Paternity and Maternity Leave

[Doppel]

<snip>

In a lot of ways the US is quite backwards.

Now that I've become old enough to think for myself and don't knee-jerk "socialist" to such things I am able to recognize that people in certain European countries like Sweden, with their big nanny gov, seem to like their lives better than in the US.

Unfortunately, much of the countries are so different I don't think the Scandinavian model is applicable here. The US has a gargantuan percentage of ignorant tits who are not fit to work and the state probably cannot support the kind of system here you might see over there. The money just isn't there for it.

Now, what there is no excuse for are the rat race idiots sitting in traffic all day long. I have no sympathy for a person who's stuck in Atlanta for 60-80 minutes each way or LA doing the same thing. It's a pathetic waste of life. Stop doing it, you're burning your life away.

And as your dad later realized, you cannot go back in time and have your kids kids again. It won't be long before they don't want to be around you much anyway, so take that time they do and prize it.

 

[Doppel]

I disagree with this approach on so many levels.

I do as well. However, a parent doing it will kick you in the balls before they admit they hate it, too, because then they have to admit they are not parenting as well as they ought to. Moreover, studies show kids thrown into day care with $10/hour college dropouts are, gasp and shock to everybody in the room, inferior to other kids in certain subsequent metrics.

 

[AViking]

I know this isnt 100% related to the topic but i would like to know. In Sweden or other European countries do you guys have car insurance that you are required to have? That is a pretty big expense for lots here in the US. And also do you guys have a version of our IRS? Do you have to sit down once a year with deductions and crap to figure out if they took enough taxes from you or if you owe more? I hate the IRS and that whole "tax season". Id rather just do away with deductions and credits etc and tax me exactly the bracket i fall into based on my income.

I personally hate our system here and think most of the Euro countries are doing it right. We are young and maybe you guys have already been through this phase of doing things wrong and found the most ideal way of handling things and what works best since your countries are so much older.

If you have a car you do. So yeah if you live outside of the city you might have a car, insurance, and so on but the car and insurance aren't that bad. It's the fuel that's pretty expensive. Also tickets are no joke here. Speed in a school zone and they'll fine the shit out of you and take your license away for a year. Parking tickets are simply brutal. Parking fees are expensive. You have to pay a toll when you both enter Stockholm and leave it on weekdays during working hours. Luckily even with a car you don't really have to drive very much here. If you work far away you'll most likely drive to the train station which isn't very far away and then commute in by rail. I know one guy who does that once a week. He has some kind of partnership between one of the Universities in Stockholm and his back home. The idea of commuting 60-80 miles a day each way by car though is laughable at best here. I don't think anyone would do that. Swedes in Stockholm have a much different sense of scale and distance. Driving longer than 30 minutes (Södertälje) is like driving to the end of the world. Everything is closer here. So the furthest end of the world in Stockholm is about 43 miles away (Norrtälje), and it takes an hour by car (or bus) and if you drive that you're only going to do it once or twice a week and you'll work from home or at a local office the rest.

As far as taxes I don't have anything complicated here to deal with so I might not be the best example. All my investment income is in the USA so work income is all I deal with. To give you a sense of how basic it is you can do it online in about 2 minutes. They send you a completed tax return in the mail, you go online, put in your code to sign for it, and they put the money in your bank account (or take it out) a month later. If you have a few deductions you can simply enter them there and it'll do it for you. The impression I get though is that deductions are not the same here. I think you get one for kids and your mortgage but the playing a billion games with rotating tax schedules and overseas accounts is not going to happen here. Everyone has the same tax schedule and rates are not manipulated like they can be back home. If you have your own business you have an accountant who takes all your receipts, invoices, etc and does your tax return for you. It's not as complicated as the US but it's not something you're likely going to do on your own. Having your own business here seems crazy since the taxes are so high but apparently it's pretty good. To make it work though prices are much higher. You can't have a $5 haircut place here because of the taxes. The cheapest legal place to get a haircut is about $30. I see places for $15 but odds are they're cheating and taking money under the table and not producing a receipt for it.

The thing everyone hates here is the price of alcohol. As a local you learn to live with it and get around it. I stocked up on $0.50 beers on my last trip to Estonia. Everything else is pretty much fine. Talk to me in a month though when I'm only getting 6 hours of sunlight though and I'll be one real negative nancy. Fuck I hate the winter solstice!

 

[AViking]

In a lot of ways the US is quite backwards.

Now that I've become old enough to think for myself and don't knee-jerk "socialist" to such things I am able to recognize that people in certain European countries like Sweden, with their big nanny gov, seem to like their lives better than in the US.

Unfortunately, much of the countries are so different I don't think the Scandinavian model is applicable here. The US has a gargantuan percentage of ignorant tits who are not fit to work and the state probably cannot support the kind of system here you might see over there. The money just isn't there for it.

Now, what there is no excuse for are the rat race idiots sitting in traffic all day long. I have no sympathy for a person who's stuck in Atlanta for 60-80 minutes each way or LA doing the same thing. It's a pathetic waste of life. Stop doing it, you're burning your life away.

And as your dad later realized, you cannot go back in time and have your kids kids again. It won't be long before they don't want to be around you much anyway, so take that time they do and prize it.

I don't understand why everyone thinks it's not applicable. In Sweden if you never work you ain't getting shit. I suppose you might be able to squeeze out some bucks out of the government and I have definitely seen some waste there but if that's what scares Americans apply it better to our culture: You can't squeeze a drop out of the system unless you work.

The way it is here is that everyone has unemployment insurance. On top of that you belong to a union that serves your job field. So if you lose your job you get a small amount from the unemployment insurance and then on top of that you might get a small amount from your union. It'll be enough to survive until you get your next job.

Now getting a free education and healthcare is something Americans just need to get over. That is truly the brilliant part of this society. The sooner Americans see this the better.

You're not getting M/Paternity leave or a pension unless you work. Same applies to all this glorious paid vacation.

So the bottom line isn't that it's not applicable to the US, it's that the US needs to stop loathing taxes. Well spent taxes are a stroke of genius. Of course to make this happen in the US would probably entail an armed revolution. The top is milking everyone dry. That's happening because we have no organized union, on job protection, and their taxes are super low. I love my super low taxes on my investment income but not at the expense of destroying the USA. We keep this up for too much longer and the US will be nothing but a fiefdom. Overlords paying measly wages to the serfs.

 

[Doppel]

You can't squeeze a drop out of the system unless you work.

If this is true, it's still not applicable to America. As you probably know there are many life-long "benefits recipients" in the US. These are people who fail out of highschool, crank out some kids, never work. Ever. They will never hold a job. In the US it's possible to have this subsistence low-end lifestyle for years and it's now part of the culture. It's very expensive to keep these leeches on the teat, but would be worse if their benefits were a lot higher, and to be honest they add so little value it barely matters if they are working or not. They are just kept wards of the state now.

Americans already get a "free" education, all the way through high school. The people I referred to in the previous paragraph don't even bother using it all the way through. College is expensive, but so many people get toilet paper degrees that until we can convince them to stop spending 4 years studying ancient pottery I don't know that we want to give them yet more money to keep their loans lower.

Universal health coverage, for better or worse, is on its way. I think it is inevitable in the US, just like gay marriage and the abolition of capital punishment.

-------------

People do loathe taxes here. The serfs have bought outright this trickle down nonsense, unfortunately. Paradoxically an increase in taxes would hit the rich hardest, yet the lower classes still don't support it. This is in part because they have bought into the dream of economic mobility, which is low in the US, but tells them one day they will be rich and they need to protect the class they want to eventually (but never will) enter into.

 

[soulcougher73]

Americans already get a "free" education, all the way through high school. The people I referred to in the previous paragraph don't even bother using it all the way through. College is expensive, but so many people get toilet paper degrees that until we can convince them to stop spending 4 years studying ancient pottery I don't know that we want to give them yet more money to keep their loans lower.

I would like to think that if we implimented free eductation/college that the government would do away with all the useless degrees and only focus on ones that can earn a living or/are needed. (as fas as being under the free college route that is). I too would hate to waste tax payer money for underwater basket weaving.

Im fine if universities want to offer these lame degrees, but those should rest on the student to pay for them.

Basicallly something like engineeres, doctors, accountanting etc would all be free. underwater basket weaving and ancient pottery youd have to pay for. Something like that might be best.

 

[pauldun170]

I apologize for skimming.
This thread got me reminiscing about the 2 months paid leave I got for each of my sons.
I still get made fun of by co-workers for the time I was out those years.
8 (full paid) weeks for paternity
4 (full paid) weeks Vacation
10 (full paid) sick days.
Toss in 10 (full paid) days off for holidays.

Last year they upped the paternity\maternity leave to 12 weeks.
Bastards
They had to go and do that after I got fixed.

From what I hear more companies are offer paid maternity\paternity leave each year. At least here in the US.

 

[AViking]

Regarding taxes.

http://sandracarpenter.net/2009/05/04/tax-day-in-sweden/

Yes, you can file your taxes by SMS (text message).

 

[AViking]

If this is true, it's still not applicable to America. As you probably know there are many life-long "benefits recipients" in the US. These are people who fail out of highschool, crank out some kids, never work. Ever. They will never hold a job. In the US it's possible to have this subsistence low-end lifestyle for years and it's now part of the culture. It's very expensive to keep these leeches on the teat, but would be worse if their benefits were a lot higher, and to be honest they add so little value it barely matters if they are working or not. They are just kept wards of the state now.

Americans already get a "free" education, all the way through high school. The people I referred to in the previous paragraph don't even bother using it all the way through. College is expensive, but so many people get toilet paper degrees that until we can convince them to stop spending 4 years studying ancient pottery I don't know that we want to give them yet more money to keep their loans lower.

Universal health coverage, for better or worse, is on its way. I think it is inevitable in the US, just like gay marriage and the abolition of capital punishment.

-------------

People do loathe taxes here. The serfs have bought outright this trickle down nonsense, unfortunately. Paradoxically an increase in taxes would hit the rich hardest, yet the lower classes still don't support it. This is in part because they have bought into the dream of economic mobility, which is low in the US, but tells them one day they will be rich and they need to protect the class they want to eventually (but never will) enter into.

I was raised to believe that we have these terrible leeches who live off welfare generation after generation. I question that now though. I know that Clinton reformed some of our welfare system and it is my understanding that you have a limited amount of time that you can suck on the government teat.

I'm fairly sure there's a lifetime cap of so many years that you can receive welfare. Food stamps are a state program and are capped for a certain amount of time in CA. There was a viral video making the rounds about who to take advantage of the food stamp card and I did a google search and was pretty convinced that it was bullshit.

So is this cultural idea that we have about people being on welfare their whole lives political bullshit?

We have programs like disability and SSI and I really don't have a problem with that. People just being poor, not working, and getting welfare their entire lives though is not cool but I'm pretty sure it's political propaganda.

Unless you're disabled or a kid you're only going to get welfare for 1-5 years. I'm almost 100% positive.

 

[AViking]

First off our high school system is pretty crummy. I pretty much redid my entire high school education when I went to University. All this despite my High School being highly rated in CA. Europeans have a completely different system and study until they're about 19 and get the equivalent to an associates degree in the US. The idea that you can graduate high school, be functionally illiterate, and not know how to balance your checkbook is laughable in Europe.

Second off the US University system is pretty amazing. I prefer it. I think some general education goes a long ways in making people more educated. What needs to change though is treating it like a for profit business selling idiotic degrees to people who will never get a job. It really hurts our society to sell someone a $100,000 degree that will net him a $19,000 income. I'd refuse student loans to those types of degrees. I'd also adopt the European (and pretty much rest of the world) system where they have internships as part of the degree as well as degrees linked to the demand of the job market. If you want to get a costume design degree in Sweden you are going to have to compete for the 5 spots that exist. They don't pump out 50,000 costume designers and have them struggle through life working at Starbucks. I got a real degree but my University must have pumped out 10,000 communication majors who were there just to get drunk and laid. That needs to stop immediately.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Years ago I needed to make a decision. I had been living in Europe for a few years and partying it up. I studied at university here and I had a job. Should I stay or go back to the USA? I chose to go back to the USA. I felt that culturally it made more sense and I really objected to the taxes and felt like I was better off making more money in the USA.

So I went back to the USA. I busted my ass and made a lot of money in a very short period of time. The American Dream right? Then it hit me though. If I wanted a higher quality of life and wanted to raise a family it made almost no sense to live in the United States. As a dual citizen I had a choice again and I chose to live in Europe for the second time in my life.

I have friends in Europe and love the culture. In many ways, I do believe the quality of life is higher there -- the people seem far less stressed out and have actual interests outside of work. People here in the US are too focused on "work, work, work" and it is unfortunate. We've become a very materialistic culture focused on getting MORE MORE MORE!

You see I once asked my father what his biggest regret in life was. His answer kinda shocked me since I don't remember it like this. He said that he regretted barely being there for my first 9 years of life. He was always working, commuting, travelling, and didn't see me very much. That's just the way it is in the US.

Yeah, it is unfortunate but true and is one reason why I've never chosen to have kids. I don't want to have children just to put them in daycare all day while my wife and I work.

My friends in CA have 1-2 hour commutes to work each day. They work in Silicon Valley but can't afford to live there so they have to drive for 65-80 miles twice a day. Some more. Some less. They get their 2 weeks of vacation, pay over $1000 a month for daycare per child, but make $75,000 to $100,000 a year. They have combined income families around $130,000 for the most part. Not bad. They're all in the top 20% of American families. It really doesn't get much better for most.

Those salaries seem low for Silicon Valley to be honest, but I get your message. I'd honestly advocate people in those positions look for jobs in areas with lower costs of living. I live in the midwest and make more than the combined family income you stated above but have a much, much lower cost of living. My wife also makes very good money.

• I get 6-8 weeks of vacation plus a whole bunch of national days off. If a national holiday occurs on a Thursday or Tuesday you get Friday or Monday off as well.
• Daycare is among the best in the world and costs $189 per month for your first child, $126 per month for the second, $63 per month for the third, and is free for any additional children.
• There is a lot of opportunity for working at home and flex time.
• Maternity and Paternity leave are 16 months long at 80% pay. Now I think the father is required to take 3 months off. Generally with my friends and family the father takes about 6 months off.

So the question I have to ask is why do we put up with this? Can it change? Do you want it to change?

A couple immediate problems present itself. First off if you live in an at-will state you would be fired for even suggesting paternity or maternity leave. Next up is that we don't have organized labor and that's probably the key to the rest of the world offering these benefits. Lastly Americans loathe taxes.

I hear your message, but consider this: what if you worked hard to form your own business and it was very successful, eventually allowing you to grow the company to 50 to 100 employees. One day, government came in and dictated that you were to pay for maternity/paternity leave for all your employees for up to 10 weeks, you'd be required to give all employees every semi-major holiday off PAID, and finally, you'd be required to grant every employee a minimum of 4 weeks of paid vacation. You crunch the numbers and discover that it represents a massive impact to your bottom line and discover that it means you would have to eliminate positions to remain profitable. What would you do? We'd all love to form our own companies and give these sorts of perks and benefits, but oftentimes, the overhead added to your operational expenses resulting from these changes is so onerous that you wouldn't remain competitive.

Also to clarify about maternity/paternity leave -- I believe those fall under FMLA and you get up to 12 weeks per year. It isn't paid time off, but you won't lose your job either. Someone please correct me if I am wrong on this point.

 

[AViking]

The $130,000 is the lowest and is a friend making $70,000 as a technician in Silicon Valley and his wife making about $60,000 as a teacher back home. They are probably making a bit more today but last I checked those were the numbers and they have been doing this for over 10 years.

You get 12 weeks of UNPAID maternity leave. Nothing for the men as far as I know. Twelve weeks is still too low and articles I have read say that most women go back 4 weeks after childbirth. It's not easy for many to take 3 months of UNPAID time off.

To remain competitive the USA needs to change. We are racing towards the bottom trying to compete with 3rd world countries paying their employees $0.10-$3.50 an hour with no benefits. If we want to compete with them we have to get to their level and that's basically what we're doing.

 

[AViking]

There is of course an alternative. Don't sell cheap chinese knockoffs in the USA. If you do tax and tarriff it accordingly. The USA should be aiming for the high end, high quality, high service market. Allowing and encouraging our citizens to simply buy and throw away cheap chinese stuff on a regular basis is stupid and killing us.

 

[mikeymikec]

nvm

 

[JTsyo]

With paternity leave, we were able to keep our son at home until he was a year old. My wife took 12 weeks of maternity leave (state disability/ short term disability offered by her company) then she went back to work but only works Tues/Thurs and some weekends. I used paternity leave to watch him on Tues/Thurs and my mom had some time off to help fill in some gaps. For us though the paternity leave wasn't a separate leave, you had to use your vacation days and sick leave.

 

[GreenMeters]

I hear your message, but consider this: what if you worked hard to form your own business and it was very successful, eventually allowing you to grow the company to 50 to 100 employees. One day, government came in and dictated that you were to pay for maternity/paternity leave for all your employees for up to 10 weeks, you'd be required to give all employees every semi-major holiday off PAID, and finally, you'd be required to grant every employee a minimum of 4 weeks of paid vacation. You crunch the numbers and discover that it represents a massive impact to your bottom line and discover that it means you would have to eliminate positions to remain profitable. What would you do? We'd all love to form our own companies and give these sorts of perks and benefits, but oftentimes, the overhead added to your operational expenses resulting from these changes is so onerous that you wouldn't remain competitive.

If these policies were set by government regulation, where everyone would be impacted, it seems like relative competitiveness would remain roughly the same.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

The $130,000 is the lowest and is a friend making $70,000 as a technician in Silicon Valley and his wife making about $60,000 as a teacher back home. They are probably making a bit more today but last I checked those were the numbers and they have been doing this for over 10 years.

You get 12 weeks of UNPAID maternity leave. Nothing for the men as far as I know. Twelve weeks is still too low and articles I have read say that most women go back 4 weeks after childbirth. It's not easy for many to take 3 months of UNPAID time off.

And there's the issue. Who do you expect to pay these people to take all that time off for having a kid? The government? I'm sorry, but I really don't want my taxes raised to pay for someone else to take time off after having kids.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

If these policies were set by government regulation, where everyone would be impacted, it seems like relative competitiveness would remain roughly the same.

I understand that, but competitiveness aside, if the government starts mandating significant new expenses, it could significantly impact the abilities of a small business to survive and would likely result in people being laid off. Unless, of course, you're saying that people who get time off for maternity/paternity leave or longer vacation periods mandated by the government should be paid by the government rather than their employer. If that's what you're saying, I don't agree with that at all.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

There is of course an alternative. Don't sell cheap chinese knockoffs in the USA. If you do tax and tarriff it accordingly. The USA should be aiming for the high end, high quality, high service market. Allowing and encouraging our citizens to simply buy and throw away cheap chinese stuff on a regular basis is stupid and killing us.

No argument there.

 

[GreenMeters]

I understand that, but competitiveness aside, if the government starts mandating significant new expenses, it could significantly impact the abilities of a small business to survive and would likely result in people being laid off. Unless, of course, you're saying that people who get time off for maternity/paternity leave or longer vacation periods mandated by the government should be paid by the government rather than their employer. If that's what you're saying, I don't agree with that at all.

No, I'm just trying to work through an economic model where your hypothetical is likely. It requires a company that's damn unstable already: minimal profitability and minimal gap between wages and productivity.

 

[Pulsar]

There is of course an alternative. Don't sell cheap chinese knockoffs in the USA. If you do tax and tarriff it accordingly. The USA should be aiming for the high end, high quality, high service market. Allowing and encouraging our citizens to simply buy and throw away cheap chinese stuff on a regular basis is stupid and killing us.

Isolationism (tariffs) simply don't work. There are dozens of examples of countries that tariff the hell out of incoming products.

The worst part is that we don't HAVE money in this country. It's already gone. That's why our standard of living is starting to drop.

To actually create wealth, you need to create value. The only thing that takes a worthless product like a lump of plastic and turns it into a valuable product like the back plate of an iphone is manufacturing. You can then sell that piece of plastic and bring in money from somewhere else.

Everything else - every service job, every 'finance' job, every banking job.... those are all just methods of sliding money around. No wealth is created, no money is brought in from other countries.

When the money finally dries up, no one will be buying the goods manufactured here, and our wages will go into free fall. It's coming. 20 years, 40 years, no one actually knows when. But at some point we WILL hit the wall and it's all going to go pear shaped in a big hurry.

 

[Codewiz]

I apologize for skimming.
This thread got me reminiscing about the 2 months paid leave I got for each of my sons.
I still get made fun of by co-workers for the time I was out those years.
8 (full paid) weeks for paternity
4 (full paid) weeks Vacation
10 (full paid) sick days.
Toss in 10 (full paid) days off for holidays.

Last year they upped the paternity\maternity leave to 12 weeks.
Bastards
They had to go and do that after I got fixed.

From what I hear more companies are offer paid maternity\paternity leave each year. At least here in the US.

Yep, I invoked FMLA and I was allowed to use my sick time and vacation time. I took 8 weeks for my first born son. I am using 12 weeks for my son that we are adopting.

People look at me weird because I am a male taking so much time off. But screw those people.

 

[chucky2]

I would imagine why this won't work in the US is because of culture. In the US you'd have so much scamming going on, so much abuse of system over even what we have now, that the tax levels needed to sustain it would be crippling.

Let me give you an example:

I'm often in the grocery store or convenience store or gas station. Here in Illinois we have a social welfare card called LINK, aka LINKs card. Basically it's like a credit card. Since the time I've actually paid attention to the people in front of me checking out, when I remember and when there is an actual visual opportunity, I've probably witnessed 100 or so usages of this card. A card that the taxpayer gets money taken out of their paychecks for, for these people to then use to buy what is supposed to be things they need. What do I see them buying with their social handout that is funded in part by reaching into my wallet? Well, important things, like Pepsi. And Cheetos. Twinkies. Arizona Iced Tea. Numerous pre-prepared foods that they have no business purchasing. The sad fact is that despite me witnessing so many uses of these cards by so many different people, I could count on one hand a ring up paid for by Links card that was actually legit.

Can you imagine if the services you are advocating the entire US have be taken advantage of in the way I've seen Links be taken advantage of?

EU and the US are entirely different cultures...they are simply not comparable. Good ideas for some of the things you list, but, simply not workable here.

 

[GreenMeters]

Poor people aren't allowed to have simple pleasures like soda or snacks, they must suffer for their appalling choice to be poor. They aren't allowed to buy pre-prepared food, they must make all meals from scratch by finding time on top of the four minimum wage jobs they already work that still aren't enough to cover basic cost of living. Thank God we live in a Christian nation that realizes that poor people are to be despised. As the Bible says, Judge, that ye be not thought lower class.

 

[chucky2]

Poor people aren't allowed to have simple pleasures like soda or snacks, they must suffer for their appalling choice to be poor. They aren't allowed to buy pre-prepared food, they must make all meals from scratch by finding time on top of the four minimum wage jobs they already work that still aren't enough to cover basic cost of living.

AViking, this really is a perfect example of why we can't go expanding social services in the US - this to a T is a perfect example of the mind F'd mindset of the type of a.) voters we have and b.) people we have that would use these services. Such a person actually believes that someone reaching into my wallet to take for themselves, via Gov taxation, should not be buying bulk ground beef or poultry, but rather ribs, steaks, lobsters, cake mix, seasoned rice dishes, etc. etc. They actually believe and see nothing wrong with someone taking from me via the Gov that rather than drink the water they have at home, they instead need to go buy Pepsi with my money. Worse, these people believe these folks are a.) working, and b.) even if they are working, such a low % of them are working 3 part time jobs let alone 4 as to be statistically irrelevant should be seen as the norm to produce maximum bleeding heart syndrome rationale to extract maximum votes for Politicians that will enact their pet bleeding heart policies not with their money, but, with my money too.

Do you see the problem now? There is no sense of self reliance, of shame. These people are owed perks even though they're sucking on the public teat. How many perks? Well, as many as this years winning voting bloc have crocodile tears for. And, as society continues to devolve with these lack of positive values, it's just worse and worse election cycle after election cycle.

Thank God we live in a Christian nation that realizes that poor people are to be despised. As the Bible says, Judge, that ye be not thought lower class.

I could care less what the bible says when it comes to US politics, we have separation of church and state for a reason. You want to help them more? Outstanding. Short yourself and yours more instead of voting to F me over more for your bleeding heart agenda.

Chuck