> In the US the only legal guarantee you get is that you can leave for 12 weeks unpaid and you'll probably still have a job when you get back.
(1) Most companies provide better benefits than what is legally required
(2) The US has a robust and very expensive welfare system
(3) Unlike something like cancer pregnancy is not an accident. If you can't afford to pay for children, don't have them.
FWIW most tech companies provide very generous benefits, though I'm pretty sure it's only possible because a lot of employees never take advantage of them. (Most programmers aren't having a dozen kids)
> Most companies provide better benefits than what is legally required
Cool, let's just bank on the generosity of companies.
> Unlike something like cancer pregnancy is not an accident. If you can't afford to pay for children, don't have them.
Did you even read the article? These people can obviously afford to have children. They can't afford to become unemployed because they had children. Short of being independently wealthy or raiding your personal savings, no one can afford to become unemployed for an extended period of time because they're raising a child.
Let's not even get into the fact that this is obviously disproportionately affecting women. I don't need to take sick leave because my wife gave birth - I don't have anything to physically recover from.
> Cool, let's just bank on the generosity of companies.
Because banking on the generosity of the government works so well for people. I'm suggesting precisely the opposite of this. Rather than everyone seeing themselves as victims maybe they should take some responsibility for their life choices.
> Short of being independently wealthy or raiding your personal savings, no one can afford to become unemployed for an extended period of time because they're raising a child.
Not true. Many women choose not to work to raise children.
> Let's not even get into the fact that this is obviously disproportionately affecting women.
Sure, where "this" means "reality". It's not a corporation's fault that women give birth and men don't.
> Cool, let's just bank on the generosity of companies.
Or, how about you think about this when finding a job, and weigh the pros and cons of various employers' benefits and policies. We don't always need top-down guidance from bureaucrats in D.C. to solve societal problems.
> Or, how about you think about this when finding a job, and weigh the pros and cons of various employers' benefits and policies
Sure, if you are in high demand you can probably do this. If you work an entry level job you won't have much leverage and since you probably can't afford to take extended time off, you may find taking care of children somewhere near impossible.
> We don't always need top-down guidance from bureaucrats in D.C. to solve societal problems.
I'm glad you qualified it with always. But a look at U.S. history shows a lot of societal problems were helped by those bureaucrats in DC and elsewhere (school segregation, voting rights, equal access to public transport, public accommodations [restaurants can't deny your service based on your race], equal opportunity employment, etc).
YOu do understand that all of the problems you say "bureaucrats in DC" solved, were infact created by bureaucrats in DC and bureaucrats in local government.
Almost the entire Civil Rights act was about ending GOVERNMENT entrenched racism and repealing laws that forced business owners to discriminate.
But hey do not let facts get in the way of irrational worship of government like it was a deity
> (3) Unlike something like cancer pregnancy is not an accident. If you can't afford to pay for children, don't have them.
It's not an accident, it's merely one of the foundations of any healthy society. I'm willing to part with a bit of our collective wealth to help raise them.
The statement "i'm will to part with a little of our collective wealth" implies the belief that you have the ethical right to lay claim to any amount any persons wealth because it is all part of the "collective".
If you would have said "I'm willing to part with a little of my wealth" that would have conveyed a believe in personal property.
Most of the time, kids pay for themselves out of their future earnings and consumer behaviors. We have a stable enough civilization that we should be able to invest something now for a potential return in 18-25 years.
The children will be born whether you want them to exist or not, and regardless of whether the parents are fit to raise them. Once the kid exists, what do you intend to do with it? Ignore it and hope for the best? Or maybe coax it into some form of societal contract, wherein we all help it reach its maximum potential now, and in return, it constructively participates in the civilized economy later?
The question is really whether you believe that the inability to easily pay the costs of child-rearing, whatever they may be, dissuades people from having more children.
And if, for some reason, one generation decides to grant itself a heap of late-life benefits that will have to be paid for by future productive workers, like retirement funds, pensions, and medical care, it would really be shooting itself in the foot to slash its support for young parents and immigration. The existence of "money" notwithstanding, current consumption always has to be paid for with current production and past stockpiles. Unless there's a warehouse somewhere out there filled with stored-up services for older people, people looking to consume such services had better start thinking about who might be providing them in the future.
Everyone. It's called a community. Same people who pay for seniors and unemployment and public education and roads and bridges and national defense. Do we not live in a world where everyone deserves to be able to afford kids?
> (1) Most companies provide better benefits than what is legally required
Gosh, I'm sure that's comforting to the OP.
OP: "My car's samouflange broke at 60mph and now I'm quadriplegic." cdoxsey: "Well, most samouflange-failure incidents only result in minor bruising, so everything is fine!"
(1) Most companies provide better benefits than what is legally required (2) The US has a robust and very expensive welfare system (3) Unlike something like cancer pregnancy is not an accident. If you can't afford to pay for children, don't have them.
FWIW most tech companies provide very generous benefits, though I'm pretty sure it's only possible because a lot of employees never take advantage of them. (Most programmers aren't having a dozen kids)