I think paid leave is just plain immoral. It is up to the parent to evaluate how much they care for their child vs foregone salaries. Paid leave is just a distortion: it makes employees and employers dance around a topic that is not in the employers business.
How can you correctly price how much the time with your kid is worth if you get gifted money for inflating it?
The worst part of this debate is that its a constant pull between two players that understand the same policy in different ways: employees think they are getting free money, but in reality the employer distributes the cost from one employee to the others. (ie. if you have a budget for 10 employees, and you make employees 10% more expensive, now you get 9 employees).
So employees ask for something thinking its in their benefit, and employers are thinking "as long as the competition gets hurt as much as we do, we don't care".
And to add insult to injury, its the richest of the richest that get the longest paid leave benefits, longest pto, etc etc, mostly to reduce tax burden.
> I think paid leave is just plain immoral. It is up to the parent to evaluate how much they care for their child vs foregone salaries.
This is delusional or dangerous thinking. Are you an ultra privileged & sheltered young man? You do realise that even if a parent chooses to work, they have to pay someone for childcare?
Quite the opposite, form a very unsheltered life. It is the sheltered people that want to get paid leave, which is why the highest income workers are the ones that get the most paid leave of all.
> You do realise that even if a parent chooses to work, they have to pay someone for childcare?
That is an argument against paid leave: if a worker takes up the "nanny job" for their own son, they are capturing 100% of the value they do. No need to pay them twice for it.
The unsheltered people of my life don't have stable salaries or jobs, dont even imagine what paid leave is. The ones with 6 figure salaries are the ones on paid leave. Still anecdotal, but im pretty sure you will find that most paid leave is taking by people that dont need it. The ones that need it the most dont have stable jobs or benefits.
Would like like to reword your first answer to take into account your last answer?
Also, my bad - not sure where you live but it sounds horrifying. I can't believe there is somewhere in the world where people on 6 figure salaries are the only ones with access to basic employment benefits, and those less fortunate have no government provided safety net (now that sounds morally bankrupt to me).
I'm curious as well to find out if there are any people considered to be in the middle classes? Say...two full time earners taking in less than 6 figures, for instance? Is that a rarity in your country?
>im pretty sure you will find that most paid leave is taking by people that dont need it.
Not where I'm from, no. Most of the people I know that take paid leave are families where both parents need to continue to work to cover cost of living.
How can you correctly price how much the time with your kid is worth if you get gifted money for inflating it?
The worst part of this debate is that its a constant pull between two players that understand the same policy in different ways: employees think they are getting free money, but in reality the employer distributes the cost from one employee to the others. (ie. if you have a budget for 10 employees, and you make employees 10% more expensive, now you get 9 employees).
So employees ask for something thinking its in their benefit, and employers are thinking "as long as the competition gets hurt as much as we do, we don't care".
And to add insult to injury, its the richest of the richest that get the longest paid leave benefits, longest pto, etc etc, mostly to reduce tax burden.