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Without parental leave I might be dead

nytimes.com

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Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#131

Post by endisneigh »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #126
endisneigh wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, but that has nothing to do with the original comment which is to say that women don't have to go to work. Nor do men.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#132

Post by hairofadog »

KaiserPro wrote: post #118
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.

> If you are just making ends meet you are not financially responsible. your grasp of statistics lets you down. US pay is distributed like this: https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distri... Given that education requires spare income, and spare time, how are you supposed to gain qualifications/training to allow you to up your income? Assuming that everyone was able to become qualified, given the sat…

Not exactly on topic but the recent Netflix series Maid does an excellent job of making the viewer feel how difficult it can be to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. I almost hesitate to recommend it because everyone I know is so stressed right now and the series is so anxiety inducing, but if you’re someone like me who thinks rising tension is the heart of good storytelling, I can’t recommend it highly enough. Everything about it is excellent.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#133

Post by bko »

ajuc wrote: post #120
bko wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nevertheless, the participation of Greek women in the labour market continues to be 8-10 percent below the average of E.U. countries Unemployment in Greece is nearly triple what it is in the US (14%). Policies don't exist in a vacuum. Everything has trade offs. Until you accept that you'll never have a productive honest conversation. [0] https://ideas.repec.org/p/wiw/wiwrsa/ersa06p257.html

According to [1] USA is 86th in the world according to unemployment. Most of the countries with lower unemployment than USA have paid paternity leave. Please stop cherry-picking, you're not fooling anyone. 120 counties in the world have paid maternity leave, often about a year or more of it. That includes countries with higher standards of living than USA. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_unempl…

Everything is on the margin.

All else being equal, providing a large benefit that's most likely to be exercised by one type of worker will discourage employers from hiring that type of worker.

This shouldn't be complicated or controversial. It's basic incentives.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#134

Post by maxehmookau »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #117
maxehmookau wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, sure. I’m on board with that. Except businesses will probably have to pay higher taxes to support such a scheme. Businesses are the wealth drivers of our economy (as we’re so often told). Money either comes from taxes on them, or on taxes on the people that they pay. It doesn’t really matter. It’s all the same money.

>It’s all the same money. Exactly, which is why tasking every business with calculating risks of pregnancies and funding for them is dumb. Just do it on a nation level, or at least state level.

Sure. Which is the most pallatable to the US legislature to actually make this happen?

It works in the UK and Europe because there is _some_ understanding that a prospering society at all levels can't be achieved by blind liberalism and some collective risk sharing is actually a good thing.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#135

Post by Apocryphon »

charcircuit wrote: post #123
mschuster91 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If irresponsibility becomes the norm, then it ceases to be an individual personal failing to be scolded for, and is instead a systemic societal issue that should be addressed.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#136

Post by yardie »

bko wrote: post #100
lotsofpulp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This graph shows the gender pay gap trending down in the UK since they implemented parental leave: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor... This graph shows women's employment rate trending up in the UK: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor...

Policy changes don't exist in a vacuum. I'm not interested in studies that show something. I'm interested in a mental model that results in employers being indifferent to hiring men or women when statistically women are much more likely to take a considerable amount of paid time off with restrictions set on replacing them. The model could be that employers are altruistic. Or that employers are dumb and don't realize…

> I'm not interested in studies that show something.

The study doesn't agree with how I believe the world works so therefore they must be wrong.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#137

Post by teddyh »

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.

May I suggest these informative articles?

• 5 Things Nobody Tells You About Being Poor, May 27, 2011: https://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-nobody-tells-you-about...

• The 5 Stupidest Habits You Develop Growing Up Poor, January 19, 2012: https://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-stupidest-habits-you-deve...

• 4 Things Politicians Will Never Understand About Poor People, February 21, 2013: https://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-politicians-will-never...

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#138

Post by csunbird »

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.

I really can not follow the logic of this thread here, especially the last sentence.

When the choice is between "living a life you can't afford" and "not living at all as they do not have any money to pay rent", I think it is clear that people should try to live.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#139

Post by charcircuit »

KaiserPro wrote: post #121
charcircuit wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

I have never worked in retail. I have only made money from programming.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#140

Post by CountDrewku »

speedgoose wrote: post #17
bko wrote: post #7

I believe parental leave should be provided, but I don't see how anyone expects employers to shoulder the burden of providing paid parental (in reality maternity) leave without an implicit bias towards hiring men (or at least paying women less). You can provide the same benefit to men and women, but let's be honest, even when available most men take only a fraction of the allowed time. I guess you can force people to…

> Saying "other countries do it" isn't really an answer. There's no clear solutions Your argument makes me think about this satiric article : https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-na... I live in a country where it's exactly what we do, and it's fine. I took a 7 months paid parental leave as a dad recently and my company congratulated me for the birth.

Which country? What do you mean by fine? It might not affect you directly but there's going to be some negative to treating it that way. A lot of countries that provide services like this tend to have massive burdens on their health systems as well.

It's a tradeoff. It might be a better tradeoff for society as a whole but this idea that there aren't some cons to doing it that way is just false.

Personally, I think if your company was able to do without you for 7 months then they don't need you as an employee. My guess is that your salaries are much lower than someone would receive in the US.

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