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why is the USA miles behind the rest of the world in this regard?

Because if something has even the hint of socialism, the discussion is considered over. It's why the U. S. doesn't have universal health care.

27182818284 3481 days ago

>Because if something has even the hint of socialism, the discussion is considered over. It's why the U. S. doesn't have universal health care.

It is a complex issue and the socialism-word boogeyman isn't all there is to it--there is more than just the vocab.

From my anecdotal experience, I can say it isn't so much the socialism that tends to bother people, but the part where socialism is given to what are considered undeserving people. Those people might be immigrants that are perceived (incorrectly or correctly) of getting an unfair share of schooling and medical services. Those people might play off the older concept of the Welfare Queen. It varies from person to person that I speak to, but very few (zero?) people have told me they're against things like health care for all without also bringing up those parts as a con to why it either can't work, or shouldn't be implemented.

(then after all that, you still have regular politics to hurdle)

2muchcoffeeman 3481 days ago

This is my observation as well. I recently read a FB discussion where an American friend was generally in favour of Obamacare.

The people who disagreed did so not because they necessarily disagree with universal health care, but because they thought it was unfair that they had to spend their hard earned money to subsidise people who they view as freeloaders.

AlexB138 3481 days ago

This is pretty on the nose. It has a lot to do with the diversity of America and the fact that they see most other Americans as "the other", or an out group, and don't want to support them.

I don't have the details on hand, but Robert Putnam (Political science, Harvard) did a study about Americas breakdown in civil engagement that speaks to this point quite a bit.

Here's an article that talks about it: http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/...

Most of you state applies, but what I was specifically referring to goes back to the Truman days, and the history I read specifically called a reaction to socialist policies.

But, yeah, I'll cop to vastly over-simplifying.

If that is the comparison you want to make, you have to look at what sort of healthcare private companies provide across their entire employment pool.

I bet American Express has a program that looks an awful lot like universal coverage for their employees.

I really don't mean to be rude, but wow did you miss the point I was trying to make. I was making no comparisons, other than when a Canadian hears the word "socialism" they don't go into a mouthing-foaming knee-jerk fit.

I didn't miss it at all, your point doesn't hold water, lots of companies provide great health insurance to their employees so the "socialism" thing doesn't really explain anything about them not providing other benefits.

brightball 3481 days ago

The biggest is that asking a company to provide parental leave means asking a company to pay somebody that they hired to do a job to not be there.

That means either, your value is low enough that you can be gone for that long without your company missing you OR that they have to pay somebody else to fill in for you with the knowledge that they'll be let go once you get back. Depending on what kind of work you do, this is no small task.

The types of companies who can afford to do this type of thing essentially boil down to subscription style, giant companies where the absence of any employee won't really effect anything from a business or customer standpoint...who also happen to be rolling in money.

If they're willing and able to provide that benefit...GREAT!

But different businesses provide significantly different cash flow models. Different businesses can't have their valuable employees AWOL for 52 weeks while paying them and somebody else to fill in for them at a higher rate.

You have to be in a money printing market position to even think about something like that.

limeyx 3481 days ago

This seems like a pretty short-sighted view of the issue. Take a look outside the US for many ways this can be and is done

foota 3481 days ago

The difference is that many Americans believe (I do not) that socialism benefits only lazy people who haven't worked hard. That is why they don't see a company providing benefits as socialism, because they think those people deserve it.

boomboomsubban 3481 days ago

It's not a benefit in other countries, it's either a socialized system or a legal requirement.

Did you miss the word "universal", then? Because what you describe does not fit that definition.

Their point does hold water, given that as soon as you decide not to work for the company, you're SOL. "Universal" would imply that I get it regardless of what company I work for.

tkxxx7 3481 days ago

I think our thread grandparents were referring to the decisions of country/government itself ("Canada has x"), not specific U.S. companies

wedowhatwedo 3481 days ago

Does American Express provide this insurance to people that don't work for them?

I don't believe they do, so that makes it fairly irrelevant to the conversation about universal health care.

I think it is sort of relevant because it reveals a certain amount of contradictory thought. Employer provided healthcare is often provided without any consideration of the actuarial cost of providing it. A group decides that everybody in the group should have coverage and shares the cost. But doing that for a bigger group, oh hell no.

wedowhatwedo 3481 days ago

I don't understand your point. We agree that American Express should not provide insurance to people that aren't working there. I bet we don't agree that the government should provide single payer insurance to all citizens so companies do not have to do it. Unfortunately, my opinion doesn't matter in the country because the elected officials right now do not feel the citizens deserve insurance.

Dylan16807 3481 days ago

If a private company does it, then it's not socialist, and no taboo gets invoked. Very different from the government doing it.

I'm arguing that the difference is imaginary.

brightball 3481 days ago

Well, you'd be wrong. A business has earned revenues that its owners can spend or use for benefits however they please. A business can't force people to pay for their services. A government can.

If you look at existing employment relationships, it also depends a great deal on how much leverage the employees have, not just on what pleases owners.

People who choose not to have children should not be forced to subsidize those who do.

If someone's getting 55% pay for almost a year while they're not creating value for the company, that has to come out of someone else's paycheck, directly or indirectly.

> Parents being around for their kids is important.

I absolutely agree, but that doesn't imply in any way that it's right to foist the cost of choosing to have children on other people.

People who choose to do $THING_I_DONT_DO should not be forced to subsidize those who do. Why should I subsidize roads with 16 foot lanes when my motorcycle needs on a fraction of that? Why should I...oh, you get the point.

If one cares to argue whether something that arguably betters the collective (Amex's new policy would fit from my POV) should be subsidized collectively or individually, I'm open. If one would rather discuss the merits of attracting workers with benefits that some might not use, let's open that conversation. But if it's just going to amount to a simplistic, Ayn Randian "it's not fair!", then it's not really worth the time.

> People who choose to do $THING_I_DONT_DO should not be forced to subsidize those who do.

Yes. What part of this is unreasonable?

> Why should I subsidize roads with 16 foot lanes

16 foot lanes aren't a voluntary activity, they're infrastructure that everyone benefits from. If you don't benefit from them somehow, you would have a valid complaint against subsidizing them. For example, farmers don't have to pay the gas tax on farm-use-only gas because they don't put wear on the roads.

On the other hand, I distinctly don't benefit from random people diverting what could be my income to keep overpopulation going strong.

> simplistic

Simple arguments are better than complex ones. You're right, my argument is simple; it's morally wrong to force people to pay for things they don't want, and it's especially wrong to force people to pay for things where the benefit is obviously less than the cost.

>16 foot lanes aren't a voluntary activity, they're infrastructure that everyone benefits from

So is ensuring that parents get to, you know, be parents.

>If you don't benefit from them somehow, you would have a valid complaint against subsidizing them

They did say they don't. They ride a motorcycle, and as such, don't need the full lane size.

>On the other hand, I distinctly don't benefit from random people diverting what could be my income to keep overpopulation going strong.

You would be wrong on all counts there, buddy.

>Simple arguments are better than complex ones. You're right, my argument is simple; it's morally wrong to force people to pay for things they don't want, and it's especially wrong to force people to pay for things where the benefit is obviously less than the cost.

And yet, the simple argument completely falls apart once you think about it. For example, you said they shouldn't be able to not subsidize wide roads. So why roads, and not childcare? Why roads and not police protection? Why roads and not healthcare?

paublyrne 3481 days ago

People who choose not to have children should not be forced to subsidize those who do.

Why not?

If you pay tax, some of that will go to paying school teachers, regardless of whether or not you have children of your own. Is that also wrong? Like it or not, all western societies include some form of wealth redistribution.

jay-anderson 3481 days ago

Agreed. It's in everyone's interest (whether you choose to have children or not) that children are well adjusted, healthy, and educated. They will be our neighbors when we are older.

> Is that also wrong?

Possibly, but in a less odious way. Public school has at least two benefits over paying people to have children; 1) it probably doesn't incentivize people to have kids, but it does (probably) benefit the kids that already exist and 2) it might actually have a positive net value to the people being forced to pay for public school but aren't using it. In particular, public schools serve as a form of division of labor, where the adult/child ratio is much lower, freeing up a huge number of parents to remain in the workforce instead of staying home and watching the kids all day. This, I would argue, is most low-quality lower-division public schools' primary function; it's not about the kids learning, it's about freeing the parents' schedules for 8-9 hours a day.

To be clear the person you're responding to is talking about companies subsidizing those who choose to have children. That is different from a government social program.

You can be for the government paying people on maternity/paternity leave while also being against mandating the business should be the ones to pay for it.

rayiner 3481 days ago

Parents subsidize the people who don't have kids. You think investors would be willing to pour billions into companies like Facebook if they knew there wouldn't be a new crop of 18-25 year olds every year? In a developed country, each person contributes a lot more to the economy over their lifetime than the cost of raising them.

(And immigration doesn't really change the result. Then you're just externalizing the cost of raising kids to another country; you're not getting rid of it, and you're still benefiting from that investment.)

> Parents subsidize the people who don't have kids.

That's a silly argument. Just because an action (possibly) has a positive externality, like having children, doesn't mean we need to subsidize it. You also get quickly diminishing returns; dumping $10M into a kid won't get you a 100x better result than dumping $100K into a kid.

Every single form of industry that isn't already subsidized by the government, by virtue of its continued existence, has a higher value to society than what they earn in income. Should we subsidize all those CEOs to make up the difference?

> each person contributes a lot more to the economy over their lifetime than the cost of raising them.

This is true and irrelevant. Again, spending more money on children doesn't mean their economic output will be correspondingly higher. At some point (which I imagine we've already passed) you're just burning money. That is, of course, if your goal is economic optimization (which your post seems to suggest). If your goal is e.g. more effective socialization/indoctrination or accelerated education, then you could reasonably argue for increased spending to push us farther down the diminishing economic returns curve.

tdb7893 3481 days ago

I've recently come the the conclusion that instead of the purpose of people being to create value for the economy, the point of the economy is to create value for people. Being able to spend time with your new kid should not be a privilege of people who have money. Overall resources in our society aren't that scarce so I don't think it's unreasonable to allocate some resources to ensuring that privilege for everyone.

> Being able to spend time with your new kid should not be a privilege of people who have money.

Ah, of course. Instead it should come at the expense of people who chose not to (or were unable to) spend time with a child at all.

"<Positively connoted activity> should not be a privilege of people who have money" is a very nice-sounding statement, but it ignores the fact that there's a reason only people who have money do certain things; because it's very expensive.

> Overall resources in our society aren't that scarce

Evidently resources in our society are scarce enough that parents can't stay home with their child 24/7 without someone else paying for it. (Either that or the parents in question are able but unwilling to decrease their expenses in exchange for time with their children.)

tdb7893 3481 days ago

As a society we've decided that some things are worth it despite being an economic cost (notably giving senior citizens access to medical care through medicare is an example of a huge cost with little to not economic benefit) so as a society we've decided that some things are worth paying for other people despite cost to ourselves. You are arguing that people shouldn't pay at all for benefits that they choose not to partake in themselves and as a society we've already decided that we are willing to do so in certain situations. Really what it then becomes is an argument of "is it worth it?". It comes down to a value judgement of "is it okay for people to pay for things that they don't personally use?" and "is it worth it to pay for parental leave?". I personally think that the economic losses are outweighed by the societal good of parental leave so I think that answering "yes" to both of the questions leads to a better society.

wyager 3480 days ago

> As a society we've decided that some things are worth it despite being an economic cost (notably giving senior citizens access to medical care...)

I'm painfully aware, given that this number is broken out on my W2 stubs.

What I'm obviously doing here is arguing that "society"'s (meaning those in charge of tax code, who nominally take some amount of inspiration from the rest of society) policies are wrong.

Your argument is just "This is how we do things right now, so that's how it should be." At the risk of pulling a Molyneux, that is, in fact, not an argument.

ghaff 3481 days ago

Most companies offer employees a bundle of benefits that have a lot of different pieces. I'm sure that, if any individual employee were designing the bundle specifically for their own maximum benefit given a specific $ pool of money, it would look quite a bit different from the one that's actually offered.

Some people would be happy to forgo benefits like life insurance. Some will want the maximum 401-K matching while others don't contribute enough to take full advantage. People trade off vacation time and salary differently.

NumberCruncher 3481 days ago

People who choose not to have children should not be forced to subsidize those who do. And should not get a pension paid by the children of others.

revelation 3481 days ago

Children pay the pension of childless people, of course they should be forced to subsidize those who have them.

user5994461 3481 days ago

> Children pay the pension of childless people

I don't think that this is correct with the usual pensions in the USA and the UK.

There are other countries with different pension funding where this applies though.

lotsofpulp 3481 days ago

Search for the funding status of defined benefit pensions for most government entities. Most are counting on passing on the buck to future generations to fund their promises, either via increasing taxes or decreasing the value of money.

revelation 3481 days ago

It doesn't exactly matter if you personally paid for your pension or the state took some percentage from you paycheck or any other imaginable system, if in 40 years you want to retire and the majority of society is made up of other retirees, any form of currency isn't going to be worth anything.

No matter which way you turn it the sustainability of a retiree lifestyle hinges on a large part of society showing up at work on 9am. In 40 years, that's not going to be your peers, it's whatever children your generation produced. If you don't want to pay for benefits that ensure enough workers will be around then you are betting that we got rid of human workers in 40 years of time or investing your money into a hut in Alaska and some shotgun ammunition.

collyw 3481 days ago

With overpopulation I am not sure that encouraging more people to have kids is actually progress.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow...

peterbonney 3481 days ago

Overpopulation of planet Earth is not a serious risk. The consensus is that population will peak at roughly 11-12 billion sometime around 2100. [1]

The real danger that most have yet to come to grips with is population stagnation/decline and the multitude of economic problems that come along with it.

(Edited for incorrect figures in first paragraph.)

alexose 3481 days ago

> population stagnation/decline and the multitude of economic problems that come along with it.

I'd be curious to know if there are any good books on the subject. It seems like this is something that we're going to have to figure out in our lifetimes.

peterbonney 3481 days ago

I don't know of any good books on the consequences (so I'd be curious too) but here is a good report if you want to know more about the possible population scenarios: http://webarchive.iiasa.ac.at/Admin/PUB/Documents/IR-08-022....

It's pretty shocking to see how quickly and how far total population would fall if global birth rates eventually decline to the level Europe is at today.

abecode 3481 days ago

Agequake: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2001290.Agequake

baq 3481 days ago

kinda related: the limits to growth

woliveirajr 3481 days ago

Depending on where you live, the population might be declining, and encouraging people to have more children (and letting you country vanish) might be a good thing to do.

bpodgursky 3481 days ago

Overpopulation is not a risk anymore in pretty much any developed nation.

Right, because I'm going to commit myself to eighteen years of making sure the l'il shit makes it to the adulthood, all so I can get a year off at half pay and a trivial tax deduction every year. Damn, it's so unfair to those of us without children.

MichaelApproved 3481 days ago

The United States culture is more pro-business than other western countries. Other governments put consumer and employee rights ahead of business interests.

justin66 3481 days ago

I wonder if businesses and their management in Scandinavian countries, for example, feel they're getting the short end of the stick. I'm sure there's a diversity of opinion but they might very well look at the chaos of the United States and say "well, at least we don't have to deal with that shit."

NumberCruncher 3481 days ago

Slavery has thousand faces.

synicalx 3481 days ago

I really want to hear the logic behind this, I love gymnastics.

synicalx 3481 days ago

I think 20 weeks is a good balance, verging on generous. 52 weeks is great and all, but what does the employer get out of it? And more importantly why is paying for babies the responsibility of employers?

It seems like this is a problem being tackled in the most inefficient and damaging way possible. The focus needs to be more on helping people fund themselves and create their own financial security rather than forcing an unrelated third-party to foot the bill.

zippergz 3481 days ago

I don't think that most families I know could get by for a year on 55% pay. How do people do that?

amitdeshwar 3481 days ago

It's more like 75% because only one person stays at home while the other keeps working at 100% salary.

randomgyatwork 3481 days ago

This is what we are doing.

run4yourlives2 3481 days ago

Some companies actually top this up. A previous company I worked for had 20 weeks at 100% for females. (In Canada maternity and paternity are actually two separate types of leaves, but they add up to 52 weeks.)

randomgyatwork 3481 days ago

sister in law will get something like this.

Why? The majority of Americans don't see it as a big enough problem to complain about. Also getting something passed in every state takes time. Opinions need to change enough for legislatures to take heed.

NumberCruncher 3481 days ago

I am not an expert but as far as I know in Germany the families get 14 months and I think the pay cut is even lower.

nolite 3481 days ago

Don't worry.. the USA is miles behind the rest of the world in MANY regards..

I'm wondering what the point of your post is other than to insult?

cloakandswagger 3481 days ago

Want to spend time with your kids? That's fine, just don't expect to get paid for it.

Here's my all American take on this: you made the choice to have kids. Don't expect companies to subsidize your child-rearing efforts, we owe you nothing.

prbuckley 3481 days ago

If you think in longer time frames everyone was a child once and there is immense value to society for children to spend time with their parents. Maybe companies should not be the mechanism to pay for it but we as a society should find ways to help people have strong and healthy families. It makes moral and economic sense.

kylepdm 3481 days ago

I think you've completely over looked the benefits to the individual, and society, as a whole when you allow parents to spend more time with their new born kids.

It's really easy to say "hey you decided to have a kid, so that's on you". But you do need children to sustain society in the future. It does them a lot of good if their parents can spend more time with them during their infant stage.

Also that attitude is really detrimental to women. Are future mothers supposed to choose over one day raising a kid or their careers? Doesn't society lose out on a lot of potential if we just say "sorry, if you want a kid then you're going to find a new job" ?

SomeStupidPoint 3481 days ago

Im all for societal level support of parents, I just don't think the obligation should be on corporations. I dont think a corporation should be required to do anything but hold your position open for up to 3-6 months as a sabbatical. (I do think we should have a parental unemployment benefit, to make up the pay.)

But it seems fundamentally unfair to impose on the business's ability to function (or other people's ability to get hired/promoted) because you want to have a kid.

So if you want to incentivize parents, do it through social benefits, rather than unreasonable demands and distortions of the labor market.

ska 3481 days ago

The Canadian 55% mentioned above is an unemployment benefit, so there is some confusion in this thread. The obligation to the corporation is that they maintain your job (or equivalent) for some period, I forget the details.

Corporations are free to offer top up benefit, and many do as a competitive incentive.

twblalock 3481 days ago

That's way better than the way people expect it to work in the US.

rglullis 3481 days ago

I am all for having children, and I do support some kind of parental leave, but I think that any progressive that resorts to defend parent-friendly policies always end up suffering some kind of cognitive dissonance. You want to see examples?

> you do need children to sustain society in the future.

Do we really? A lot of the worries, especially among progressive circles, is how automation is reducing the need of manual labor and how the people in this world already are replaceable by machines.

Also, the ones that are more focus on protecting the environment always get to pull some kind of neo-malthusian argument. So, one could argue that we should not be establishing policies that encourage people to have more kids.

> Are future mothers supposed to choose over one day raising a kid or their careers?

Why do you assume that the mother is the one that will stop working? Why not the father? Or, to make it more "equal", why can't both parents switch to part-time jobs and participate in the child rearing part, equally?

I'd argue that even if you employer is fully supportive it will sideline your career. Raising kids is very time consuming. Even if you get lots of maternity leave time and child care benefits, if you plan to spend a lot of time with your kid you will not be able to make that time up at work.

Think about all the time you spend thinking about work in off work hours. You no longer really have the time. All those hobby projects that make you a better worker? What time do you have for that?

runjake 3481 days ago

The tone and lack of compassion in this comment reminds of that line from The Big Lebowski:

"You're not wrong Walter. You're just an asshole."

martythemaniak 3481 days ago

He's actually both wrong and an asshole.

He might only appear right if you take a look at the world in a very narrow and short-term way. Ie, he can only think of children as children, rather than the adults who will sustain society once he is old and (even more) feeble-minded.

mordocai 3481 days ago

You may take the stance that we need less children due to overpopulation problems. Either way though, people having kids is what continues America's and humanity's existence.

This is the whole idea behind lower tax brackets for married couples and similar things. Making sure our population is at least being maintained and preferably growing.

In addition, if you dislike the large amount of kids that grow up in orphanages/bad homes things like this should allow people to have more time to take care of their kids during their first several weeks of life as well as potentially encourage more people to keep their kids instead of putting them up for adoption.

RHSeeger 3481 days ago

> This is the whole idea behind lower tax brackets for married couples and similar things.

I'm confused by that statement. From my experience, married couples pay more in taxes (in the US) than they would if each were single (and making the same amount).

Or am I misunderstanding, and you meant that there _should_ be lower taxes for married couples?

hawkice 3481 days ago

This is a bizarrely complex question (it relates to US tax law, so no surprise there). Some households would pay more if married, some would pay more if filing separately. See: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-marria...

mordocai 3481 days ago

I was under the impression it was usually lower taxes (partially selection bias due to it being lower for myself). As the other commenter points it, it is complicated and sometimes lower/sometimes higher to file jointly.

Interestingly, the current tax structure somewhat encourages single income families.

bzbarsky 3481 days ago

Taxes for married filing jointly are usually lower than for married filing separately.

But taxes for married filing jointly are often higher than for two single filers. This is especially true for higher incomes.

As a really simple example, consider two people both with $100k in taxable income, after taking their standard deductions and personal exemptions, in 2016. As single filers they would pay $21036.75 each in taxes, for a total of $42073.50. If they were married filing jointly, they would pay $42985.50, which is more. That happens because while the first two bracket boundaries (10% to 15% and 15% to 25%) are twice as big for joint married filers as they are for single filers, after that the boundaries start to converge. At the very top, the 39.6% boundary starts at $415k for single filers and at ~$467k for married filers....

There are also nasty perverse incentives where if one member of a married couple has a high income the other one can't contribute to IRAs in ways they could if they were just filing as an individual filer.

azernik 3481 days ago

You're right about the facts you said, but wrong about them contradicting the parent comment.

Filing as married benefits couples where only one person is pulling down an income, thus providing a subsidy for one parent to be a full-time parent but not for marriages in general.

peterbonney 3481 days ago

See my comment elsewhere in this thread about overpopulation - it's really not a legitimate issue to worry about (Malthus was wrong).

untog 3481 days ago

People are replying to this remarking on the lack of compassion. I agree, but you don't even need to agree with that to find the statement objectionable.

It seems pretty indisputable that children who are raised with more parental involvement are more successful in life. Those that are less successful don't just disappear, they become a financial drain on society, be it through social security, imprisonment, etc. etc.

So no matter how little you care for other people having kids, two things are true:

1) they're going to have them whether you like it or not (and really, society depends on this)

2) if they don't have support, they're going to cost you more than if they do.

There's really no way in which increased parental involvement doesn't make sense for society.

ChrisClark 3481 days ago

And this is an example of everything that's wrong with America right now. There is no human compassion left. The rich get to live, the poor deserve to die. Trump appointed a guy that wants to not only get rid of the ACA, but also wants to get rid of Medicare and Medicaid.

"You should have thought about that before you became poor!"

To be clear we are talking about maternity leave and pay. That's a far cry from your hyperbolic statement of "the poor deserve to die".

praneshp 3481 days ago

Non-American here, but the replies to this comment (including yours!) is enough proof that there is human compassion left in pretty good amounts.

bluthru 3481 days ago

>you made the choice to have kids

Civilization literally depends on having children. It's not optional.

It's amazing how bad the me-first, consumerist, anti-heritage, anti-community sentiments have gotten.

gaius 3481 days ago

Civilization literally depends on having children. It's not optional

It doesn't depend on high-consuming Westerners having children tho'. The human race will survive regardless of whether Western civilization does.

run4yourlives2 3481 days ago

Western Civilization depends on western children. I'm pretty sure we're all in favour of either keeping, or improving the civilization we have.

daxorid 3481 days ago

s/high-consuming/high IQ/

Yes it does. Idiocracy is a far-future documentary, not a comedy. We absolutely need to encourage the highly intelligent to breed.

bluthru 3481 days ago

>It doesn't depend on high-consuming Westerners having children tho'.

Right, because everyone else wasn't going to burn oil and coal? It takes an advanced society to produce energy responsibly.

Also if we never leave earth we will die, so yes you do need humans to continue getting more intelligent. People with below-average IQ's breeding are just contributing to the problem.

ska 3481 days ago

In the US governments (and corporations) already subsidize child-rearing in lots of other indirect ways, so it at least makes sense to discuss one of the many ways in which the US is notably different from most developed economies.

I do agree the OP could have said "different" rather than "behind"

After all, with something like this they often stem from a least theoretically similar policy goals, so it seems crazy not to evaluate implementation cost & benefits against peer systems.

run4yourlives2 3481 days ago

This seems to be a common misunderstanding in the US.

Companies don't subsidize these types of plans (well, other than being forced to allow the leave). The government does via something (in Canada) called "Employment Insurance". It's a basic payroll tax. We pay taxes into a program specifically designed to provide benefits if you lose your job. That's been extended to pay for things like leaves for having children or caring for your dying parents, kid with cancer, etc, etc.

Considering that it's in all our best interests to have healthy, well adjusted children in our society, it's a trade-off well worth the "owing". I'd take a look at your crime rates compared to ours and think about your ideology a little. I'm no socialist, but it's silly to not take the very real advantages of living in a society. You wouldn't tell someone to pay for their own roads, or fire service, would you? And if you would, what happens to our society overall when everyone thinks like this? How does that move us forward? How does that move YOU forward?

criddell 3481 days ago

Here's my American take on this: if enough people want this to happen, it should happen. This is a democracy after all.

And why do you say "we owe you nothing". You aren't a company, you're an individual.

We're a republic, and it's precisely to prevent unfair outcomes like the one you're proposing. It's not good policy just because most people want it.

The thing is that in America, there is still a barrier between the private and public sectors. While we obviously like perks like this, we don't believe that it's the government's place to mandate it. As we can see by many companies in the United States willfully offering such perks without legal mandate, companies are willing to make these accommodations on their own if they feel it will benefit their position in the market by allowing them to attract better talent.

Companies that can't afford this will be at a market disadvantage, but they won't have to be afraid to hire the workers they need when they're growing because the law would force them to pay out half of the employee's salary for up to a year without being able to derive any productive benefit from that outlay.

The most American thing about America is "it's a free country". That means that unless there is a vast social cost with allowing a certain behavior, it should be legal and people should be allowed to prosper or fail on the basis of their own choices rather than governmental policy that states "we know what's best for you".

"Companies that can't afford this will be at a market disadvantage"

I disagree entirely that this "disadvantage" is enough for them to worry or care. If the disadvantage was real, you'd see more companies sacrificing profits to do it.

"The most American thing about America is "it's a free country". That means that unless there is a vast social cost with allowing a certain behavior, it should be legal and people should be allowed to prosper or fail on the basis of their own choices rather than governmental policy that states "we know what's best for you"."

That statement ignores an awful lot about reality.

>I disagree entirely that this "disadvantage" is enough for them to worry or care. If the disadvantage was real, you'd see more companies sacrificing profits to do it.

Most professional workplaces offer some form of parental leave. My workplace offers 1 week for men (I don't know what they offer women, I assume it's much longer). It's not the 20 weeks that Amex just announced, but it's not nothing.

The disadvantage is real. I've tried to hire professionals in a place that didn't offer benefits before. They wouldn't come aboard -- not a single one (and yes, IMO, parental leave is a standard benefit). I had to draw from a pool of college kids who needed a break into the industry.

>That statement ignores an awful lot about reality.

I disagree. I think that's always been the American way. Government should be small and only interfere with specific legislation when very significant macro-level damage is likely. Other than that, the government's role is to preserve order (including both a criminal and a civil justice system) and promote freedom of conscience within the law, and free people will be free to act in their own best interests without burdensome constraints or regulation. That's how I define "freedom".

Whether you think every company should offer 20 weeks of parental leave (itself debatable from a business perspective, though obviously not a perk many employees would willfully decline) is different from whether you think they should be forced to do so.

>The disadvantage is real. I've tried to hire professionals in a place that didn't offer benefits before. They wouldn't come aboard -- not a single one (and yes, IMO, parental leave is a standard benefit). I had to draw from a pool of college kids who needed a break into the industry.

So, to the higher ups, they were still able to hire. Did they eventually decide this was a disadvantage, and try to rectify it? Or did they not change?

>and free people will be free to act in their own best interests without burdensome constraints or regulation. That's how I define "freedom".

Having to pay rent and buy food are definitely huge burdensome constraints. Hence, most of this "If you don't like it, you don't have to work there!" is ignoring much of that, and reality. You said you had to hire college kids who didn't have any bargaining clout. But people out of college have kids too. Do you honestly think that this kind of benefit is something that should only be reserved for someone who is lucky enough to be in a good bargaining position?

>Whether you think every company should offer 20 weeks of parental leave (itself debatable from a business perspective, though obviously not a perk many employees would willfully decline) is different from whether you think they should be forced to do so.

Not to me. But then there are many things I don't believe should be dependent on where one works, or how good they are at bargaining.

criddell 3481 days ago

> We're a republic

That's true, but if the issue is important enough to lots of people, those people will elect representatives to enact the policy they want made.

> As we can see by many companies in the United States willfully offering such perks without legal mandate

If it were many companies, then this wouldn't be news.

>That's true, but if the issue is important enough to lots of people, those people will elect representatives to enact the policy they want made.

Yes, but it's more complicated than that. The federal government isn't legally allowed to mandate these types of things under the Constitution, except insofar as they can claim it relates to "regulating interstate commerce" (which they do for almost everything these days). Most employment law is state-level, where there is not necessarily a constitutional prohibition on this type of action (each state has its own constitution, YMMV) and where there's a reasonable possibility of jurisdictional competition to keep things healthy.

For example, there is no federal minimum wage (the term "Federal Minimum Wage" refers to the lowest amount of money that the government pays its employees, not a legally-required minimum wage nationwide). Each state has its own minimum wage.

>If it were many companies, then this wouldn't be news.

It's news mostly because AMEX paid its PR people to put this out. It's good press and may cause talented job seekers to look at their openings. There are a lot of news reports about routine things every day, because much of the news is bought by PR firms.

Secondarily, it's news because it comports with the political agenda of the news editors and gives them an opportunity to say things like "America is behind other developed nations in this area", when that's anything but an objective conclusion (because whether this policy is "ahead" or "behind" is a subjective evaluation).

criddell 3481 days ago

> Each state has its own minimum wage.

That's true, but if a state has a minimum wage it can only effectively be higher than the federal minimum wage.

From https://www.dol.gov/whd/minwage/q-a.htm:

> Where an employee is subject to both the state and federal minimum wage laws, the employee is entitled to the higher minimum wage rate.

The rule is from the Fair Labor Standards Act.

eli_gottlieb 3481 days ago

>The thing is that in America, there is still a barrier between the private and public sectors.

What barrier? It's a selectively permeable membrane at best: wealth can flow from public to private, but never the other way.

Wealth flows the other way (private->public) constantly, by governmental mandate. It's called "tax".

toomuchtodo 3481 days ago

> The most American thing about America is "it's a free country".

"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." - Winston Churchill

36bydesign 3481 days ago

You must not have heard that corporations are individuals who pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps with only hard work and the power of the American Dream(tm).

philfrasty 3481 days ago

„we owe you nothing“ You should print that on your shirt so I'll never do business with you. Disgusting attitude.

geofft 3481 days ago

I like how this comment portrays companies as a fixed part of nature, and children as a weird thing that some people choose to do.

I say: you made the choice to have a company. Don't expect child-rearers to subsidize your corporate veil, we owe you nothing.

losteverything 3481 days ago

<we owe you nothing.

That may be true, but not everybody is special and selected enough to keep the species going. All of humanity supports those that have children.

Amex should be proud to help species continuers.

Tell us what company you run. So that way all of us know to avoid it like the plague, for the extremely anti-employee mindset you have.

cgvgffyv 3481 days ago

Here's my single and childless (most likely forever) take on it, more like.