It's standard for countries to offer a certain amount of mandatory paid parental leave as a recognition of the special role parents play in our society (in effect, this measure lowers everyone’s wages slightly and then provides a benefit only to parents, thus enacting a small transfer of resources from non-parents to parents). In the United States, everything must surrender beneath the all-powerful God of flexible labor markets, and "pro-family" conservatives seem fine with that.
I might add that these same "flexible labor markets" are the same ones that dump employees at the first sign of trouble, so I don't understand why we shouldn't push for some basic benefits as part of this trade off. Plus, as I keep hearing these days, our economy is based upon people spending their discretionary income; so if you want new parents - a large portion of society! - to spend more, you should give them incentives and tools to do so, rather then forcing them to spend their vacation time and money to stay home with their newborns.
No comments:
Post a Comment