse for the US. Nonsense. If you had looked at the OECD government deficit data [1], you would have known that the US is running one of the biggest deficits in terms of % of GDP (4.94% in 2016 vs 1.546% for the EU as a whole, or a surplus of 1% for Germany). Similarly, personal savings are 2.8% in the US [2] vs 10% in the EU [3] or 50% in Japan [4]. Of course, this has little to do with the balance of trade, as you seem to be thinking. The US runs a trade deficit: it imports more than it exports. This is offset by capital inflows from abroad, meaning that a bigger and bigger share of the ownership of productive assets are being owned by foreigners. Returns on those assets will accrue to foreign investors. [1] https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-deficit.htm https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-deficit.htm [2] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/indicators https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/indicators [3] https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/indicators https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/indicators [4] https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/indicators https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/indicators

dragonwriter 8y ago

> What's a state of affairs we can reach such that people don't become preemptively discriminatory for lack of being able to examine factors that would impact workplace performance? Make the penalties for such discrimination large enough that, even when factoring in the uncertainty that they will be applied in each case, they outweigh any conceivable benefit.

awinder 8y ago

So insurance actually is the vehicle that most companies utilize to protect against shortish-term disability (which does cover pregnancy). Second, tax credits exist for FMLA leave, which stack on top of normal favorable wage tax treatment. The financial burden is being collectivized already. If you’re talking about the general time treatment that parents have vs non-parents, then I don’t know what to tell you. 40 hours a week is pretty attainable especially with flexibility around work day, which a progressive workspace like google should be able to support. If the problem is that google is set up to expect people to work themselves to death, that’s not smart and they should focus on that problem instead.

scarface74 8y ago

I agree. You can't have it all - a man with one butt can't dance at two weddings. You have to make a choice between aggressively getting ahead in your career and family. I think more couples should think about the effect that thier (not just her) career will have on thier family and choose to make the necessary lifestyle choices accordingly. I married my wife in our mid thirties and she had two kids she was raising by herself - in a good neighborhood (meaning they weren't struggling). We've made plenty of career limiting choices to put our marriage and our family first. She took a pay cut to work a job with fewer hours and less pay and I gave up all of my side hustles and refuse to work a job that requires extended frequent travel, long hours, or a long commute. I don't expect a business to accomadate my family choices or to reward me as highly as someone who is willing to put in 70 hours a week. On the other hand, a business shouldn't expect me to sacrifice more than 40-45 hours a week with my family for their benefit. I'd much rather lose my job than lose my wife.

ThrustVectoring 8y ago

You look at workplace performance directly, that's how. Employers fundamentally aren't entitled to the residual value of workplace performance above and beyond the standards they demand for the renumeration they provide. Possibly you can create an option that allows employees to self-discriminate. Say, "drop down to 30 hrs/wk with some work-from-home flexibility" for a significant drop in pay. You'll get roughly the same level of performance in many creative arts like programming, but since it's the employee's choice to take the company isn't responsible for "discriminating".

DoreenMichele 8y ago

You seem to assume being a parent (as an employee) is all downside and no upside (for the company). Let me suggest this unstated assumption is not accurate. You learn a lot when you have a family that you aren't likely to learn any other way. My ex was a really smart guy, but not much of a people person. He once told me that most of what he knew about being a good manager he learned from being married to me. Otherwise, he would be good at the technical parts of his job, but he wouldn't be any good at dealing with people. Part of what I knew about dealing with people came from being a full time parent. I'm also much more of a people person than he was, but potential gets developed by practice and real world experience. It doesn't happen in a vacuum.