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Associations Among School Absenteeism, G.I. and Respiratory Illness, and Income

cdc.gov

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Re: Associations Among School Absenteeism, G.I. and Respiratory Illness, and Income

#21

Post by School-Cotton »

renholder wrote: post #15
School-Cotton wrote: post #11

The headline here is incredibly misleading. The CDC is not making the factual claim that "low-income parents send sick kids to school due to lack paid sick leave". The actual truth: a paper from the CDC finding an apparently quite weak link between poverty and rate of school absence due to sickness stuck that in as one of many somewhat plausible explanations, in a very speculative discussion section. To emphasize: th…

Upboat for rationalisation. Also, from the European perspective (and specifically speaking of the technology sector, as that's what I have first-hand experience with), taking sick leave to take care of a child at home isn't a thing, whatsoever. You would just send an email to your team saying that you're sorry but you're working from home because your kid is sick and that would be the end of it. No compulsion to take…

I work in the technology sector in the US and my experience is exactly the same as yours.

> However, given the American exceptionalism showing up in the thread, I'm going to wager that this probably going to see some vitriolic response.

I actually don't believe in American exceptionalism at all. Nor European exceptionalism. But I am fed up with people from the most developed part of the world acting shocked and morally outraged when life isn't as amazing everywhere else.

You probably didn't intend it that way, but it comes off as extremely smug.

Re: Associations Among School Absenteeism, G.I. and Respiratory Illness, and Income

#22

Post by zeroname »

markdown wrote: post #20
zeroname wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is paying for those five extra days? Is it the health insurance? Your cost of health care will go up or service will get worse. Is it taxes? Your taxes will go up or money will be missing in the budget (or you will need to get more debt). Is it the employer? Wage suppression. You haven't gained or won anything really. There's no free lunch. I will make an exception though: If you make people stay home when they a…

> Who is paying for those five extra days? The cost is shared between taxpayers and the employer – employers get a 150% tax deduction for wages paid for family care leave. Taxes will go up, and perhaps some prices. This is good. > You haven't gained or won anything really. There's no free lunch. Workers maybe haven't gained anything, but a worker has, and that's wonderful. You can argue all you want about economic mo…

The cost isn't paid elsewhere. It's essentially going straight out of their own paycheck. Not immediately and in equal measure, but over time and on the average. It's effectively vacation days.

Remember, everyone gets those five days. Big earners, small earners. It evens out to nothing. Everyone can't live at the expense of everyone else.

Re: Associations Among School Absenteeism, G.I. and Respiratory Illness, and Income

#23

Post by renholder »

zeroname wrote: post #18
renholder wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upboat for rationalisation. Also, from the European perspective (and specifically speaking of the technology sector, as that's what I have first-hand experience with), taking sick leave to take care of a child at home isn't a thing, whatsoever. You would just send an email to your team saying that you're sorry but you're working from home because your kid is sick and that would be the end of it. No compulsion to take…

> (specifically speaking of the technology sector, as that's what I have first-hand experience with) In other words, you're out of touch with ordinary, less privileged workers. > It really is a different world, over here. The antithesis to the apathetical, if I may be so bold... Oh, come on. If you're a developer you can have a "work from home" day in the US as well. Plus, you can earn far more and you pay less in ta…

>In other words, you're out of touch with ordinary, less privileged workers.

Just because I'm "out of touch" with ordinary, less privileged workers doesn't equate to my experience and observations in the sector as being invalidated, yeah? Isn't the site "Hacker News" and not "ordinary, less privileged workers'" news?

>Oh, come on. If you're a developer you can have a "work from home" day in the US as well.

That might be true for you but is it true for developers in the overall society?

Let's take this to an extreme example: A coworker missed over two months, last year, for 'x' medical reasons. What would've surely driven him to the poor house in the states was paid through those taxes you later commented on and there was no threat to his job because of it.

>Plus, you can earn far more and you pay less in taxes.

What does that have to do with anything related to kids and the propensity to send them to school because you haven't the time to take off to take care of them or the funds to have a minder? Surely, those less taxes (and more pay) should equate to more days from school, yeah, if it really is as exceptional as you're trying to make it sound.

Personally, I like paying taxes for a better society (e.g.: education, health, infrastructure, etc.) but that's just me. However, that has nothing to do the topic.

Re: Associations Among School Absenteeism, G.I. and Respiratory Illness, and Income

#24

Post by alkonaut »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #14

Children are expensive. And it’s not about money. It’s about time and energy and effort and incessant tending and bonding. I honestly think people need counseling and planning before they start to think about starting a family. They need back up plans and contingency strategies. It used to be that we lived in small communal groups and non nuclear families. Usually matriarchal wherein the post menopausal grandmother p…

Where I come from the thinking is that people both responsible and irresponsible will have children, and being born to irresponsible parents is never the child’s fault. So the responsible thing to do for the state is to ensure the well being of all children by having generous grants, generous parental leave, universal healthcare including dental for children and so on. Basically, if a child’s well being ever depends on the economic status of the parents, society has failed - not the parents. Does this lead to moral hazards such as irresponsible parents getting children they can’t provide for? Who knows. Perhaps. I much prefer it to the alternatives.

Re: Associations Among School Absenteeism, G.I. and Respiratory Illness, and Income

#25

Post by School-Cotton »

markdown wrote: post #17
School-Cotton wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's your excuse, USA? Well, what's Fiji's excuse for being "barely above 'third world' status" ? What makes you think it's normal for Fiji to have low standards of development, but it's an aberration for the USA? It turns out there are many different dimensions of development, and just like many countries, the US ranks poorly on some of those dimensions, due to extremely complicated and maybe intractable politic…

> Well, what's Fiji's excuse for being "barely above 'third world' status" ? Well there's a very long list of reasons starting from geographic isolation to brain drain (incl. to the USA) all the way up to military coups, but I doubt that was a serious question so there's no point me answering your question in any great detail. > What makes you think it's normal for Fiji to have low standards of development, but it's…

> See above for why Fiji has low standards of development. In comparison, USA is the most prosperous and powerful nation on earth and has been for over a century. You've enjoyed democracy for almost 250 years. You've been to the moon.

Democracy and space programs are two dimensions of development, but certainly not the whole story. India is a democracy, and Russia has an advanced space program. Both countries have loads of problems. So I'm not sure what your point is with democracy and the space program.

As for "powerful", I also don't see how that's relevant. China is extremely powerful, and Switzerland is not powerful at all. However I would bet my life that a greater fraction of Swiss than Chinese people have access to sick leave.

Yes, the US is prosperous in some ways, and not in others.

> And at last after the defensive stuff is out of the way, we see an attempt at an answer, abstract and hand-wavy though it is.

Actually that was the point of my entire post. Everything else in the post was an illustration of that point.

Let me make another point. The US isn't a person; it doesn't have willpower, feelings, or emotions. So it doesn't make sense to reason as though "the US" made some sort of irrational bad decision to be a shitty country where people can't take the day off of work. It doesn't make decisions at all in the way a human being does. It's an emergent system with no mind of its own and must be understood as such.

Re: Associations Among School Absenteeism, G.I. and Respiratory Illness, and Income

#26

Post by School-Cotton »

benj111 wrote: post #19
School-Cotton wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's your excuse, USA? Well, what's Fiji's excuse for being "barely above 'third world' status" ? What makes you think it's normal for Fiji to have low standards of development, but it's an aberration for the USA? It turns out there are many different dimensions of development, and just like many countries, the US ranks poorly on some of those dimensions, due to extremely complicated and maybe intractable politic…

Unless you're suggesting causation between barely above 3rd world status, and having family days off I'm not sure what your point is? Richer countries tend to (or should?) have nicer things, its reasonable to ask why one of the richest doesn't have something that much poorer countries do.

How are you defining "rich" ?

Having high quality of life like easy access to childcare, sick leave and vacation time from work, etc., is part of being a rich country, or more precisely, a developed country. So your argument amounts to "rich countries should be rich", which is circular.

If by "rich" you mean GDP per capita as opposed to development, I don't think it's a great metric -- there are plenty of countries with horrible, oppressive regimes that have a high GDP per capita. There are many low- or middle-income countries that I would rather live in than the "rich" UAE or Saudi Arabia, for example.

Also, how are you defining "should" ? Doesn't that imply some capacity for moral reasoning, or at least willpower? The US has neither -- it is not a person and it has no mind of its own. Saying the US "should" do something is like saying a hurricane "should" avoid my house. It'd be nice if it did, but it sounds a bit odd to put it that way.

Re: Associations Among School Absenteeism, G.I. and Respiratory Illness, and Income

#27

Post by markdown »

zeroname wrote: post #22
markdown wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who is paying for those five extra days? The cost is shared between taxpayers and the employer – employers get a 150% tax deduction for wages paid for family care leave. Taxes will go up, and perhaps some prices. This is good. > You haven't gained or won anything really. There's no free lunch. Workers maybe haven't gained anything, but a worker has, and that's wonderful. You can argue all you want about economic mo…

The cost isn't paid elsewhere. It's essentially going straight out of their own paycheck. Not immediately and in equal measure, but over time and on the average. It's effectively vacation days. Remember, everyone gets those five days. Big earners, small earners. It evens out to nothing. Everyone can't live at the expense of everyone else.

An American parent has a sick child but can't care for them. A Fijian parent has a sick child and can care for them. This comes out of their own paycheck (not immediately and in equal measure, but over time and on the average. It's effectively vacation days)

If you really don't see how the latter position is so vastly better for the individual parent than I don't know what to say. Perhaps you've never been a wage slave.

Re: Associations Among School Absenteeism, G.I. and Respiratory Illness, and Income

#28

Post by alkonaut »

dummyload wrote: post #8
markdown wrote: post #5

Fiji just introduced 5 days/yr of "Family Care Leave" on the 1st of Jan, 2019. The Act doesn't require there to be sickness involved, so while you can take leave to care for your sick family member, theoretically you can also do so to support them at a school rugby match: https://i.imgur.com/Ct0wv5D.png Fiji is just barely above "third world" status. What's your excuse, USA?

US is optimized for individual gain, not societies gain as a whole. This is the thing which attracts immigrants from all over the socialist/communist republics of the world and they are the ones who make it big. No one wants to change that, there is double speak here when people do sympathize but when it comes to foot the bill, no tax payer is ready for that.

> No one wants to change that

There is a continuous stream of polls showing things like “More Americans now want to raise taxes on corporations and high incomes, than lower them”.

Obviously most Americans don’t have high incomes so it’s still someone else’s bill - but sentiments are shifting somewhat.

Re: Associations Among School Absenteeism, G.I. and Respiratory Illness, and Income

#29

Post by benj111 »

School-Cotton wrote: post #26
benj111 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you're suggesting causation between barely above 3rd world status, and having family days off I'm not sure what your point is? Richer countries tend to (or should?) have nicer things, its reasonable to ask why one of the richest doesn't have something that much poorer countries do.

How are you defining "rich" ? Having high quality of life like easy access to childcare, sick leave and vacation time from work, etc., is part of being a rich country, or more precisely, a developed country. So your argument amounts to "rich countries should be rich", which is circular. If by "rich" you mean GDP per capita as opposed to development, I don't think it's a great metric -- there are plenty of countries w…

I'm defining rich in this context as the US, as that was the developed nation we were talking about.

You will note that despite the US being richer than most developed nations, it has poorer benefits like you highlighted [1], compared to those other developed nations. So I fail to see how that is circular, if the richer country has less of those things.

[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2730947/Americans-p...

Edit: To answer your 2 additional paragraphs:

"Richer countries tend to (or should?)" There is a correlation (tend to), but there are exceptions as you have identified, so to avoid getting bogged down in arguments like this, I added the parenthetical. I then added a question mark because I am aware its attempting to impose ethics on something amoral.

I will attempt to hedge my statements even more in the future.

Re: Associations Among School Absenteeism, G.I. and Respiratory Illness, and Income

#30

Post by zeroname »

renholder wrote: post #23
zeroname wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (specifically speaking of the technology sector, as that's what I have first-hand experience with) In other words, you're out of touch with ordinary, less privileged workers. > It really is a different world, over here. The antithesis to the apathetical, if I may be so bold... Oh, come on. If you're a developer you can have a "work from home" day in the US as well. Plus, you can earn far more and you pay less in ta…

> In other words, you're out of touch with ordinary, less privileged workers. Just because I'm "out of touch" with ordinary, less privileged workers doesn't equate to my experience and observations in the sector as being invalidated, yeah? Isn't the site "Hacker News" and not "ordinary, less privileged workers'" news? > Oh, come on. If you're a developer you can have a "work from home" day in the US as well. That mig…

> Just because I'm "out of touch" with ordinary, less privileged workers doesn't equate to my experience and observations in the sector as being invalidated, yeah?

It means your experience doesn't scale to broader society, but you were making a point about broader society. If the ordinary secretary or the shift worker or the policeman don't get their "work from home days" there's essentially no difference in your example to what's going on in the US.

> That might be true for you but is it true for developers in the overall society?

Working from home on occasion certainly isn't unusual.

> Let's take this to an extreme example: A coworker missed over two months, last year, for 'x' medical reasons. What would've surely driven him to the poor house in the states was paid through those taxes you later commented on and there was no threat to his job because of it.

"Surely" you have no idea about the US system. Paid sick days is something your insurance may or may not cover. You get the choice of whether you want to pay for that or not. States laws also may protect workers from getting fired during longer illness.

> What does that have to do with anything related to kids...

Nothing, just rubbing it in. If you're successful in Finland (or some other little Euro country), you're going to be far less wealthy than in the US. You'll be paying for everyone else to live. If that makes you happy, go for it. Pat yourself on the back.

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