So I get SAD each winter, would you be cool with society subsidizing two tropical vacations per winter for me? I find major depression stressful.

That's a pretty terrible analogy, I don't think it's even worth discussing.

I agree that Thremp and KC should not have kids... unless they were both the fathers!

[ROLL OPENING CREDITS]

I took 8 weeks of paternity leave with both my kids.

They are both awesome, solely as a result of that imo.

Science.

You are just uncomfortable with the fact that you think society should give you free **** for not pulling out, but not to give other people for free **** for making other equally arbitrary choices.

Why are we incentivizing procreation at all? There aren't enough people? Not having a kid is actually one of the greenest things you can do (whoa SJWs).

But ya, whatever makes you happy. You wanna think treatment for major depression is NOT OKAY. But sitting on your ass to have kid 15 is. k.

Thremp,

Have you thought about getting an emotional support animal? I hear N1H is looking for a job.

G4S,

I took two weeks off when the twins were born, but the second week was just because my wife almost died during the first week. I'll admit to being a bit less productive at work for a few months after that, though.

DT,

I would totally watch that show.

Wow making ridiculous assumptions and claims about my stance and strawmanning to the max. I was led to believe you conducted rational, emotionless arguments.

I agree having kids is objectively negative for society at this point***, but as with many other things in life, I'm probably just gonna do what makes me happy. If whether or not we should incentivize people having kids is your argument here, I think that's just absurdly unrealistic.

***ETA: Although I'll backtrack a bit, maybe there's a competition aspect here where you can't let all the dumb hick kids take over the world

Yikes, understandably so.

The way we did it for both kids, was my wife (at the time) stayed home for the first 8-10 weeks, then when she went back to work I stayed home for the next 8 weeks. Would recommend.

She took 13 weeks off and we stayed with her folks, both for the help and because she wasn't allowed to use the stairs, and our place has a lot. Night nanny immediately (again, doctor's orders) and day nanny at around 11 weeks got us through it.

I know people that have done it your way, and I have to admit it sounds pretty cool; I'm not sure if I'd have ended up actually doing it, though, for all the reasons you'd expect.

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what your stance is.

The way it sounds to me (and I could be wrong here, so feel free to correct me) is that you're basically saying "Parental leave is awesome because I'm going to take full advantage of it". I would agree that if you are a recipient, then for you it is +EV.

But if you are interested in making your position clearer, you need to explicitly state why people who don't need/want parental leave should be forced to subsidize those who do.

The underlying assumption here is were are talking about some government mandated policy. If some private employer wants to give a valuable employee parental (or any other) leave because replacing them would be more expensive, I don't think anyone is against that.

Saw,

Not saying time off isn't warranted. Just giving men full bonding leave equal to the mother's is lol.

Melk,

I wasn't really loling at it from a governmental mandate perspective. Just from a lol perspective.

saw,

I was using the generic you. I'm sorry if that was unclear. Also, that argument about hicks is mostly used against brown people. My personal thesis is the spaghetti problem is solved by willful extinction of all evolved species. I think most people don't realize how heavily we incentivize people to reproduce (Europe even moreso), which results in comical outcomes. For example here in West Russia, you can dump one out every 2.5y retaining you average salary pre first kid, and generally working under the table on the side. How does that help anyone?

See also: Tax credits. Kids as social peacocking.

Monte,

No. I have browsed his log, but it looks scary in passing. I've had enough of this following MLY. I'd rather rant against emotional topics.

Well I wasn't thinking about it from a government policy perspective either, but I will now. Aside from the point that we shouldn't reproduce anymore - maternity/paternity leave to me seems like an extremely reasonable desire for new parents (if I'm wrong here then k, but it doesn't seem like anyone is disagreeing with this part). And I don't trust free markets to do much of anything except make good cheap(er) products for consumers, sometimes. I don't think every regulation the government imposes has to or should be based in economics. Pure capitalism just doesn't get everything right, and if we want parents to have m/p-aternity leave, seems reasonable to regulate it.

Don't feel super strongly about that though. Again, see 2nd sentence in my response to KC.

Oh ok, I'm not saying the two should be equal. You just said "lol paternity leave", so I thought it seemed a bit ridiculous that the dad shouldn't help the mom out at all...

Something in the range of 2-4 weeks for dad and 1-2 months for mom seems reasonable to me?

ETA: This post makes more sense to me if you read the KC response first.

Not sure what the laws are exactly. I know in Mass dudes get 8 weeks unpaid leave guaranteed by state. My employer offers 8 paid weeks. I think for women it's 8 paid and 4 at reduced pay and more at no pay.

Damn. I guess I picked a bad day to be busy at work.

On the bright side I probably would have said something to get banned anyways, so maybe for the best.

I am taking notes on how to be discriminatory without upsetting people.

a. Talking about IQ and race ok as long as you just talk about Asians being at the top.
b. Talking about poor people procreating too much ok as long as you use pejoratives to make it clear you are specifically talking about poor white people.
c. Taking shots at womyn always ok

-Did I miss anything?

Wife is getting 14 weeks @ 80% salary (govt) plus a grant from her work of about 4 weeks full salary. I get up to two weeks unpaid leave.

So good

That's actually a really good summary (I assume), thanks!


Nobody #paternityleaves like Europe/France!

Bolded is correct, but paying for other people to take maternity/paternity leave is extremely undesirable for those who don't want (i.e., they would rather just have more income and figure **** out on their own,), don't need it, or would use less than the average person.

At some point you're going to have to articulate exactly why one group's desires take precedence (and there are many possible ways one could choose to justify it). All you're doing so far is assuming the conclusion and then moving on to how to implement it.

SAD is not a choice so in that regard you should feel more, not less entitled to work leave during those times

Because having children such a universal good that he wants the state to expropriate others to pay for it. Simple.

YES

I agree with this. Please learn what observational/longitudinal studies conclude and you may move out of the **** poster range.

At my level of wealth it is

Obv.

Well, maternity leave facilitates women entering the workforce, which facilitates higher productivity, which theoretically we all benefit from, although in the last 10 years or so pretty much all of the extremely high increase in productivity we have enjoyed has benefited the super rich exclusively.

So, as good capitalists we should support maternity leave, because at the end of the day it allows the rich to be that much richer.

Not to mention that encouraging maternity leave, childbirth, and immigration to increase the size of the labor force is a great benefit to the super wealthy because the excess supply of labor allows them to depress wages.

I know there are costs too, e.g. the prisons being full of adults who were unwanted children, homeless population, etc, but the super wealthy does a good job of manipulating the tax codes so the burden of paying these costs goes disproportionately on the middle and lower working classes, so again win for the super wealthy.

Being the 98% must suck.

Well I don't want to put words in his mouth. Let him say what he means to say.

It's the weirdest thing, I was thinking this exact thing about you. What an amazing coincidence!