I mean well and this is not directed at you personally, but I don't get why employers should be forced to pay for someone's choice to have children. Unless that is their choice as well.
I would like to spend many hours of the day on my art. I don't want children. Should my employer be forced to continue to pay me if I want to go spend a year focusing on my art? Why is a couple's (or a mothers) choice to have children more important than what I choose to do in life?
The straight answer? Because their kids (maybe, just maybe) will have jobs and pay taxes that keep services running when you're retired. It's part of the social contract[1].
You might make the point that your art benefits society as well. It might, I have no idea. But more importantly, we as society haven't agreed on that benefit (which I think needs to be talked about as well), so you don't get recognized.
Like any "standard" contract, the social one does not address everybody's needs equally, but it's the one we arrive at by consensus. And so we are bound by it as long as that consensus stays. (Or we opt out of democracy, which certain SV nutcases are certainly considering)
You might make many other points about the social contract that are valid, like e.g. the scarcity of work, the unsustainability of current society, etc. I think we need to address them, and I think the social contract will change significantly in the next 30 years.
But as it is right now, that's why employers should support people who have children.
I find this argument exceedingly unpersuasive. The "social contract" argument would only be valid if people agreed on its terms. As it is, a company's responsibilities end where the law ends.
The "social contract" is an abstraction to quantify certain elements in human interactions through society.
What is real, is the necessity of a human population to procreate. This need has two aspects: does culture in general support procreation and who's procreation does it support?
First, companies do not work in a vacuum of financial abstractions. Their operations are always rooted in a very fixed cultural context. This cultural context for the most part is the cultural context of the society where the operations are based. The corporate operations affect the cultural context outside and vice versa.
Now, the first part - should there be procreation? Unless the answer is yes we can stop the discussion right here.
As for the second part, who should procreate? Let's skip the eugenics part, but, the fact is this: talented kids are usually raised by talented parents.
Should the society become more talented? I'm certain this would serve everyones best interests. Well, then, if we accept without proof that talented individuals tend to work in corporations and demanding workplaces, then if those workplaces discourage the procreation of the talented individuals they discourage the population in general of benefitting from their statistically talented offspring.
This is what is on the table. Not the happy motherhood of a single mother, or the irritation of single coworkers who begrudge parents their perks, but the future of a society. From a statistical point of view. Human urges will make sure there are kids tomorrow as there are today but the way careers treat potential parents affect directly the total human potential of those kids.
>The "social contract" is an abstraction to quantify certain elements in human interactions through society.
Yes, and we have a concrete implementation of that abstraction in the law.
>What is real, is the necessity of a human population to procreate. This need has two aspects: does culture in general support procreation and who's procreation does it support?
I don't see any barriers to procreation here. All I see is people who want to have their cake and get other people to pay for it. Go ahead and have children, just like people have always done. But realize you're going to have to make some sacrifices, and that it's not reasonable to expect other people to make sacrifices on your behalf because you want to have children.
The point I tried to make that having children is not equal to having cake - from the point of view of the society in total it is necessary as is eating and sleeping. The need is for the society. To maintain a healthy corpus the society requires children as people require food and sleep. Therefore it seems rational to me society participating in child rearing in form of financial support.
It's a political view. The way I see it a functioning society is a resource and a substrate for companies. A company that does not give the minimum support for family life of their employees is effectively reducing the quality of the society where the particular center of operations is situated. To me, it's a similar logic as to why there are environmental controls for companies and other incentives against negative externalities.
Yes, I'm familiar with the social contract. There is no such thing in the real world. It's a post-facto justification for what is enforced by other means. It has zero legal applicability.
There are laws passed by legislators who are elected. The rule of law is established by force, not by any sort of contract or agreement. There is no social contract except in philosophy class and books that have no legal standing.
> "I don't get why employers should be forced to pay for someone's choice to have children."
Because
> "There are laws passed by legislators who are elected. The rule of law is established by force"
That's why. The men with the power, who control the men with the guns, have declared that this is the way our society should work. There is your realpolitik answer.
The system these powerful men have set up does not prevent people from breaking the rules the powerful men have set. It does however lay out potential consequences for breaking the rules, should the victim choose to navigate this system in the correct way.
They are powerful, but not omnipotent. They are men, not gods.
Good point, now we can get a (for me?) more interesting discussion:
- Was something illegal done here?
- If yes, why is it (seemingly) so easy to do this?
- How can this be changed?
- Should it be changed? (In my opinion: Yes, a law which is easily breakable is useless)
Note: I only raise questions of legality here, not morality. I will not even start to discuss the morality of this action, because in my opinion anyone who says anything besides "horrible, not tolerable" in his analysis of what happened here has such a fundamental different set of core values from myself that any discussion would be a complete waste of time.
> Was something illegal done here? - If yes, why is it (seemingly) so easy to do this?
Laws don't exist to make it impossible to do the prohibited things, they exist to provide consequences for doing the prohibited things. Particularly, civil laws of this kind exist to provide compensation to those harmed by the act prohibited.
But they tend to require the person who believes they are due compensation to actively seek it.
An aging population is never good for any government.
Unless you are a really overpopulated country, having a positive birthrate is a good thing (translates to economic growth).
The case for encouraging the population to have children is pretty straightforward...
Economic growth isn't a desirable thing in and of itself. What really matters is wealth per capita. If growth is flat and population is down, that's a better situation where growth and population are both increasing at the same rate.
it will be very difficult to maintain the economically active population over total population ratio constant, you need a corresponding increase of productivity to offset the increased burden over the few working...
Right now in Europe and the US we have boatloads of people sitting around without jobs. How does it make sense to import more people to compete for the few jobs that are left? Automation means you need a smaller percentage of working people to maintain society. We can't figure out what to do with the people we have.
Although terrible for the affected, in the US the unemployment right now is 5%, hardly a catastrophe.
10% average in Europe is not horrible. If you take Spain (24%) or Greece (26%) yes, is bad, but is not sustainable and most probably things will improve in a few years... but I'm talking about decades of population reduction.
>Although terrible for the affected, in the US the unemployment right now is 5%...
U3 is a fanciful number, both because people are using disability insurance as a way to collect benefits indefinitely and because once you give up looking for a job you don't count as unemployed. The US has the lowest labor force participation rate in decades.
Another way to increase younger population is also to encourage immigration in that population group. However, for other reasons, this will never be acknowledged as a reasonable measure :)
There isn't much anti-immigration sentiment in the US. What we have in the US is anti illegal immigration sentiment.
In terms of European countries there was an article about a week ago regarding Americans going to Germany for free college. The Germans were hoping they'd stay.
I think people worry about the quality of immigrants. We want more young Sergei Brins and fewer middle aged guys with a sixth grade education.
While that may be technically true, AFAIK it's hard for someone to immigrate to the US. If I wanted to move to the US tomorrow, I believe it would involve me having to get a job before I got there.
One could argue that saying that you're against illegal immigration and making legal immigration very difficult is the same as saying that you don't really want immigration.
I agree that raw population grow is not a sustainable solution, but at least you need to grow at the replace rate or you're in trouble.
Care for the elderly is still an intensive task. Maybe yes, in 30 years it will be done by (Japanese) robots but we're not close yet.
You have the economic burden too: how much more productive each working individual has to be if it has to offset an increased ration of non working individuals?
Lastly, I don't think a country is sustainable with a dwindling population unless it can be physically and culturally isolated and has an important deterrent against military action
Not entirely. John Locke's take is that you agree to a rule of law by choosing to live in it, and that you can move to another government if you disagree.
Only Thomas Hobbe's take was based purely on force, because he viewed the nature of man as being vile and completely evil, which isn't surprising given the environment he lived in.
Groups must persist; therefore a group must sacrifice to ensure that the actual next generation is created and cared for. Schools, parental leave, etc, are all required. Any society that neglects these would seem to be self-limiting.
K, you are more than welcome to go ahead and break our laws. Oh you don't feel like suffering the consequences we've set up for doing so? Then you've agreed to the social contract. Countries that have to reestablish sovereignty with each succeeding generation are failed states.
So, if a person is born into a particular society, you are effectively telling them that they must toil for whatever amount of time is necessary to pay for the policies that preceded his existence. At the very least, this sounds like indentured servitude.
Incidentally, the U.S. government was set up in such a way where men were not beholden to others, but were equals, trading value for value with each other absent coercion. A strong but limited government was instituted to protect individual rights---to protect us against internal and external threats with retaliatory force.
The expansion of the government over the last 100 years has nothing to do with the protection of individual rights and the original intention of Founders (who were greatly influenced by Locke). The "social contract" is a way for some individuals to justify the abrogation of protecting the freedom of individuals in favor of a gargantuan rights-violating welfare state.
Finally, what is the objective measure of how much an individual owes? Do they owe 50% of their time? 70%? To whom specifically do they owe this? How does one come to these conclusions in an objective manner?
You are conflating taxation with indentured servitude.
The U.S. government has supported taxation from day 1, including for the purposes of funding collective welfare, e.g. collective self-defense. Current citizens pay for the democratic decisions of past generations all the time. Even if you don't drive, you pay taxes to support road and bridge maintenance. This is not "indentured servitude". It is how a democratic society functions.
How much do we owe? Answer: it is determined through a democratic decision-making process that weighs costs and benefits to our society.
Case in point: This very forum would likely not exist without the aforementioned expansion of government. DARPA and government funding for high-tech research to the tune of billions of dollars has been instrumental in the birth and evolution of Silicon Valley, and continues today (e.g. Siri, self-driving cars).
I think it is a stretch to presume that without DARPA there would be no internet (or equivalent). There were many other networks that had nothing to do with the government - FidoNet, BIX, Prodigy, CompuServe, MCINet, innumerable BBS systems, and even I designed one in my head before I'd ever heard of Arpanet. Everyone who had two computers thought of connecting them together (and often did, with existing or ad-hoc protocols).
That ['DARPA created the Internet'] wasn't the point they made though.
If anything I think your "many other networks" example reinforces the point. The private sector left to its own devices came up with tons of incompatible small networks all vying to be the juggernaut.
The government, when faced with much larger problems than growing market share, instead invested considerable resources into solving a problem in a way that could handle the needs of a large national government, and then later invested more resources into making that internet a public good.
Even if the government hadn't developed its own internet protocols (and standardized on a notional private sector one), the government would likely still have been instrumental in expanding the use of some other standard. E.g. Eisenhower didn't invent the road, but his Administration sure did ensure a lot of them got built.
Putting aside the fact that the minicomputers that ran the early CompuServe came out of a multi-decade period of government-supported development and procurement, and also ignoring that CompuServe, Prodigy et al ultimately failed while the DARPA-spawned open Internet succeeded... the Internet is only one of a long list of technologies developed by DARPA or other government agencies over many decades and many billions of dollars. I mentioned just two in the headlines right now: Siri and self-driving cars, both of which trace directly back to taxpayer-funded research. Silicon Valley owes much to Big Government spending.
"What if" discussions are always ultimately flawed because one cannot go back in time and try something different. But my point is absent DARPA, the internet would have happened anyway in all likelihood.
Just like if the Wright Bros had not invented the airplane in 1903, someone else would have probably within 5 years. We'd still be flying today.
I suspect that the number of inventions that would not inevitably have happened once the preconditions were in place is very small.
After all, as I mentioned previously, having worked extensively with computers before the internet, the first thing someone with two computers tries to do is hook them together.
Hell, I even did my own hardware and software to transfer files from my LSI-11 to a PC over a wire. The government couldn't have stopped an internet workalike from forming if it tried.
There is a classic aphorism: "democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner."
This country was very specifically founded NOT as a democracy, for the very reason elucidated above. If the mob wants to vote your rights away, they should not be able to.
Self-defense and transfer payments from one individual to another (i.e., welfare) are different issues fundamentally. We authorize the government to solve the problem of coordination---in terms of defense, we don't want a bunch of private militaries roving around the countryside. At the heart of this is the issue of rights protection: if one man steals from another, his rights have been violated and government must act in response.
However, if the issue is whether a man has a claim on another man's property simple because he "needs" it, this is not sufficient justification for him to take it by force. Indeed, most people would call this "theft". Why is it different if the thug steals a dollar in dark alley from you or if a government coerces the same action at the point of a gun? Because a majority have voted for it?
You merely referring to the laws that you like as "coordination" and the laws you dislike as "theft".
Even if we narrowly focus on a particular system of "private property right protection", which was certainly not the exclusive focus of the founding fathers -- who also advocated slavery and were extremely protectionist -- that nonetheless requires the enthusiastic embracement of the majority enforcing its will upon the minority at the point of a gun.
Incidentally, the U.S. government was set up in such a way where men were not beholden to others, but were equals, trading value for value with each other absent coercion
Only men? I always find it amusing when this kind of libertarian rhetoric forgets that women exist.
And if you want to talk about who is protecting the freedom of individuals, keep in mind that the US banned slavery considerably later than it's contemporaries. You talk of a 'gargantuan rights-violating welfare state' while at the same time lionising a state that was quite happy to literally enslave people. Not figuratively or rhetorically, but literally enslave people.
Can you read back my comments? When did I lionize the institution of slavery? The Founders got most things right philosophically, and fell short on some of the practical implementation. Eventually the Civil War rectified this contradiction.
Perhaps you should read your own link, which says that 'men' is not gender neutral. "By the 18th century, man had come to refer primarily to males; some writers who wished to use the term in the older sense deemed it necessary to spell out their meaning.". The US was founded in the 18th century. So whether you want to use the 18th-century term supported by your own link, or modern usage, "men" is not gender-neutral.
When did I lionize the institution of slavery?
You didn't lionise the institution of slavery, but you were lionising people that made a system that supposedly was all about individual rights but was at the same time supporting slavery.
You don't get to talk about how awesome the Founding Fathers were about the rights of individuals if you get to hand-wave away the multitudes of individuals whom they had no problems putting in chains. I mean, you even specified "absent coercion" about a society with legal industrial-scale slavery!
Edit: to be clearer, the Founding Father's philosophy quite happily allowed for slavery in practice. Perhaps you shouldn't talk of it in such reverent tones - the 'welfare state' you complain of is clearly better at being fair to all individuals, not just the blessed ones that are pre-approved.
Why should employers be forced to pay a minimum wage? Provide a safe work environment? Pay in to unemployment benefits?
Why? Because we are trying to have a civilization here. Our purpose on this planet isn't to work. It's to live, and creating life is just about the most mind blowing life experience we can ever have.
We let your employer exist, not the other way around.
In the case of employers that aren't individual persons but which are legal entities established under forms provided for by law, "we let you exist" doesn't mean "we could have destroyed you but chose not to", but "we took active steps to cause you to exist in the first place".
Corporations, LLCs, etc., don't exist in nature. They are creations of government through law that funnel benefits, at public expense, to particular members of society, in exchange for the specified obligations.
Oh, gotcha. Well, barter exists in nature, and gold as well, so from what you're saying I gather that you would not be opposed to:
- instead of a Corporation or an LLC, I just be myself
- instead of an employee, I choose to barter some natural gold for some natural manual or intellectual labor from someone else
if I don't care to oblige to the labor laws du jour?
Because right now that's illegal. I agree with you, if you benefit from creation of government then you should pay in, awesome. We agree 100% (I'd still prefer to see an itemized bill, though). But why should I go to jail if I have an ongoing promise to give someone a shiny "worthless" rock (not created by government) so long as they keep laying bricks at my backyard the way I tell them to?
> so from what you're saying I gather that you would not be opposed to
I didn't say anything about what I was or was not opposed to in the post you are responding to, I simply enumerated certain facts regarding the existence of the kind of entities that make up a substantial number of "employers" and how their existence is dependent on active actions and costs born by the rest of society.
So, no, there is no valid inference from that as to what I would or would not oppose.
Did you not say that a substantial number of employers owe their existence to creations of government and for this reason are bound by government obligations?
For that to be a principled argument, would it not follow that if one does not owe their existence to the government, they aren't bound by those same obligations, since the reason as present above is now missing?
If not, then you're really just saying "we're all bound by government business obligations whether you choose to benefit from government created "funnels" or not". Yes, but don't make my case for me.
> Did you not say that a substantial number of employers owe their existence to creations of government
Yes.
> and for this reason are bound by government obligations?
No, at least, not in the sense you are using "government obligations" (generally applicable labor law, etc.) I said a substantial number of entities are creations of government on the principal of granting benefits to certain individuals associated with the entities in exchange for certain obligations attached to the particular form of organization.
I did not say that those were the reason (sole or otherwise) that those organizations are bound by generally applicable law. (There is, I think, an argument that, whether or not a law should be applicable to people in general, the fact that those entities are creatures of government and not natural persons may be relevant to whether or not the law should be applicable to them. But I certainly did not argue that things like labor law were applicable to them because, and much less only because, they are creatures of government.)
I'm was not, in fact, saying anything about why people are bound by generally-applicable government business obligations. I was making an observation related only to your upthread comment on the meaning of the phrase "we let you exist" in reference to employers.
Who is the employer? It is either an individual or a group of individuals who have bound themselves together in some legal manner. Should they not be able to choose who they employ? How they employ them? What wage rate they pay? Should you, as the employee, not be able to exercise your judgement and either accept their offering, seek out someone better, or offer your services as a free agent?
The minimum wage: Black youth unemployment was higher than white youth unemployment before the minimum wage was instituted above market rates in the late '50s (see Thomas Sowell on this; he's a local at Stanford). Upon the institution of a minimum wage, the black unemployment rate skyrocketed, and has remained much higher than the white youth unemployment rate. If you can't get that first job, you are more likely to be consigned to a life of poverty. If you can get that first job (at even a low wage rate), you can build skills and practice your work ethic, eventually landing a job with a higher wage.
Unemployment benefits: The more you subsidize a certain behavior, the more you get of that certain behavior. What incentive would you have to look for a job if you were getting free money to sit on your ass? Finding a job would certainly be a less-pressing issue.
Yes, I certainly do want civilization---one in which the government protects my rights and doesn't sanction the mob to steal what I've worked so hard for. Men should deal with other men in the context of voluntary transactions, trading value for value; they should not live at the expense of others.
Having a child isn't really a "choice" in the aggregate. As a society we need to have kids, or else all this paper Silicon Valley wealth predicated on the extensive of successive generations of teenagers goes up in smoke.[1] It's more like paying to install bathrooms than for something societally optional.
[1] Or our debt-funded public services, or our socials security system, or our stock market. The inter-generational dependence of the old on the young and vice-versa is inevitable. All modern inventions like retirement savings do is create a level of indirection between young workers and the retirees they support. But at least until we obsolete human labor, having new generations of educated workers is essential, and having kids generates a large positive externality.
> Abortion is, fortunately, always a choice in the US.
Legally, it is sometimes a choice in America (many states have restrictions, both within the bounds which have previously been found constitutional by the federal courts and in many cases outside them and likely to be challenged in the future, but enforced until such a challenge happens and succeeds -- and there is no guarantee that a challenge will succeed, even if the precedent suggests it should.) Practically, it is even less of a choice than it is legally, due to various factors, including the restrictions, driving abortion providers out of large swaths of the country.
Unless the only hospital nearby is a Catholic-affiliated hospital. Or you live in one of several states with little to no access to abortion providers.
> Unless the only hospital nearby is a Catholic-affiliated hospital.
Elective abortions generally aren't mostly performed in hospitals anyway, but in separate clinics, so what kind of hospital is nearby is largely irrelevant (it might have an indirect relationship in states that have adopted rules requiring abortion providers to be doctors with admitting privilegs in a nearby hospital, but those rules have, IIRC, only been proposed in places where none of the elective abortion providers meet that description in the first place, and are intended as a backdoor prohibition on abortion.)
While performed at clinics, local hospitals can have a disproportionate impact on access to abortion - for example, by influencing whether or not doctors in the area have access to training in the procedure, whether or not they provide referrals, and often are the places where poor and minority patients end up seeking care.
> Why is a couple's (or a mothers) choice to have children more important than what I choose to do in life?
Fundamentally, human society exists because it increases the chance of our species success. Everything else - from art to the internet - is a peace dividend from how much better we are at taking care of our young than the average species. Biologically human child birth & child care is actually really disadvantaged, but we more than made up for it by the advantages of society.
Keep that in mind anytime you compare "giving birth to a child" to literally anything else in society. Giving birth to a child is the core reason for it all.
1. Having children was until very recently (probably still is) the norm
2. Children are net-benefit for society (otherwise you have problems of lack of young people to support an ageing population)
3. The government should at least partially subsidise [pm]aternity leave - the rest is just part of the cost of doing business (along with all the hundreds of other laws business have to deal with)
4. Parental leave attracts more experienced staff (as they're older and more likely to have children)
As a european, I find it almost inhumane not giving statutory parental leave. Having children is a normal part of life, and in the current economic climate having a full-time job is basically a requirement for most people. You shouldn't need to be rich to afford children
1. Having children was until very recently (probably still is) the norm
2. Children are net-benefit for society
3. The government should at least partially subsidise
^ These make me feel that we had a population bubble that popped some time ago. Just compare it to housing: Buying it is the norm, it is net benefit for the economy, and yet it still sometimes pops and then no government subsidies help when people are not ready to buy anymore.
Same thing we have with children, albeit much more inertial.
In most western countries (basically all, except the US), maternity/parental leave is paid for, and not by the company. You're required to hold the person's job (except in extreme cases, like if you're restructuring and the job no longer exists, in which case you're required to try to provide a similar position).
> Why is a couple's (or a mothers) choice to have children more important than what I choose to do in life?
The reason why parental leave is important is that the first few years are extremely formative, and having an opportunity for mother and child to bond (or father and child, whatever the case) strongly affects development. Being able to focus on the care of your child is extremely important to their development[1], and because those children tend to become more well-adjusted, it's beneficial to society as a whole. That's why most countries provide parental leave for one or both parents.
So the answer is, women should be able to have children and not feel punished for it or discriminated against because of it because that discourages a society where people care about each other and feel like they're part of something.
I think the solution isn't to pay someone when they have kids. Allow _all_ employees enough time off or flexibility so that there is a work/life balance.
Whether your life consists of caring for others (children, elderly parents, or disabled relatives) or for your self (fitness, education, relaxation, or having fun) should not be differentiated.
The point is employers need to realize that you need to HAVE a life, and that will in the end make you the most productive and happy employee.
Perhaps what we need is acceptance of part time work in more high earning jobs. People who want to work 60-80 hour weeks and make the maximum money should be able to do so, while accommodating those who want to work 30 hours a week but are okay making less.
Work/life balance problem applies to very few fields. Imagine an average construction worker, if you give him/her a year off, what on earth are they going to do with it?
What life/work balance problems do they have to begin with?
It is only creative fields with blurry boundaries of what is expected of you that keep shifting somewhat, that this is brought up. It's a non-issue for most jobs, for most people.
I think you're really underestimating construction workers and people in general. Einstein was a patent clerk while doing amazing physics. Jimi Hendrix worked odd jobs and was a paratrooper. People are capable of amazing (and terrible) things and it is folly to think that you can understand people's problems and potential without getting to know them individually.
Shrugs - you're cherry-picking exceptions when I clearly used the word average.
If I say dancing around a fire and chanting, on average, doesn't help people with kidney disease and you retort with 'it helped my grandmother' - where do we go from here?
Should I get to individually know every person with kidney disease to see if dancing around the fire will cure them?
That seems to be what you're suggesting, unless I'm misunderstanding you.
If I'm reading your comment correctly, then I think I'm disagreeing with you on two points:
1) I find that the outliers make a big difference in any distribution. For example: the vast majority of start ups fail, but the ones that succeed can make a large impact. To your example, the vast majority of compounds tried as drugs fail but the rare ones like peniclilin change medicine as we know it.
2) Personally I've found that people's current status in life can be a predictor of future success but it far from perfect. I would suggest that rather than trying to predict who is going to succeed beforehand we come up with a system that gives them some opportunities to be successful.
> If I say dancing around a fire and chanting, on average, doesn't help people [...]
What if we really did give people the option of periodic sabbaticals where they could do whatever they want (including "dancing around fires and changing")? It could massively reduce stress levels, and given stress' negative impact on health, this really could help (on average).
We could perhaps achieve something to this effect via "basic income", such that people would be able to take leave of employment without fear of destitution, thus laboring on such a schedule as they would more genuinely voluntarily agree to.
I think they are objecting to your generalisation of construction workers as lacking in imagination or dreams beyond "living to work". Which I object to, as well, as when I worked in construction that range of people I met and the dreams and goals and ideas they had were immense. People are fascinating, regardless of what job you do, and I think you would be amazed at what people can do when given the opportunity.
> Imagine an average construction worker, if you give him/her a year off, what on earth are they going to do with it?
Whatever they want. You don't think the average construction worker has things they'd rather do with their time than grinding away at their job ceaselessly?
I think either I've misunderstood the person I replied to or I'm being misunderstood here.
Nobody's saying 'Hey, construction workers don't need free time. They're construction workers!'
We are talking sabbaticals and whether or not they improve the situation all around so much, that they ought to be implemented.
You know, like using soap was implemented, because it's cheap and it works GREAT. Now do we implement sabbaticals for EVERYONE?
I say no, not really. Because while MOST people would enjoy time off, how would you like to wait an extra month to get an operation you need? Doctors should have sabbaticals. Btw, they can definitely afford them.
Or you know, the president. Why don't we have presidents take sabbaticals? They're pretty stressed out.
If the only thing to consider is whether the person taking the time off is better off, then great, let's all go sabbatical tomorrow. If we think a few steps ahead, then maybe adjusting pay/working conditions/etc would yield better results than simply saying 'let's lose a productive member of society for a while, in the hopes that he/she will on her own make great use of their time.'
Every construction worker I've ever met expected time off, especially during the winter. They draw unemployment (perhaps construction firms have to pay a higher rate for this?), and typically stuff picks back up in the spring.
> Why is a couple's (or a mothers) choice to have children more important than what I choose to do in life?
Because at a fundamental level, a society continuing to exist is predicated on people continuing to have children. Your art does not fit that criteria.
> I don't get why employers should be forced to pay for someone's choice to have children
Discussions about the social obligations of "businesses" would benefit to have distinctions made between the different kinds of businesses.
A large profitable corporation with thousands of employees can probably provide paid maternity leave whereas paid maternity leave would put most small businesses and early stage startups out of business.
I'm sympathetic to both sides of the argument. My mom lost a few years of seniority working at the phone company (GTE) in the 80s due to pregnancy, and as a result was often outbid on higher paying jobs for the rest of her working life. On the other hand, my current startup would have instantly folded if we had to cut paychecks for a non-working employee.
I'm guessing the majority (by number) of businesses just cannot afford to offer paid maternity leave, and this needs to be acknowledged. There aren't simply "two sides" to this discussion.
The third perspective would be for governments to collectively provide social benefits in this category, decoupling many aspects of the big vs small business disparities - which also extend to the provision of healthcare by businesses in general.
Companies are not obligated to provide paid maternity leave--only unpaid. There are expenses incurred (namely, health insurance), but you won't be receiving a paycheck to raise your children or focus on your art, as in your example.
Children are the future. Companies and society as a whole invest in the next generation because they will need more workers and support for an aging population. A company without paid maternity leave is directly discouraging employees from having children. I think (most) companies, especially in SV profit more than enough to offer their employees paid maternity leave (and probably time for you to work on your art).
I find myself truly struggling to get past this point all the time. I think people too often think that having children is somehow granted as given for anyone who wishes to. I am a man but I expect then whenever I decide to start a family I will attempt to spend less time at work. At the very least, I'll be tired from trying to do both. That's not a burden I would "require" a company to bear, but if companies wish to compete for me, they would provide it. Perhaps it's not worth the price of keeping someone on once an employee moves into the family starting part of their life : /
Employers don't have to, at least in the U.S. Lots of people I know have used up their PTO and sick days for maternity leave. There is also FMLA, which is unpaid but guarantees you'll still have a job after 12 weeks. In some cases, like in the parent comment, they'll figure out a way to cut you loose.
My wife took FMLA for six weeks. Law or no law, HCA happily told her she had the right to apply for another job at another center when she got back. With no guarantee of the same pay. Of course, she ignored them and didn't go back, but we didn't sue either, as that wasn't feasible. Big companies can get away with a lot that isn't legal or ethical.
Oh, for some reason I was under the impression they were. Thanks for clarifying. A quick Google search seems to show that a few states require paid leave for a short period at a discounted wage.
I don't see the parent suggesting anywhere that employers should be forced to do anything. I kind of dislike how most conversations on these topics quickly turn into regulatory or philosophical ones.
I'd much rather have people discussing what can be done by companies, people and other agents.
A couple of reasons might be: Motivation, and political power.
"Motivation" is the idea that certain factors motivate people to compete harder in the workplace. One of those factors is having kids. A colleague of mine was dissatisfied with his advancement, and I suggested that he should become a project manager. His response: "Why should I take that horrible job when my engineer job lets me go home at 5 every day?" He had no kids, but lots of social activities.
An amusing story about motivation at my workplace, a Fortune 500 company, is that our management jobs tend to be pretty thankless, even if they pay more. Everybody I've known who has applied for those jobs, has kids.
I've read that after the birth of their first kid, there's a 50% chance that a worker will change jobs in pursuit of higher pay. I also read about a study of unskilled, single women living in the south side of Chicago. Those with kids tended to earn higher wages, and traveled further to their jobs, than those without.
It may be that the choice is not so much children versus art, but career versus art.
Providing family benefits might be one way to effectively pay people more without creating an overt caste system where all of the higher level jobs are held by people with kids.
Political power relates to motivation. From what I've read, people with kids tend to vote. Unsurprisingly, we vote our interests. And there are certain interests that can only be met, within our system, by influencing employers.
Women are the only people who get pregnant. If you force people to choose between a family and a job some people would see that as discriminatory against women.
First of all, your use of the term "breeder" is pretty disgusting and you should feel ashamed of using it.
I'm a man and maternity leave does not bother me despite it being "discrimination" on the face of it. For one, maternity leave isn't really equivalent to vacation. Taking care of a newborn baby is very hard, exhausting work. To add to that, giving birth is a pretty physically traumatic situation that a woman does have to spend time recovering from.
Ultimately, no two people at a company are going to have identical benefits. We should try to be fair and equitable, but that means different things to different people, and is not always clear-cut. I can either wring my hands that someone somewhere may be getting a better deal than me, or I can actually go ahead and try to improve my situation. I don't see any point in trying to knock down women who want to be mothers because they may be getting a benefit that I'm not.
And finally, there are strong arguments for mandatory maternal (and paternal) leave from a societal perspective. I'm not going to rehash them here, but they're there if you really want to understand the other side.
Maternity leave is not a vacation. And people generally don't have kids so they can take long paid vacations.
It's not a reward a company bestows upon an employee for having a child, nor is it a mechanism for discrimination towards those who don't have or choose not to have children.
It's a way for an employer to support an employee in an important life choice, and is one of many benefits that a company may provide to foster a nurturing and open office culture.
FWIW, most states don't even require employers to pay for maternity leave and are only bound by FMLA. Newly-minted parents usually take accrued PTO, sick days, and declare disability to take care of their newborns.
[EDIT] For context, the parent poster (whose comment is now deleted) wrote about feeling discriminated against when a company gives maternity leave to parents but got no vacation time for choosing not to have kids. As an aside, I am confused by why the poster felt discriminated against.
This comment is akin to the farmers who tell us we need to subsidize them because without them we will all starve.
There are hundreds of millions of people who would very much like to come to the United States. They are ready and willing to start working and contributing taxes now. We can pick and chose the skills we need, not invest for 22+ years and hope for the best.
We only need the product you are selling because you use your political power to prevent your competitors, with a superior product, from entering the market.
The irony of appealing to immigration to justify child-hostile policies is that all those immigrants (me included) think westerners are crazy for being so child-hostile. Hispanics in the U.S. have a fertility rate of 3.
> all those immigrants (me included) think westerners are crazy for being so child-hostile.
Westerners in general isn't child-hostile, even if US labor practices are, and many of those immigrants -- including the Hispanic ones -- are Westerners themselves.
If they do all think we westerners are crazy (and I'm certainly not going to take your word for it), that isn't enough of a downside to leave us with a shortage of potential immigrants. Your argument about freeloaders is just plain wrong.
What we have going here is attractive enough that we have people lining up out the door. We don't desperately need you to do us a favor and bless society with your children, despite the fact that every parent seems to think we do.
It's not freeloading. It's a voluntary trade for value.
In any event, your logic is flawed. A person can easily be a net contributor over a lifetime without having children. And someone who has children, can easily be a net drain even after attributing some of the costs/contributions of the children (which may well also be negative).
> There are hundreds of millions of people who would very much like to come to the United States.
They aren't prevented from coming to the United States by people having children, they are prevented from coming to the United States by US immigration law (either because they are individually undesirable, or because they exceed the hard total or per-country caps in various permitted categories.)
It's not just what you traditionally think of as "welfare." Our whole economy is predicated on the assumption that populations will not collapse. This is especially true of Silicon Valley. Baked into the $50 million investment round that values your company at $500 million is the assumption that the company, if it succeeds, will have customers in the future. If, e.g., the whole world became sterile tomorrow, VC, the stock market, property values, everything would collapse.
Maternity leave is not a vacation. It takes time to physiologically recover from giving birth. Psychologically, new mothers need time to adapt to their new role. Between frequent feedings, diapers, sleepless nights, taking care of a newborn is a lot of work. Certainly there is no time for leisure so labeling maternity leave a vacation is disingenuous.
That being said, there should be a "leave" option for parents adopting children as well.
Human life has a few cyclic needs that are necessary. These include: eating, sleeping, recreation.
Family is also such a cyclic need, but with different temporal properties and statistic properties - the time taken by parenthood is localized over a brief period of time and reduces to zero. And as for statistics, the need is throughout the entire population but some individuals can avoid it.
Workplaces recognize the need for food and rest. The needs of a family is a similar need, although it is localized to a few persons, it permeates the entire population. A human workplace recognizes the critical needs.
Because there was a law passed in the United States in 1978 called "The Pregnancy Discrimination Act" which makes it illegal to fire people based on their pregnancy status. So assuming the commenter is in the US, it's the law.
Can we please stop downvoting comments like these? There were no incorrect facts, or mean statements presented. This person asked a sincere question in a non-aggressive way. I'm sure there are other people who had the same question, so why not discuss the point openly? Even if you disagree with this opinion, maybe you can change it, or change the opinion of someone who felt the same way and was just reading through the comments. Would it be preferable for people to be afraid of stating their opinions and therefore never have a chance to hear someone else's perspective?
I would like to spend many hours of the day on my art. I don't want children. Should my employer be forced to continue to pay me if I want to go spend a year focusing on my art? Why is a couple's (or a mothers) choice to have children more important than what I choose to do in life?