I think this is pretty telling of your attitude to the whole thing. In a time where virtually all developed countries face a demographic crisis in the coming decades, where record numbers of young people cite "financial reasons" for not starting a family, you still think that if somebody is poor then the cause is "poor financial planning".
Let's face the fact that pronatalist agendas have been pushed by the major religions for centuries in order to better control the population.
[0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.GROW?end=2018&lo...
[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.GROW?end=2018&lo...
> . I don't think incenctivising >2.1 fertility is being "protonatalist".
Yes it is, because you are incentivising births just to float above an arbitrary level.
I don't see how this is a problem if we have immigration. We should support immigration from high population growth areas of the planet to low population growth not add more population to the planet.
Adding more people to planet and causing climate for next generation is way worse than not providing paid leave.
"Exploited" and "used for the intended purpose" are not interchangeable phrases.
Having children is not some accident nor disease that must be insured against. The purpose of such government programs is not to alleviate misfortune. There seems to be some deep misunderstanding of the issue here.
The point isn't to trust people not to scam the system (because just like banks have found another way to abuse (now commercial) mortgage backed securities (CMBS)[0], market dynamics can be applied to people finding a way to abuse the system), but to design such a system best we can that gives the benefits to those the program is intended for, and to prevent abuse from malicious actors.
[0]: https://www.propublica.org/article/whistleblower-wall-street...
I take all the vacation days I’m promised, too. I precisely time it so I use every last day. Screwing my employer again!
But government programs could fix this by paying maternity leave whether or not the mother plans to go back to work. Then they could be open with their employer that they don't plan on coming back.
A good reason the leave pay should be provided by the state.
Which is, precisely, the issue at hand here.
The amount of days allotted are still the same. Same goes for people quitting right after: the allotted days are the same, independently of quitting or not. What's your expectation, that a new mom leaves work and stay unemployed the day her newborn comes, setting a lot of uncertainty for the future, instead of an employer paying for it? Even socially wise, i would always say the mom should be taking that parental leave.
And that overlooks the other side of things too: In the first case, the person might have had some issues with the newborn. My daughter had problems breastfeeding for basically 3 months, is this possibility accounted in the "maximizing time off"? Yeah the parent's priority now is the newborn, I'd argue that a company should promote that at all time, to have better human beings.
The last case: what if the person had a change of mind when the newborn and decided it wanted to be a stay-home mom or dad to be fully dedicated? Or maybe they want a part time remote job, so they could afford having kids with them at all time, without resorting to child care.
Granted that you could make points for parental leave being too long (sure!), that can be balanced by law, but the simple fact that it's used it's not abuse.
Perhaps it would make sense to have policies like when your employer sends you off for schooling, you are expected to stay for x-months and if not you owe them.
So a guy goes on paternity leave, resigns after coming back, he owes the co. some amount discouraging this practice? If the move is worth it, then they would afford the penalty. Kind of like withdrawing from retirement before maturity.
It also has historical context. Colonization around the world happened on the back of permissive immigration - when early America needed labor it didn't pay every family to have more kids, it brought the poor over from Europe with the promise of opportunity. And while the investments needed to make a worker productive are much higher today than back then it applies to both a natural born or immigrant citizen all the same.
A lot of it is cultural though. The unrealistic expectations heaped on most western working class peoples to both have a successful career and somehow produce a well adjusted functional progeny feels to me like the same kind of fantastical unrealism of the titular American Dream - where everyone could have two cars and a separated house anywhere, drive everywhere, and that scaling that up to hundreds of millions was both practical and optimal. In practice, no, very few members of the working poor are skilled in parenting enough to somehow magically balance 40 hours a week between two parents on subsistence income with raising children effectively. Perpetuating that lie causes real harm to everyone involved. Its the same kind of doublethink that keeps global warming off the agenda as a legitimate threat - the need to protect culturally established norms even if they cause real harm to perpetuate.
Korea’s pop nosedive should not be seen as the antidote for badly planned demographics elsewhere.
Sure, if they want to that’s okay but they certainly aren’t obliged to.
Let’s imagine what would happen to Bhutan if they opened their doors to their neighbors.
I'm not saying that immigration is bad.
However, having a country advocate zero childbirths - and trying to keep population up entirely foreign migration is a recipe for disaster.
Presently a relatively small fraction of western populaces can afford children without assistance. Trying to artificially prop up birthrates is putting a bandaid on a gushing wound of wealth inequality. If productive gains weren't being realized by capital to such an absurd degree more people would be able to afford doing zero-revenue labor like raising children for longer periods of time.
In Australia, we call it the population (or migration) Ponzi.
Another way to look at it is - you're essentially borrowing from your future generations, in order to fund your current lifestyle.
Those future generations are going to be the ones looking after you in your old age (through being taxpayers to provide services - or in some cultures maybe even literally being the ones to house/care for your), and also because that's how your culture/society continues. Society/culture is more than just a input/output machine that eats, s*hits and sleeps.
I don't particularly like the arts, but I understand that as a whole, our government funds things like that for the betterment of society.
I am fortunate I don't have any major disabilities - but if I did, I know my society looks after those less fortunate (or I hope they do).
I have a lot of trouble believing that people would time their pregnancies specifically to screw over their employer. That's so outrageous to me that it casts a lot of doubt, in my mind, to your entire reply.
Of course: if any business has poor relationships with their employees, it is not my problem to solve.
It's kinda telling that economics treats trained workers as something that springs into existence unbidden. While raising children is mere 'leisure' and government funded education is dead weight loss.
Every word above is false. Gary Becker’s economics of the family has many, many flaws but assuming children happen by accident is not among them. Leisure is not “mere” in economics. It’s everything that’s not work. It’s what work is for. The point is not the production; it's the consumption. If we could do the latter without the former sustainably that would be paradise. There are none, zero, no economists who think government education is dead weight loss. Even Bryan Caplan of The Case Against Education thinks it’s at least 30% human capital building and it’s glaringly obvious after the past few weeks that the child minding function of school is enormously valuable.
In practice economists assign a value of zero to child rearing. Because simply economists hate reasoning about externalities.
I think you're being pedantic; the entire tone of @thefz's comment is that employees time their pregnancies to maximize time off work and effectively screw over their employer
But I don't think it is pedantic to point out there is a difference between
1. Maximizing your time off work, even if it screws over your employer.
and
2. Timing your pregnancy in order to screw over your employer.
You're being disingenuous by making it sound like GP is arguing that they are doing it in order to intentionally screw over their employer, when clearly GP is saying they are doing it to maximize their paid leave, which also screws over their employer.
Witnessed this with my eyes many times.
1. Don't have kids 2. Are a male (I'm male as well)
Having kids is a big decision. (I'm lucky enough to have two so far).
We (wife and I) have had to make a lot of sacrifices, both financially and at a family/career/personal level. We are lucky that we both have reasonably good jobs.
However, being pregnant is an absolute b*tch, and seeing what my wife went through, and what some of the other mums in our parents group went through - I am very dubious anybody intentionally gets pregnant only to get a few extra weeks/months of leave.
If you're a guy I suspect we probably can't know how bad it is. Let's just say that tearing or being cut down there isn't fun, and for many women it can have lasting impact on your body.
For both of you it upends your entire life - and you're on the hook for the next 18 years (at least). And not just financially, but you need to actually spend time with them - feeding them, changing nappies, reading books, playing games, looking after them when they're sick, taking then to school every day, teaching them, ferrying them to activities etc.
I have zero regrets - but it really irks me when immature people start commenting about how providing things like parental leave will encourage people to "abuse the system".
Those people were likely already going to have kids anyway, so I don't see why we as a society shouldn't support them - unless we want to deal with the demographic and sociological implications that comes with a rapidly aging population and no young people.
That being said, this is ONE person I know, I have no hard data or anything, but I'm pretty sure it's a minority.
Also pregnancies are delayed until after a pay increase, so leave pay is higher.
How on earth can you know that?
'I have seen' - excuse me, but what? Are you going to tell us that you work at a company where people's reproductive plans are common water cooler discussion? Do you work a tech company? I'd find that mind-boggling.
'timing a pregnancy'? Only someone who's never tried to get pregnant could take that seriously.
Obviously, plans often don't survive first contact with reproductive biology, but sometimes they do, like in my case.
No, but sort of, yes. I have witnessed many cases in which some employees practically disappeared, to the point of having to hire others to substitute them, for years.
Timing a pregnancy is not as uncommon as you'd think.
a) my company is an engineering company
b) I have no evidence
c) my post is directed against women
?
I'll take a chance and guess your gender. Timing a pregnancy is not as easy as you think.
Despite people “exploiting” the system as you say, over the entire population it provides more benefits to society than it costs.
That's you, that's how you think.
I don't imply to be right, I'm just stating my opinion.
But the child's future problem will become yours, then, unless you somehow manage to escape society.
Edit: I can understand the notion that some want to maximise their time away from their employer, but the idea that birthing and caring for a baby is time off work is somewhat naive :)
People should get the same benefits even if they plan to quit after, which would address the issue of people quitting after.
If you’re against social insurance as a whole though, then opposition to maternity leave makes sense.
The parents who can abuse parental leave are quite privileged. -Have a reliable partner who wants to have children with you -Have required fertiliry to "time" pregnancy -Work for a stable company (rules out small business owners, self employment...) -Be employed in the first place
How many % you think this would represent of the women aged 20-35 in your country? Do you believe that these women will contribute less taxes to the society than society uses on them? Are these tax payers net-negative part of society?
So, if your employee quits at the end of their leave, that's probably not a huge issue. They will likely give you plenty of warning, and you can offer the position to the substitute that you had to hire anyway.
Of course people are counting months and planning when to have children. That's the whole point! We decided that it should be easier for an average two-income family to have children. That's the reason for the rules.
As long as both sides sign the job contract willingly, without a severe imbalance of power, it’s not abuse. It’s business.
Not sure why someone wouldn't do this. I would definitely do that.
I don't get it. This is exactly the kind of thing companies do to optimize their own profits. So what's good for the goose is good for the gander, no? Unless you're saying that the kind of ethical framing laissez-faire capitalism encourages is bad for society.
Your "exploit" is another's due compensation. You might examine where precisely your resentment comes from.
I've always been in favor of it but since I have joined the workforce I'm kinda on the fence if not against it.
The amount of people exploiting it is enormous (at least where I live). I have seen some time up precisely their pregnancies to maximize time off work, but still getting paid 100%. Others getting pregnancy leave while planning to resign the day they have to come back to work, sucking up all that their employer has to give and then leaving him.
Employer bias exists for a reason, and it is precisely the existence of this behavior.
The ways in which a system like this can be exploited, in my opinion, are countless and far outweigh the benefits. And since maternal leave is paid for with tax money, I as a taxpayer, am against use of public money to fund private activities.
If anyone, be a male or a female has no mean of having a family due to poor financial planning, it is not my problem to solve.