Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Without parental leave I might be dead

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 570 posts

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#121

Post by KaiserPro »

charcircuit wrote: post #116
comeonseriously wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe you should not live somewhere so expensive and stop spending money on unnecessary things. Because The Poors waste their money? > You can switch to eating cheap food and minimize your expenses. So, The Poors shouldn't care about nutrition? > If you are just making ends meet you are not financially responsible. This is so naive.

>Because The Poors waste their money? Either that or they are not using their time well for making money. >So, The Poors shouldn't care about nutrition? cheap and nutritious don't have to be mutually exclusive >This is so naive. It means you are living a life you can't afford.

> not using their time well for making money.

you've not worked in retail have you?

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#122

Post by lotsofpulp »

TheCapn wrote: post #70

My first child is due January. I sat down with my boss about a month or so ago and told him I'm intending to take parental leave. "No problem" he said, I told him my intention was to take the full 8 weeks I'm entitled to. He didn't say anything right away to that... eventually it was more of a "...that's not typical for the guys around here" We did a bit of back and forth. (I think he went to HR to find out he can't…

> So I do have a small sense of loyalty to them

Why? They already showed they have no loyalty to you. Also, 8 weeks is pretty bare bones as is. 12 weeks is the minimum even in US states that have managed to implement it.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#123

Post by charcircuit »

mschuster91 wrote: post #103
charcircuit wrote: post #87

Maybe you should not live somewhere so expensive and stop spending money on unnecessary things. You can switch to eating cheap food and minimize your expenses. If you are just making ends meet you are not financially responsible.

> Maybe you should not live somewhere so expensive That is one of the problems of the "cycle of poverty". Moving requires a large upfront capital investment for a moving truck or gas for your own vehicle at the very least, as well as taking time off of work for house and job hunting (since getting to your old job may be unfeasible from wherever you manage to find a home). Not to mention you'll need to pay up for a de…

>investment for a moving truck or gas for your own vehicle at the very least, as well as taking time off of work for house and job hunting

There are financial instruments like loans where you can for a fee get money which you can use now and pay back later.

>Are you really calling nearly 70% [1] (or, after COVID, likely more!) of Americans "irresponsible" for having less than 1000$ in savings?

Yes. I don't even have a job that pays well and I could quit my job and live for years if I wanted to off my savings. Now I'm perhaps an outlier, but you should have a buffer in case you can't work for whatever reason or something unexpected happens.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#124

Post by paulryanrogers »

bko wrote: post #105
paulryanrogers wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt similar after the first child. But the reality for my SO is that it was harder on them because of all the other non-baby chores I couldn't do when working. So for the second child I had to get VP approval to take a whopping 3 weeks (unlimited* PTO, technically no paternity leave). That was essential because now there was childcare, chores, and baby care involved. It should've been more like 8w.

That's fair. I was working from home and tried to do a lot more of the non-baby chores, like cleaning and cooking. We're also fortunate enough to have paid cleaners. But it didn't require me to take any more time off work. I would log off relatively early. I think sitting around not doing anything or screwing around on my computer not at work would just annoy my partner more. But I know some people have a lot more ch…

Good points. We had a house to maintain, family was further away, and no paid help. Another big factor is C-section recovery can be a lot longer than natural birth. It is major surgery.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#125

Post by endisneigh »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #109
endisneigh wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor people have more children than rich both per capita and in aggregate Also, I never said only rich people should be able to have children. However at the end of the day raising children requires money. Hence the newly introduced children tax credit.

Birthrates among poor people are way down: https://www.statista.com/statistics/562541/birth-rate-by-pov... There may be some effect of the very poorest people having children for the purposes of benefits, but the vast majority of women will have fewer kids once they get access to birth control and financial independence.

Birthrate isn't my point. Per your chart birth rates are down for everyone. The fact remains that poor people have more children. And more to the original point, people aren't being forced to leave their children.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#126

Post by lotsofpulp »

endisneigh wrote: post #125
lotsofpulp wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Birthrates among poor people are way down: https://www.statista.com/statistics/562541/birth-rate-by-pov... There may be some effect of the very poorest people having children for the purposes of benefits, but the vast majority of women will have fewer kids once they get access to birth control and financial independence.

Birthrate isn't my point. Per your chart birth rates are down for everyone. The fact remains that poor people have more children. And more to the original point, people aren't being forced to leave their children.

My point is lack of access to contraceptives and lack of women’s financial independence might be the reason poorer women have more children. My conjecture is their higher birth rates have little to do with them being poorer.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#127

Post by nucleardog »

endisneigh wrote: post #49
letmeinhere wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's...not what a Ponzi scheme is. Also, lol at entire population using roads at exactly the same rate, I've been subsidizing rural and exurban lifestyles my whole urban lifetime.

How is it not a Ponzi scheme? You need more people to fund the previous beneficiaries. You think the math works if the population never increases? Consider how you’d fund it if the population decreased and immigration did not exist.

Is there any indication it actually requires continued growth to break even?

Given average salary where I am and roughly average tax rate, a typical household with two working adults is going to pay somewhere in the neighbourhood of $2m in tax over their working life. Paying 3% of that back to them is not going to break the bank.

There are other programs vying for their tax dollars, but I can't see any inherent reason why it requires population growth to fund the benefits unless as you look at a timeline longer than a single tax year.

As well, kind of an odd program to make that argument on. Parental leave is one of the few programs where you can pretty definitely guarantee the population growth since it's paying out for population growth that has already happened.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#128

Post by endisneigh »

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #94
endisneigh wrote: post #18

The problem with parental leave is the same problem with universal health care or any entitlement that isn’t utilized by the entire population at the same rate constantly. Things like roads (and even then there are many locales with crappy roads) are easy to justify. Things like parental leave and universal health care are hard because the percentage of those utilizing will be low and the disproportionate benefit wil…

The majority of the population over time will use parental leave if it is available. Most people do have at least one child in their lifetime so this is a terrible example of an entitlement which is unequally distributed. Health care is even worse, especially if you are guaranteeing access prospectively. Even people who are not currently using healthcare resources (hopefully most people) know that there is a very goo…

> The majority of the population over time will use parental leave if it is available.

I agree with this. However:

> b) It distributes resources from higher to lower earners, depending on how the obligation is structured there is usually a progressive taxation element which ensures a certain minimum is available.

This is irrelevant to whether or not parental leave is a ponzi scheme.

> a) It moves resources from your own pre-child and post-parental leave career to the period when the child is born. Many people who can easily fund a year of not working from their total career earnings cannot do so in their peak child-bearing years and there aren't any efficient ways of using saving or borrowing to shift that money either. For these people, parental leave uses the risk pooling and payment guarantee capabilities of the state to effectively borrow cheaply against their lifetime earnings.

Parental leave’s true cost is more than just the income lost. It’s the labor required to raise the new children.

If we say parents cannot just stay at home (in which case parental leave is unnecessary) then the people required to sustain the new children will be exponential in growth.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#129

Post by haunter »

charcircuit wrote: post #87

Maybe you should not live somewhere so expensive and stop spending money on unnecessary things. You can switch to eating cheap food and minimize your expenses. If you are just making ends meet you are not financially responsible.

What a grade A asshole you are

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#130

Post by endisneigh »

nucleardog wrote: post #127
endisneigh wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it not a Ponzi scheme? You need more people to fund the previous beneficiaries. You think the math works if the population never increases? Consider how you’d fund it if the population decreased and immigration did not exist.

Is there any indication it actually requires continued growth to break even? Given average salary where I am and roughly average tax rate, a typical household with two working adults is going to pay somewhere in the neighbourhood of $2m in tax over their working life. Paying 3% of that back to them is not going to break the bank. There are other programs vying for their tax dollars, but I can't see any inherent reaso…

I see what you're saying, but parental leave is a direct cost, but there are subsidiary costs, such as the lost productivity as well as the lifetime resources to raise the newly born child that require more people to subsidize.

If a child were something that required no ongoing resources to provide for, then yeah I'd agree with you.

That being said I didn't really properly articulate that, so the way I described it I'd have to concede that perhaps it's not a Ponzi scheme.

Post reply on HN