Why state mandated paid parental leave is a bad idea

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Leaving it up to employers gives an advantage to larger companies who can more easily afford it. Small businesses are hurt by refusals to take the burden off businesses to provide healthcare and paid leave to their workers.

The idea that the Hard-Working, Adaptive, Frugal Companies will rise above this burden is capitalist propaganda. Life is not fair. The market is not a meritocracy. The big fish eat the little ones and the rank and file suffer the most as a result. Taking burdens like paid leave and healthcare off small businesses, if anything, makes the market more competitive because it grants them more breathing room to expand.

If these policies are not popular, that is mainly a result of the US bring force-fed capitalist propaganda by businessmen and politicians being paid by those businessmen to say what they want and ignore what you want.

OP, I feel your argument is very poor comfort for any expecting parent who works in a company without paid parental leave. You also ignore the role of coercion in the labor market. Many people work for companies for poor pay, poor benefits, no paid leave, etc. But they have to work there for the time being because not working=being destitute. The corporations have the advantage here, not the workers.

Try seeing it from the point of view of the baby.

Well, sure. Comfort isn't the point. Reality is.


They don't "have to." That is a choice. There are many different companies out there with as much variety in company policies and corporate culture as there are goods and services that they provide. If the American marketplace is lacking in these areas, it is because of stifling government policies that prevent them from offering good things. There is NOTHING WRONG AT ALL with paid parental leave. But government policies such as high taxes and federal minimum wage increase the costs of goods and services. To stay competitive, companies really do have to reduce their workforce to cut costs AND they still run the risk of having to increase their prices which hurts competition. Strong, large businesses can easily handle temporary reductions in force while offering parental leave as an incentive to work there by shifting responsibilities to other employees in the short term and possibly hiring temps. But if small businesses are obligated to keep employees who aren't working, cannot afford to train temps or cannot stay productive with temps, can't afford a large staff to shift responsibilities to, they might cease to exist. I don't have a problem with the idea of big businesses shutting small businesses down in the way of usual competition. I have a BIG problem with government policies that make startups NEEDLESSLY difficult and give an unfair and unnatural advantage to ANY business, large or small.

And so my point here is that employees can choose to work for companies that offer paid parental leave or they can work for companies that don't. It only really negatively impacts young people. However, it's not in the best interest of young people to start families so young. They will flourish with entry level jobs. Even a freshly graduated MBA might find himself waiting tables while rising through the ranks to managing and ultimately owning his own restaurant. Or if a young woman goes through med school...well, moot point anyway because there's really no such thing as an entry level physician, and well-paid professional jobs will allow employees to save enough money to prepare for leave OR those kinds of jobs are well-positioned to offer those kinds of benefits. There is no need to devalue an incentive or reward for certain jobs by making it obligatory for all employers to offer it. (Hint: It's not really an "offer" if you are obligated to give it)


Of course corporations have the advantage. It's not the proper place for workers to have any advantage except the advantages that employers WANT to give them. I'm a music director at a school. Part of my job involves hiring and supervising non-credentialed staff to work directly with students so I'm not spread so thin. I'm only going to work with talented and passionate individuals that I know I can trust. I don't want to hire just anyone. I don't want to feel obligated to hire just anyone. And if you work for me, you have to understand that it is your job to realize my vision for the programs I oversee. If you have you own vision and your own agenda, that's GREAT. If you think you can do a better job running the program than I, GREAT. Go to music school, earn your education degree and your license, and apply for head director jobs at other schools. But while I'M paying you, you do things MY way. I'm not running a collective where I have to listen to your ideas and get input from others. If I want another perspective or opinion, or if I'm looking for a better way of doing things, I'll confide in those I trust and I'll seek good advice. But in the end, it's MY decisions and policies that matter.

The problem with employees running the business is that it is not the role of employees to take the creative direction of the business where THEY want to go. That is the job of the inventor, the innovator, the leader, the visionary. Everything that happens in the workplace is the result of the execution of the creative vision of a creative person. If the employees run the corporation, it is no longer the same company. There is no vision because the mission of the company is the whim of its employees. There is no forward thinking. Eventually there's not even a company to work for. The advantage always SHOULD be for the business. It's the creator's business. He made it. He deserves to enjoy the reward of his own productive work in realizing an idea and pushing a product. The role of employee is to serve that idea. It is not the role of a business to serve the ideas of the employees. If an employee has an idea and wants to execute that idea, he can do so on his own time by saving up enough overhead or applying for loans. If he succeeds, he can hire his own employees, snipe his former coworkers, build his business, increase his profits, and potentially bankrupt the competition. That's how capitalism works and succeeds.

And paid parental leave is a wonderful weapon and tactic for attracting the best, the brightest, the hardest working, the most dedicated. Making it obligatory, even if the government pays for it, removes the incentive and causes companies to be less competitive. Less competition, less reward, less incentive stagnates industries. The government should leave this alone.

Speaking of governments leaving things alone...if we hold, say, Canada as a shining example of the success of socialized programs, has there ever been any real, objective payout from this? What, for instance, are some goods and services that Canada offers that make it a leader in the world economy? Anything? Well, Canada does have Smarties candy and maple syrup. Big deal, Vermont maple syrup is far superior to anything you might find in Quebec. Or if, say, we look to Scandinavian countries--what real contribution has there been? IKEA? Has anyone actually successfully assembled anything that came from IKEA?

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Ahem...

Human Capital...

And Quality of Life...

My God Man Grow A 'Soul'
Up A Little Higher Now....

If You

Can And Will...

A Soul Is Empathy
For Others Who Don't
See the World The Way We do, by the way...

There's 'This Saying', 'What Good Is Gaining

The Whole World, If You Lose Your Soul';

Actually Canadians Are Gaining

Quality Of Life In Human Capital;

That's A Resource You Can't Put A Price

On; Sure, You May Try, Yet You Will NOT

Put A Price on 'Human Capital'; Other Than

That The Demographics Are Changing;

Younger Folks Are Not Nearly

As Cold Hearted

to the

Needs of Others;

At Least Not 'This Cold Hearted'...

And They Are Voting IN Larger Numbers

For Change Like Maternity Leave Next;

Canada Is Producing More Well Adjusted
Human Beings, Who Don't Go ON Mass Murder Sprees Each Week...

And That's Only One of Unlimited Other Measures of Societal Health...

Dude, You Are Seeing A Lot of Green It Seems, Yet Not The Living Kind...

It Seems You Are Big on Christianity; Yet Your Philosophies Are opposite to 'Jesus'...

And That's Okay With Me; However You Believe And Whatever Your Opinion Here is that

Is Polar

Opposite

With Mine too..

Different Strokes and all of that too...

Just Glad We Have Folks With More Empathy
For Other Humans Expressing that For Real

Who Are Coming in Greater Numbers to Vote

Next... As Countries With Cold Hearts Go All

Frozen And Fall Apart for What's even worth living (LovingSoul)...

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You know that we can subsidize small businesses that can't afford to give such leave, right? That is at least an option. And yeah, workers can theoretically move around to find a job that gives them the benefits they want. But, speaking as someone who currently works pretty near the lowest end of wage work, there are people that get stuck in very bad jobs. And sure they can quit their one bad job, and what? Go to another equally bad job because they don't have other qualifications and get trapped because "poverty is expensive". You can only tell these people "let them eat cake" for so long before they get really fed up. Saying "just get another job," or "just start a business" works for some people, but there are many people whose problems can't be solved so easily.

The vision of the free market you're talking about was what I was basically taught in high school econ. It's incredibly simplistic and basically just propaganda that attempts to push all systemic failings on the victims of those failures. Capitalism doesn't actually work the way you describe, because fair competition is a terrifying thing to a capitalist, due to the obvious risk involved. So capitalists will always try to dominate markets and make them unfair, either by manipulating the state, or by simply forcing competitors out of the market. We tried unregulated capitalism in the 19th century and I would hardly describe it as a "free" market. That's why we had to make those antitrust laws.

In the system you describe, there is always a significant amount of people (probably poorer people) who happen to be in a job that doesn't offer parental leave when they have kids. You're trying to rationalize this bad thing, I'm saying we should stop doing the bad thing. And yeah, we could say "just don't have kids lol" but life really isn't that simple and you know it. Things happen.

It doesn’t take government action to make it work, though. Massive wealth redistribution will ultimately stretch the government too thin to enforce ANY laws, at which point the government can’t offer programs and services because there’s nobody pulling in any income that could be taxed. Those kinds of things appear to work in the short term. They are not workable solutions long-term.

Capitalism can’t be said to have failed in the United States because the US has never been a free market capitalist nation. We wouldn’t know what we were looking at if it had even been attempted. 19th century American economics were dominated by monopolies brokered by politicians and greedy executives. The only way monopolies can exist is if government policies allow them to. Remove government regulations that created monopolies, you get rid of monopolies.

Suppose National Widgets operates in a free market in Rust County. And let’s say there’s a competing mom and pop widget store in Rust City. NW undercuts the mom and pop until they can no longer afford to stay open. M&PW shutters their business and take an early retirement. Maybe even NW purchases their assets and hires their employees, along with a huge buyout.

NW hires Norman Rockefeller Greed as CEO. To increase profits, knowing full well he has a de facto monopoly with high demand and he can set whatever prices he wants, he increases prices on widgets, meaning that most businesses in the area aren’t profitable since they depend on NW parts.

Enter Rocky Glassjaw. Glassjaw is a former employee who was super smart and highly qualified and had his own ideas on how to improve NW widgets at a cheaper price. But because Mr. Greed was already going to hire his own kid as a supervisor, Glassjaw was fired along with a few other workers. Rocky starts his own widget business and hires former NW employees. He makes cheaper widgets that are actually better than NW. Local businesses flock to Glassjaw-Rust Industries. In response, Greed massively drops the prices on his widgets. Both businesses hold their own for a while until a NW widget fails at an auto manufacturing plant. Another NW widget fails on an earth mover. Another NW widget failure causes an explosion at a nearby oil field. Businesses don’t mind buying the slightly more expensive GRI widgets because they have a reputation for being more reliable. Out of desperation, Mr. Greed makes an offer to buy out GRI. At this point, Greed’s CFO gives him the bad news that they are already taking out loans from buying out M&P and paying employees, plus they can’t keep up with all the lawsuits from widget failures. Greed doesn’t have the money to buy out GRI, but Glassjaw does agree to sell his own widget patents.

Greed is relieved that GRI is getting out of the widget business. But then Rocky Glassjaw does the unthinkable. He invents a Whatchamacallit that makes the entire widget industry obsolete. With nobody even buying widgets anymore, Glassjaw buys what’s left of NW and expands wmc production into the old widget site. Meanwhile, a mom and pop set up a Widget Equipment Services across town specializing in repair and service of widget technology for other individuals and small businesses who can’t yet afford wmc-based technology and for the nostalgia market. They even offer to upgrade old equipment to WMC compliance and maintain a positive trade relationship with GRI.

That’s how unregulated capitalism works. Anti-trust laws were passed because monopolies had government protection that afforded them ability to hold entire INDUSTRIES for ransom. These laws granting monopolies were unfair because these businesses had the government on their side. The laws were inequitable because they showed government favoritism enabled by bribes and political maneuvering. In actual capitalism, “fair” and “equal” aren’t in our vocabulary. Everyone tries to make a superior product and sell it as cheaply as possible, increase profits, and try to eliminate the competition. Some businesses will succeed. Some businesses will die. What you end up with is the best anyone has to offer. You don’t make special rules to keep mom and pop on life support. If they can’t compete, they don’t do business. And the wonderful thing about the free capitalist world is that while companies within a market compete and there are winners and losers, industries all depend on each other. If you cannot make a superior widget, what CAN you do? Either you try to get a job with the winner or you fall back on your own talent and foster a trade relationship with your former competition so that you support each other. It’s ok to not be as good as someone else. It’s ok to quit. But it’s also ok by cooperating for EVERYONE to win. It’s NOT ok to cry victim when someone else does a better job. Stop being a victim and figure out how to either work for winners or find something people need or want that you do better than anyone else.

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Or Don't Be 'A Fool'
A Slave to Anyone;
Target

Audience

Or So-Called Boss;

Be Free; It's Possible too...

Not Easy Yet Worth It As

No Longer Slave to the

Dollar Bill As God And 'Goods'...

Of Course This Nation Is Founded

On the Unalienable Rights to Life,

Liberty, And the Pursuit of Happiness;

A 'God Of Money And Goods' Is Just one Option to Slave to...

Rather Be A Willing Human to Serve Love Yet That's Just My Flavor of 'God'....

And

i JusT Do IT
As It Feels
Best to me Free Period.

Yet Never Ending Story Now Never Landing...

Meanwhile Nurture Children as Love or Basically Lose It All...

Yet That's Beyond my Paygrade Now Usually Interacting With Only 18 Plus Age Folks...

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-Citation needed

-"True capitalism has never been tried!"

-Imaginary anecdotes prove that capitalism is a perfect system

-Ok, so "just get another job" or "just start a business." Damn, systemic poverty destroyed my duderino.

Laws regulating businesses have been around in the United States since its inception. Licensing and inspection regulations have always been around. The Whisky Rebellion was the result of disproportionate policies that favored eastern grain farmers over western grain farmers, and that happened during the Washington administration.

Americans were mostly unconcerned about regulation during this time period because NORMALLY regulations were used to expand liberties rather than limit them. But also remember that racial slavery existed in America at this point in time, meaning the federal government recognized and respected the rights of people as long as they were men and they were white. The Whisky Rebellion ended quietly after a show of federal force. The slavery issue was settled with rivers of blood.

And the federal government stopped pretending it was concerned about American freedom to do business with the Interstate Commerce Act. Trusts in America in the 1880s were legal agreements that allowed corporations to band together to prevent competition from smaller businesses. These agreements had the added benefit of enforcement by the federal government. The Sherman Antitrust Act was a federal action to break up trusts that the federal government itself enabled.

If 19th Century economics was about free market capitalism, please explain to me how it was corporations were able to get the backing of the federal government to screw local, small businesses. Free market capitalism is about competition. Federal enabling of trusts and holding companies is the opposite of competition. Antitrust laws, a federal regulation, was intended to break up large, successful companies and FORCE the new, smaller companies to compete, i.e. force them to succeed in the market. Why would you want a badly run company to succeed? If company policies are so onerous, shouldn’t they fail? Wouldn’t you expect them to fail? And yet federal policies that force competition in companies that are non-competitive keep incompetent corporate boards on life support. What better way to support small businesses than to allow big businesses who can’t keep up to fail?

Stockholm Syndrome.

It's funny.
When Poland was an Eastern Bloc country, all issues were officially explained by "socialism not applied correctly".

It seems some things are universal.

I think that whenever people get caught up in their pet ideology, and ignore what actually happens in reality, there's trouble and blame-shifting.

Ideals are a great thing, but ideologies are hammers that only ever see nails.

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Religion, Politics, Philosophy, Sports,

What Clothes We Wear If Any At All

How We Dance How We Sing Together

Or Not All Comprise The Stories We Create

Of Life To Glue All the Parts of 'Chaos' into

A Story That Will Guide Us And Bond Each Other in Life's 'Order'

For Success of Subsistence And Survive And Perhaps Even Thrive too...

i N B A L A N C E

Bottom Lines

Capitalism Still

Allows Some Folks

To Thrive Other Folks

To Survive And Other Folks

To Suffer In Misery too When Enough

Suffering And Misery Comes The Story Will

Change As It is Doing As i am Speaking Now;

Some Folks Are Empty Within And Are Always Looking

For A Way Out; No Different Again than 'Scar' In The 'Lion King

Movie' They Consume And Never Fill And or Feel The Empty Void Within

Those Who Have

Enough Don't

Mind/Feel/Sense So Much

For Giving, Sharing, Caring Freely

Now With Others AS THEY ARE ENOUGH

YET TRUE The Others 'the Capitalists, Overall',

Form The Greed And the Over-Consuming

Of Humanity That Leaves Child Unattached to

Breast And Forming Love to Come to the Place Within

Of 'the Ocean' That Always Remains Filled And Feeled Enough Within to STaY iN Balance

Meanwhile Now Humanity in this Greed of Empty Within is Harming, Raping, Maiming,
And Killing 1 Out of 8 Animal And Plant Species In 'This Evil Capitalistic Way of Living

Dying in the Coming Decades

Out of Balance

Where the one

Who Consumes

Nature the Most 'Wins'

While LoSinG the Game

For All of Us Now in Their Selfish

Greedy Ways True It's A Story and

A Nightmare For All of Nature Indeed;

These Evil Clothes of Greed And Shameless Ways
of Over-Consuming Consuming What it even Means to
Be Humans; Creatures of Cooperation Who Love to SuRViVE iN Balance Best With
The Rest of Nature; Move out of Balance We Fail; No Ifs ands Or Buts, Whatever
Greed And Selfish Nature is Named... Other Than That Happy Earth Day No

Different

Than the

Planet i am

Naked And Complete

Although True Being

Financially Independent

Helps As That comes

Without Over-Consuming

too in this Shallow World We LiVE iN
Like Buying Your Own Home Sacrificing
What It Takes to Stay In the Same Home

And Not Believing You Have to Do" Moving On
Up to the East Side" of the Town Like 'The Jeffersons'

Taking Care of the Same Car For 15 Years And Keeping it too...

Keeping the Same Wife And the Best thing We Will Possibly Do
For Nature Now Stop Overpopulating Nature With This Creature

(Having A Steady Job Still With Pension Benefits Helps too A
Dying Breed Of A More Perfect Union IN Balance That is too)

Of the Dark

Lagoon

The Swamp

Monster of CuLTuRE
We Create of Capitalism
That is Destroying The Rest
of Breathing Nature; Yep Take even
Just The Bees Away And We All Fall Down Like Toy Soldiers....

Other than that Happy Earth Day, Wow, 'this thread 'A 'Perfect DarK Poetic Muse'
For That As Folks Are Trying To Justify Not Doing What it takes to Attach Child Back to Breast

We aRe

Mammals

This is what

It even Means to

Be A Mammal Mice

More Than The So-Called 'Men' We Create Now....

And Yes i am TalKinG About All of Us including Me Too....

Good News It Seems A Majority of Us Are On the Mammal Side of 'The Wall'...

'By
Pink Floyd'...

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Part of that is with socialism there's always some common enemy. There's always some boogeyman to screw things up. And if something's not getting screwed up, there's nothing to fix, nobody to blame, and no reason to control the means of production. If everything is going well, crops are good, people have adequate shelter and medicine, etc., then it's hard to justify why a productive worker or farmer can't have a nicer house or extra food. Socialism, and in particular communism, are not designed to solve problems. The rhetoric or propaganda suggests that once government is overthrown and the people take collective control that all will be well. In practice, tyrants end up actually in charge of administration with a number of corrupt officials at the local level. So when something goes wrong, you can't blame people in charge. There are too many capitalist, or selfish, people holding out, or this guy was taking bribes and "we had no idea." From time to time the problem is discovered catching the central government by complete surprise and requiring a complete purge of traitors from the top down. And when things still don't improve for the people, we can just blame capitalist nations like America.

The problems America faces isn't about capitalism being applied correctly. It's about capitalism being applied at all. And I do think that collectivist elements in the USA are pushing the same propaganda and tactics as in the former Soviet Union and, heck, North Korea. A lot of it is the creation of imaginary enemies while reality is not as stark some would rather us believe. The Whisky Tax threatened the livelihood of those who were unable to move grain as easily as those in a different region. It was unreasonable. While a violent uprising cannot be tolerated and Washington was right to make a show of military strength to protect American people and prevent greater bloodshed, states and territories were left unable to practically enforce the Whisky Tax. So they pretty much just ignored it and nobody knew any differently. Had it been enforced, grain interests in the west would have been non-competitive. Knowing how troublesome the Whisky Tax was at the time didn't get it repealed, though. Farmers in Kentucky were forced to live under the shadow of Washington for many years afterward as a result.

If the government is involved, it's not capitalism. Has nothing to do with whether it's applied "correctly" or not, either it is capitalism or it's not.