[SwellJoe]

That kind of law would guarantee only quite large business can survive, which is counter-productive if one wants to empower individuals.

I'm pretty much always on the side of workers in any discussion of labor vs. employers...but, there's also small business to consider. I think there's some kind of happy medium to be found, where workers are treated well and small businesses can survive long enough to become somewhat bigger businesses. In the US this is codified into law; rules and regulations that apply to large companies may not apply to smaller mom-and-pop shops.

My company couldn't afford to give an employee more than a few months paid time off; we're a four-person company, and we'd literally run out of money if a quarter of our work wasn't being done for months. On the other hand, if we had a hundred employees, we'd barely notice if one or two people were out for a while.

[mtberatwork]

> That kind of law would guarantee only quite large business can survive, which is counter-productive if one wants to empower individuals.

As others have pointed out, maternity/paternity leave in other Western countries are heavily subsidized through government assistance programs. The costs are not completely shouldered by the business.

[tptacek]

Many of those countries also increasingly have a two-caste system of fully-fledged full-time employees and "temp" workers of various types. If you want Salaryman culture, like they have in Japan, you can set pretty arbitrarily high expectations about leave and job security.

[patio11]

It is my anecdotal impression that this is common in some European countries.

Japanese leave policies are historically pretty simple: the government says you get X weeks, buuuuut X is an inconvenient number for us, so you probably want to look around the room and conform to the practices of your coworkers, which are closer to Y days. Also, for you ladies: remember that the traditional expectation is that you have unlimited maternity leave when you leave formal employment after marrying or having a child. (Some re-enter when the child goes to school. This is largely not compatible with career advancement, with rare exceptions like e.g. translation/interpretation.)

[SwellJoe]

So, why are the same folks trash-talking Basecamp for not offering more paid leave, since the US has no such subsidies? Aren't they based in the US?

I'm not opposed to such subsidies being implemented in the US.

[mtberatwork]

You are right, the trash talk may be a bit misguided since social safety nets that exist in other countries do not really exist in the US. Family leave, universal health care, worker's rights, etc are huge political issues in the US. I'm not originally from the US but have lived here now for a good while and I still am shocked to this day that these kind of societal benefits are not commonplace as they are elsewhere.