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Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap

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Re: Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap

#171

Post by john_moscow »

lukeschlather wrote: post #48
john_moscow wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And then you mix migration driven by climate change Do you seriously believe the migration is driven by climate change, not by the difference in life quality driven by political/cultural differences?

Do you seriously believe that climate change isn't a factor? One need look no further than the Maldives for an extreme example, but there are little examples all over. Obviously people migrate for lots of different reasons, but climate change is becoming a serious one for a lot of people.

I seriously think that differences between countries in factors like medical care, corruption, education, religious freedom/etc outweigh the climate issues by a huge margin. And climate-driven migration would normally mean moving to a different climate, not trying to offset the ~1 degree Celcius change that is observable as of today.

Re: Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap

#172

Post by albertgoeswoof »

curtis wrote: post #143

We're thinking about the problem all wrong. Clearly the way to close the wage gap is to get women to stop having kids. Of course I'm not serious, but then I personally don't care if there is a wage gap as long as it is not being caused by workplace discrimination against women. If instead it's the case that the wage gap is caused by women (disproportionately to men) making an informed choice to de-prioritize work in…

I don’t like how this argument is presented, I can’t remember the correct name for an argument articulated like this but I’ll try to explain why it’s misleading as I keep seeing it lately:

> Clearly the way to close the wage gap is to get women to stop having kids.

That’s one way, the basis of the rest of this comment is then predicated on this being the only way, and as such only has to deal with this.

> I personally don't care if there is a wage gap as long as it is not being caused by workplace discrimination against women.

This a statement that almost every reader agrees with and allows a reader to justify the position that follows (I.e. great, can’t argue with that)

> If instead it's the case that the wage gap is caused by women (disproportionately to men) making an informed choice to de-prioritize work in order to prioritize childcare, then I am totally alright with that.

There is the massive assumption here, “the wage gap is caused by women” without any evidence to back it up. But the author has already trained the reader in the previous statement that they are saying something they agree with, and that the only problem we are solving is to stop women having children (the first statement).

The comment ends with a slight retraction, “maybe, ...” but does not deny the core of the argument. This allows the author to looks like they have presented a balanced view, but it’s anything but.

Re: Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap

#173

Post by swebs »

dgudkov wrote: post #163
larrydag wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While not huge the US tax system has a child tax credit https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/five-things-to-know-about-the-c...

>We could choose to offset it directly, for example by subsidizing children -- kind of like a basic income just for kids. Unfortunately, too many people thinking "why should I pay for raising someone else's kids?".

>"why should I pay for raising someone else's kids?"

Well why should I?

Re: Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap

#174

Post by dang »

patagonia wrote: post #20
oconnore wrote: post #7

This seems really heavy handed. In my experience what’s valuable for men is flexibility, not some set number of weeks you have 100% off. I (as a father) went back to work at Fivetran 4 weeks after my son was born, but at 20 hours a week. That allowed me to help my partner during the initial recovery, but also be the primary parent (with daycare) from ~4-9 months when she returned to traveling for work in consulting.…

“What’s valuable for men...” It begins with “Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap”. Not, what would be valuable for men. A woman who just gave birth just spent an increasingly personally costly, and completely requisite (so long as the pregnancy is wanted), nine months simply getting to the maternity leave portion of the process. I can’t immagi how a woman would perceive for men to gawk at it even…

Could you please not up the ante like this on HN? This comment and the ones you added below take the thread into flamewar. Picking a gotcha phrase from what someone posted and giving them a smackdown leads straight to degraded discussion.

Instead, please follow the site guidelines and (a) assume good faith, and (b) react to the most plausible interpretation of what someone said, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Both of those are necessary for thoughtful conversation, which is what we're trying for here. That still leaves plenty of room to disagree, and then your disagreement will be much higher-quality, be more likely to convince others, and much more likely to lead to interesting (a.k.a. unpredictable) responses.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap

#175

Post by albertgoeswoof »

zimablue wrote: post #102
chris_mc wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is talking about needing to control population, but according to current figures, the population will level our around 11b people around 2100. Check out www.gapminder.org for more info, but a lot of what people think about the world is wrong.

And you think 11 billion is a good number? We couldn't support the 6 billion at western standards of living.

Why? All evidence so far suggests we can, standard of living globally has only increased with population growth.

Re: Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap

#176

Post by jaredklewis »

amb23 wrote: post #167
curtis wrote: post #143

We're thinking about the problem all wrong. Clearly the way to close the wage gap is to get women to stop having kids. Of course I'm not serious, but then I personally don't care if there is a wage gap as long as it is not being caused by workplace discrimination against women. If instead it's the case that the wage gap is caused by women (disproportionately to men) making an informed choice to de-prioritize work in…

In a perfectly rational market, neither mother or father would disproportionately decide to make one choice or another to prioritize or de-prioritize work at the expense or benefit of raising children. Equal numbers of men would be making that same choice as women do. But that's not the case today. Despite all the hemming and hawing over the wage gap issue, it's clear where the wage gap comes from: childcare, childca…

> In a perfectly rational market, neither mother or father would disproportionately decide to make one choice or another to prioritize or de-prioritize work at the expense or benefit of raising children. Equal numbers of men would be making that same choice as women do.

Why are you sure of this? Doesn’t this assume that men and women’s natural dispositions to work and childcare are identical? Are they? If so, how do we know?

The shape of the current market could be the reflection of discrimination alone, but I suspect there are other factors.

To me, it seems very difficult to isolate what market phenomena are due to culture and which are due our nature, or what the balance between the two is.

I like the idea of paternity leave (though I feel a little bad for those citizens that choose not to have children), but I doubt it’s going to close the wage gap, or result in a 50/50 split of house wives with working husbands and house husbands with working wives.

Re: Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap

#177

Post by renjimen »

zimablue wrote: post #114
matz1 wrote: post #9

Good, I guess as someone who have no plan to have kids, it makes me more attractive to employer since they don't have to wory of paying me leave.

Except that you have no way of proving that and it would be illegal for them to ask. What it actually does is leave you do the work/pay taxes for your colleagues reproduction holiday.

"Reproduction holiday". I can only assume you have never spent time around babies and small children. Holiday usually is the last word that springs to mind.

Re: Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap

#178

Post by jonathankoren »

brighteyes wrote: post #17

It would have been a more interesting article had it also went into the downsides of this approach. One specific concern is that mandatory paternity leave may discourage men from becoming fathers, further decreasing the birth rate which is already quite low in many advanced economies. Another is that if taking paternity leave impacts men's careers, then in many cases both parents will suffer such an impact, further d…

This is paid leave.

Comparing Sweden, which has mandatory paternity leave, to other countries with parental leave, the the amount of money you get paid during leave is the major factor in whether someone takes it or not.

https://qz.com/587763/how-swedens-daddy-quota-parental-leave...

Re: Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap

#179

Post by dasil003 »

swebs wrote: post #173
dgudkov wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We could choose to offset it directly, for example by subsidizing children -- kind of like a basic income just for kids. Unfortunately, too many people thinking "why should I pay for raising someone else's kids?".

>"why should I pay for raising someone else's kids?" Well why should I?

To pay taxes for the public services and infrastructure you will use during your retirement.

Re: Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap

#180

Post by alkonaut »

zimablue wrote: post #105
michaelt wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just start with making it tax funded, not employer funded. I guess it'd be good for small businesses, but I'm not sure how I'd feel about paying $40,000,000 a year to Larry Ellison while he was on parental leave.

Just cap it, if you make more than 100k you don't really need it anyway.

Yes. Cap for where I am (Sweden) is around the pay of a teacher, and the pay during the leave is 80% of that. This means I as a software dev is paid around 50% of my salary during the leave. Some employers fill this in up to e.g 80 or 90% as a benefit.
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