Paid Family Leave Discussion (derail from fertility decrease)

[Jimmy Higgins]

Of course they are. Are you under the impression that government can legislate free bennies for all? Are you under the impression that when a universal requirement is imposed on the labour market that employers do not pass on the cost of that?

Yes, just like how the cost of vacation, sick time, medical benefits, office heating is passed on to the customer.

Some people seem to think it is more important for everything to be cheap as possible, regardless the impact on the standard of living of those that provide everything. Paid family leave? Fuck, I was barely even able to take time off, forget not dip into vacation time for paternal leave. Regardless, paid family leave for children (not a common reoccurrence) and really sick family (even less common reoccurrences) are certainly life events that every family has to deal with.

The argument against providing a level playing field for all companies is that it'll cost money to ensure families can have bonus time with newborns and time to deal with dying loved ones. Talk about petty!

Just to toss in my anecdotes, when my Dad was diagnosed with cancer, I had max'd out my vacation, something like 8 or 9 weeks. In the 17 months to follow, including his last three weeks in the hospital, I used up every hour I had of sick and vacation time. I actually had to go to work sooner than I wanted (just after he died) because I was out of options. This happens. Should corporations be forced to pay for me to have luxuries beyond my wildest dreams? Not really... we are talking about people being able to spend the last days of their loved one's lives together, instead of worrying that if they don't die soon enough, they need to go back to work or not get paid. That you turn this issue of humanity into a question of dollars and cents is really unfathomable.

 

[laughing dog]

Of course they are. Are you under the impression that government can legislate free bennies for all? Are you under the impression that when a universal requirement is imposed on the labour market that employers do not pass on the cost of that?

Unlike you, I know that the degree to which a cost is passed on depends on the market conditions. Unlike you, I know that there are two relevant markets in this instance - the labor market and the product market. Unlike you, I realize that vacation is part of labor compensation which is typically viewed as an expense or cost by the employer. And, unlike you, I understand that vacation time that is cashed out is an expense to the employer. And to the economically literate, costs can be passed on (in whatever degree) in the product price.

The employer bears the cost of managing leave across its workforce, sure.

That management includes the cost of hiring replacement workers, or increasing the the workload of remaining workers without extra compensation or the cost of the undone work - all objections you made to AOC's policy but do not bother you in this case. Hmmm.

The idea that you don't think that employers pass on the cost is kumbayah fantasy.

I know employers try to pass on costs. Unlike the economic illiterate or the intellectually dishonest, I know the degree to which they are successful depends on the demand and supply conditions in the relevant markets.

 

[laughing dog]

The people who bear the cost is everyone else, not the person on leave.

That is true for every type of leave - it is not unique to AOC's policy on parental leave. Yet, you do not criticize vacation or sick leave policy in Australia. Hmmm.

 

[Jarhyn]

The people who bear the cost is everyone else, not the person on leave.

That is true for every type of leave - it is not unique to AOC's policy on parental leave. Yet, you do not criticize vacation or sick leave policy in Australia. Hmmm.

I would think Metaphor would be thrilled: it is egalitarianism at its finest! Family leave same for both women and men.

I wonder, metaphor is always "No! ThInK Of ThE ChIlDrEn" when it comes to trans children seeking hormones but here he couldn't care less about ThE ChIlDrEn, who actually ARE suffering.

Hey metaphor, why don't you try ACTUALLY thinking of the children, eh?

 

[TomC]

Not true. AOC does not seem to be able to imagine life outside her current pampered experience.

I think it's exactly the opposite. She's not accustomed to the pampered experience of the power elite. She's seen the other side of what you call "fairness". She's putting her money where her mouth is. For all you know, she's subsidizing her family friendly staff policies out of her very comfortable congressional salary. Probably in the indirect form of diverting cash flow she could manage to keep, if that were her top priority, to family friendly staff policies. The huge sums swirling around top government officials aren't always easy to identify or trace.

And here's the thing. The best employees are often going to be the ones who take domestic responsibility seriously as well. Giving them the ability to take care of those as well, without adding financial stress, will tend to motivate and retain the best people.


And furthermore, family friendly policies aren't just a zero sum game. They are an investment in the future of society as a whole, because they're an investment in the early development of the children. No amount of cash is going to reproduce the bonding experience of a child's first months.

Similarly, I feel the same way about the public school system. I have never been enrolled in it, nor have I ever enrolled a child in it. But the bulk of my property taxes go to funding it. That's not fair, strictly speaking. But I don't have a problem with it. Because I want to live in a world of educated people, and requiring children to go to school and making sure it's funded is the best method of achieving the goal. It's in my own selfish interests to invest in the improvement of youth.
Tom

 

[Gun Nut]

CBS News on Twitter: "Experts sound the alarm on declining birth rates among younger generations: "It's a crisis" (link)" / Twitter

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "The actual crisis is how entire generations are sunk w/inhumane levels of student debt, low incomes, high rent, no guarantee of healthcare & little action on climate change which creates a situation where feeling stable enough to have a kid can feel more like a luxury than a norm" / Twitter

But AOC has a solution, and she has implemented it for her employees.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "I’d like to share another “unusual” (but shouldn’t be) part of my office policy w/ you all: Parental Leave! ..." / Twitter

I’d like to share another “unusual” (but shouldn’t be) part of my office policy w/ you all: Parental Leave!

Three members of our small team are expectant or new parents in the first 6 mos of my term.

In my office, *every* new parent receives 3 mos paid leave - including dads.

A few notes on our approach:

1. Expecting a child has nothing to do with our hiring decisions, & we do everything we can to accommodate. That’s supposed to be law, but there are small ways (incl self-selection) where it can play a role. We work to be a pro-family workplace.

2. Paid parental leave applies to ALL new parents, period. Moms, dads, parents; biological or adopted. If you’ve got a new child, you get 12 weeks to spend adjusting your family to this huge transition.

3. Our 12 weeks parental leave is up to the parent on how they want to use that time. They don’t have to take all 12 weeks at once - for example, they can take 5 weeks off and work 2 days a week to transition in; bank 3 weeks for later in the year, etc.

4. I want to reiterate how important it is to give dads full parental leave. I strongly encourage them to take the full time.

I’ve heard the “normal” paternity leave is 2 weeks. That is NOT okay! As my partner says: “What do employers expect those new moms to do? Walk it off?”

5. Equal pay at work is about SO much more than the salary you offer.

If you give dads less paid parental leave than moms, you’re contributing to the pay gap.

If you see pregnancy or family as a workplace obstacle, you’re contributing to the pay gap.

6. We make an effort to make our office family-friendly. We talk about what play mats + cribs we need along w/ our legislative agenda. My personal office can be used for pumping/feeding.

Staff can bring their babies to work if they like & we are working to prepare to have them.

7. Additionally, paying a living min wage to our most junior staffers means they’re talented + capable (no 2nd job) to take over big-time situations, meaning senior staffers are confident enough in them to take parental leave and not feel like everything will fall apart.

8. This is convo is bigger than parental leave - it’s a larger conversation about how modern work has grown so hostile to family life. It doesn’t have to be that way!

Work + family can go together, but we have to break down the barriers that force people to choose between them.

It's good that AOC is such a forward-looking boss.

How much, precisely, in her take-home pay, did AOC give up to implement this policy?

Billions

AOC has the potential to be a multi-billion dollar CEO. Instead, she chose a role in public service. Through that public role, she helped implement a policy that put money in your pocket. You're welcome?, I guess.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Humans with penises angry that human with vagina is outspoken about social positions that most humans, within the border she also lives within, agree with.

 

[Toni]

How much, precisely, in her take-home pay, did AOC give up to implement this policy?

Billions

AOC has the potential to be a multi-billion dollar CEO. Instead, she chose a role in public service. Through that public role, she helped implement a policy that put money in your pocket. You're welcome?, I guess.

Metaphor is Australian, so a AOC has not put money in his pocket.

I understand your confusion that someone from Australia takes such a keen interest American politics on such a granular level.

 

[Metaphor]

But you just described paid vacation as part of employee compensation (post 35). Presumably you recognize that other benefits: medical (common in the US) and life insurance (offered by many employers), educational/training benefits, pension/other retirement plans, etc. are part of employee compensation? Presumably in Australia, costs of employee compensation are part of any corporations costs of doing business and as such figure into how and how much businesses are taxed?

Right...so, what?

EDIT: If you mean "this is a cost like any other cost", I have already explained more than once why it isn't. I have already explained how different it is, for example, to annual leave, and how the benefits of the leave accrue to select people but are paid for by everyone else.

 

[Metaphor]

How much, precisely, in her take-home pay, did AOC give up to implement this policy?

Billions

AOC has the potential to be a multi-billion dollar CEO. Instead, she chose a role in public service. Through that public role, she helped implement a policy that put money in your pocket. You're welcome?, I guess.

Metaphor is Australian, so a AOC has not put money in his pocket.

I understand your confusion that someone from Australia takes such a keen interest American politics on such a granular level.

"Stay in your lane" is not a coherent argument.

 

[Metaphor]

Humans with penises angry that human with vagina is outspoken about social positions that most humans, within the border she also lives within, agree with.

Angry?

 

[Metaphor]

How much, precisely, in her take-home pay, did AOC give up to implement this policy?

Billions

AOC has the potential to be a multi-billion dollar CEO. Instead, she chose a role in public service. Through that public role, she helped implement a policy that put money in your pocket. You're welcome?, I guess.

I'd say you were trolling me, but maybe not.

AOC didn't give up any of her take home pay to implement her office parental leave policy. Her pay is ensured by the taxpayer.

As for AOC's promise of being a "multi-billion CEO" - what evidence do you have of that?

 

[Toni]

Not true. AOC does not seem to be able to imagine life outside her current pampered experience.

I think it's exactly the opposite. She's not accustomed to the pampered experience of the power elite. She's seen the other side of what you call "fairness". She's putting her money where her mouth is. For all you know, she's subsidizing her family friendly staff policies out of her very comfortable congressional salary. Probably in the indirect form of diverting cash flow she could manage to keep, if that were her top priority, to family friendly staff policies. The huge sums swirling around top government officials aren't always easy to identify or trace.

And here's the thing. The best employees are often going to be the ones who take domestic responsibility seriously as well. Giving them the ability to take care of those as well, without adding financial stress, will tend to motivate and retain the best people.


And furthermore, family friendly policies aren't just a zero sum game. They are an investment in the future of society as a whole, because they're an investment in the early development of the children. No amount of cash is going to reproduce the bonding experience of a child's first months.

Similarly, I feel the same way about the public school system. I have never been enrolled in it, nor have I ever enrolled a child in it. But the bulk of my property taxes go to funding it. That's not fair, strictly speaking. But I don't have a problem with it. Because I want to live in a world of educated people, and requiring children to go to school and making sure it's funded is the best method of achieving the goal. It's in my own selfish interests to invest in the improvement of youth.
Tom

Those 'very comfortable government salaries' aren't that 'comfortable' considering both the cost of living in DC and the cost of maintaining a residence in the state which you represent.

I would guess that she simply allocated her staff allowance and office budget differently than some other people do,

 

[lpetrich]

How much, precisely, in her take-home pay, did AOC give up to implement this policy?

Billions

AOC has the potential to be a multi-billion dollar CEO. Instead, she chose a role in public service. Through that public role, she helped implement a policy that put money in your pocket. You're welcome?, I guess.

After she graduated from Boston University in the middle of 2011, she could have gone to work for some NYC brokerage house or some such and had a successful career there.

But she had other plans. She returned to the Bronx and she got involved in some educational projects. Like starting a publishing company of children's books: Brook Avenue Press.

From 2012, she announces it: Brook Avenue Press - YouTube

It never succeeded in publishing anything, however.

From 2 years ago: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's defunct book publishing company 'owes $1,870 in back taxes' | Daily Mail Online

She couldn't earn enough to sustain herself, and she became a bartender.

 

[laughing dog]

But you just described paid vacation as part of employee compensation (post 35). Presumably you recognize that other benefits: medical (common in the US) and life insurance (offered by many employers), educational/training benefits, pension/other retirement plans, etc. are part of employee compensation? Presumably in Australia, costs of employee compensation are part of any corporations costs of doing business and as such figure into how and how much businesses are taxed?

Right...so, what?

EDIT: If you mean "this is a cost like any other cost", I have already explained more than once why it isn't. I have already explained how different it is, for example, to annual leave, and how the benefits of the leave accrue to select people but are paid for by everyone else.

That is true for every type of leave policy, so your explanation lacks relevance.

 

[Metaphor]

Yes, just like how the cost of vacation, sick time, medical benefits, office heating is passed on to the customer.

I've already explained this at length.

Annual (vacation) leave is built in to a person's salary, and each person gets the same amount. In Australia (though apparently not America), vacation leave is accrued and if you retire/switch jobs without using it up, it is paid out. The person who used the vacation leave is also the person who paid for it (the employee).

Sick leave is different. Sick leave is a benefit that is not evenly used (some people use up all their benefit and go on leave without pay, some people retire with a year's worth of sick days remaining to them). Sick days do not 'belong' to the employee and somebody pays the price for them, but it isn't clear cut who that is. Sometimes, it's the employer, who has to replace the sick person with somebody else for that shift, or do the work themselves. Sometimes, it's the other workers, who have to do uncompensated work to cover the sick person. Sometimes, the sick person themselves 'pays the cost' (in white collar situations mostly) because they simply have to do the work that accrued while they were sick and they are not compensated again.

Some people seem to think it is more important for everything to be cheap as possible, regardless the impact on the standard of living of those that provide everything. Paid family leave? Fuck, I was barely even able to take time off, forget not dip into vacation time for paternal leave. Regardless, paid family leave for children (not a common reoccurrence) and really sick family (even less common reoccurrences) are certainly life events that every family has to deal with.

The argument against providing a level playing field for all companies is that it'll cost money to ensure families can have bonus time with newborns and time to deal with dying loved ones. Talk about petty!

That is not the argument, and if you think that is the argument, you haven't read or processed anything I've said in this thread. I said the way it was proposed was unfair, not that it cost money.

Just to toss in my anecdotes, when my Dad was diagnosed with cancer, I had max'd out my vacation, something like 8 or 9 weeks. In the 17 months to follow, including his last three weeks in the hospital, I used up every hour I had of sick and vacation time. I actually had to go to work sooner than I wanted (just after he died) because I was out of options. This happens. Should corporations be forced to pay for me to have luxuries beyond my wildest dreams? Not really... we are talking about people being able to spend the last days of their loved one's lives together, instead of worrying that if they don't die soon enough, they need to go back to work or not get paid. That you turn this issue of humanity into a question of dollars and cents is really unfathomable.

This is incoherent. Of course it's a matter of dollars and cents.

Fully half of the medical expenses that anyone uses in their lifetime occur in the last year of that person's life. Society needs to make decisions about how much it is willing to spend to keep people alive (or at least it does where medicine is mostly or fully socialised). It may seem 'inhumane' to you to grapple with questions of cost, but it's an unavoidable reality for the many people involved in making these decisions. Somebody, somewhere, has to decide how long someone can be kept alive if they are costing the taxpayer $5,000/day.

 

[Metaphor]

But you just described paid vacation as part of employee compensation (post 35). Presumably you recognize that other benefits: medical (common in the US) and life insurance (offered by many employers), educational/training benefits, pension/other retirement plans, etc. are part of employee compensation? Presumably in Australia, costs of employee compensation are part of any corporations costs of doing business and as such figure into how and how much businesses are taxed?

Right...so, what?

EDIT: If you mean "this is a cost like any other cost", I have already explained more than once why it isn't. I have already explained how different it is, for example, to annual leave, and how the benefits of the leave accrue to select people but are paid for by everyone else.

That is true for every type of leave policy, so your explanation lacks relevance.

I have explained more than once why you are wrong and I'm not going to explain again.

 

[Metaphor]

Those 'very comfortable government salaries' aren't that 'comfortable' considering both the cost of living in DC and the cost of maintaining a residence in the state which you represent.

Oy gevalt. You need some perspective. AOC's congressional salary is at a minimum $174,000, not including the deductions and other payments members of Congress receive. The Census ACS 1-year survey reports that the median household income for the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria District of Columbia metro area was $105,659 in 2019.

I don't know if AOC has additional household income (I don't know if she lives alone or has other investment income) but her household income as at least twice and more like thrice the national US median ($65,712).

I didn't expect a leftie to have a pity party for the governmental elite, but there you are.

 

[laughing dog]

That is true for every type of leave policy, so your explanation lacks relevance.

I have explained more than once why you are wrong and I'm not going to explain again.

Thank you for not repeating bogus and economically illiterate explanations.

Every participant in this thread gets you feel her policy is unfair. I suspect every participant but one that has waded through your double standards and petty anecdotes understands why you feel it is unfair.

 

[laughing dog]

Those 'very comfortable government salaries' aren't that 'comfortable' considering both the cost of living in DC and the cost of maintaining a residence in the state which you represent.

Oy gevalt. You need some perspective. AOC's congressional salary is at a minimum $174,000, not including the deductions and other payments members of Congress receive. The Census ACS 1-year survey reports that the median household income for the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria District of Columbia metro area was $105,659 in 2019.

I don't know if AOC has additional household income (I don't know if she lives alone or has other investment income) but her household income as at least twice and more like thrice the national US median ($65,712).

I didn't expect a leftie to have a pity party for the governmental elite, but there you are.

It is economically illiterate to compare nominal incomes across regions that have significantly different costs of living.