Your argument that we should have people pay for others to have kids can be applied to more than just a tax break and paternity leave. Do you think we should have non-parents or parents of grown kids pay more at the grocery store allowing parents of young kids to get a discount? What about at the gas pump (your slogan could be "discount at the gas pump if you have a baby bump")?

My point is that is is silly to expect any industry or employers to redistribute money based off of age, sex or parent/non-parent. If that is important we should do it within our tax system.

Do I get to opt out of paying for the military I never use, too?

Sure the tax code is a better way of doing it. Having individual employers save up money for parental leave is a bad way to do things because it's better to spread the risk across all of society instead of dividing it by firm. Just raise taxes across the board and then have companies apply for a rebate, discount or whatever for employees who take their year off for parental leave

You need to re-read my post. I said I’m okay with redistribution via taxes and not ok with redistribution via other methods.

Short election campaigns. It might be worth repealing the 1st amendment to achieve this one.

I'm confused on where you stand politically now.

I think trump is a bad person who isn’t very smart and I disagree with some of his policy, but I think the country is better off with him than Bernie, warren or Biden.

I support him (or any future president) taking it hard to the paint on China, but I don’t think trump (and most politicians) understand trade enough to come up with a good plan to get to where I want to be trade wise which is free-er trade (free trade with all countries being the pipe dream). Just like Bush 2 I think trump has some smart people in the room giving him some good economic advice but I don’t think either understand why they are doing some of the things they are doing - bush 2 proved this true IMO when he abandoned free market principals near the end of his 2nd term.

By the way, where did that middle paragraph come from that is within the quote of my post (about NK, Russia & Iran)? I did not say that.

hasn't tariffs and limitations on trade essentially been his approach thus far?

there're long lists of capable people willing to say their piece in his network, but how much confidence do you have in his ability to separate the wheat from the chaff? peter Navarro, the brains of the operation for the china tariffs, is exactly the kind of guy i would've expected him to listen to. he's like the "feel" player of economists in a field that's filled with GTO nerds, and trump is like "awww yea baby, that **** works every time in my home games, this guy will crush the nits" while china is going through their nth refinement of pluribus. it's like the fact that someone has an opinion that runs contrary to the conventional wisdom is in itself enough to give him confidence in their judgment. not good.

it's not a matter of him being bad or not smart. he's just way too confident.

so how confident are YOU that he would be better than a warren or a sanders? i'm guessing you were willing to give trump the benefit of the doubt in thinking that a lot of what he said on the campaign trail was bravado he had no intention of following through on - do you not think it's possible that democrats are exaggerating their ambitions for the PR?

Where I live the mandatory maternity and paternity leave are paid out of what is called the social security system, which is funded by payroll taxes and is definitely not insurance.

But his existence was not necessary.

Yes tariffs has been trumps go to move and I am still holding out a little hope that he is only using them because he knows he has an incredible amount of leverage over China (since they need us as a trade partner way more than we need them and everyone knows they have been screwing us). However, in the back of my mind I have been thinking he is just a protectionist because he doesn’t understand the benefits of free trade.

I agree that trumps confidence is a bigger issue than him not being smart or him saying mean things. Very well put by you.

I am extremely confident that trump is better for the US than either warren or Bernie. Maybe some of the stuff they are saying on the campaign trail is fluff meant to get more PR but I strongly disagree with too many of their policies to consider either of them. I am personally shocked and scared that either of them are still in the race - and I have been able to say that about any presidential candidate ever.

Maternity and paternity pay is largely immediately consumed, not hidden under the mattress.

Most liberals think that the "paid" part of parental leave benefits can, if not should, come from the government. There's not really any way for the necessary time off to come from the government, but it is something that is necessary for a functioning society that has women in the workforce. If you want to bar one or both of those things (a functioning society and/or working women), lol, ok, your case had better be a lot stronger than "This comes at the expense of people who don't have kids, therefore it shouldn't happen."

Well, that's a little embarrassing. That was my text embedded in your quote. I wasn't sure how to fix it so just left it.
Anyways.

So, we're still very different ideologically, and not gonna be friends, but I now understand you a lot better and can appreciate and respect your perspective on things.

As for myself, I'm more of a moderate liberal than a progressive. Funny enough,I too don't want neither Sanders or Warren to be President. I'm a Biden guy. I bet you my guy can beat up your guy

I agree, the economy is doing well. But the economy was well on the recovery during the Obama years. Despite all the good Obama was doing for the economy, the right was still relentlessly negative. The right wing media is pretty pathetic.
Not everything Trump is doing is horrible, but the negatives far outweigh the negatives. He's tearing the country apart. He's tearing apart how this government has functioned for over two hundred years. The long term negatives of his policies will far outweigh the short term benefits that we are now seeing.

I will not whore myself for a few dollars my friends.

considering trade and 'making deals' is his core competency and he's going against the grain of what the overwhelming majority of his advisors would've told him in a direction that you disagree with, how could it get any worse? most democrats in the race could expected to be less gung ho about tariffs.

i don't agree that he doesn't see the merit in free trade. the problem is that china knows that he knows it's inflicting damage on both sides. he thinks that he's being strategic by pretending otherwise and they're not buying it. this is where the hubris comes into play. he must think they're idiots.

and the moral case for it is even more tenuous. when americans wanted to defect from the british who had their own form of monetizing these things in the form of taxes, they thumbed their nose at the taxes as morally repugnant and so it was completely justified to give them the finger. that's acceptable, but anyone who doesn't recognize the legitimacy of american intellectual property is scum? if the ancient romans declared intellectual property rights for concrete over an infinite time horizon, would they be entitled to charge whatever they want for anyone using concrete?

in what sense is it necessary? plenty of women plan ahead, save money and take time off. not necessarily wealthy ones either - this is something normal people do. if you have parents that want grandchildren, they'll usually help ease the process. very common.

the people who have no help, no money and are basically straddling the poverty line - i kind of think this is maybe not the group you want to incentivize to have more children. there's nothing noble or sacred about bringing more children into the world. if they fall on hard times and overextend themselves i'm not saying we shouldn't help them but there're better ways.

It's a certainty that these people will have children, and at a pretty good clip, especially if we ban abortion, teach abstinence only in school, let employers deny birth control coverage, and other conservative priorities.

Plus, parental leave isn't some massive "incentive." It's necessary. Not all mothers have parents, have husbands, have support networks. It's necessary even if they do have these things, but not all do.

Just what do you think is better to give a poor new mother than time off from work?

A tubal ligation. Not to force her to have it obviously. It has to be her personal choice to do it but in exchange she'd get that year off work, parenting workshops, healthcare, living accommodations and a shiny new set of boot straps.

Government paid/subsidized parental leave is an important component of the neoliberal machine and the process of wealth transfer to the elites classes, for a couple different inter-related reasons.

First you have to accept that people, especially poor and/or religious people are going to procreate. Because they are human beings, and human beings are animals. And animals are lifeforms. And it is just how life works.

So now that we accept that people are going to procreate anyways, government paid leave is an effective way to maximize wealth transfer to the elites. First off, you want women working en masse, to increase productivity and just as importantly to flood the labor pool to keep wages depressed and suppress worker power/leverage, to maximize wealth transfer to the elite class.

Secondly, strong famly/communal/tribal bonds are anathema to the neoliberal capitalist machine. They want you to be completely dependent on the state, so they call all the shots. If there was no paid leave, not only would less women be in the workforce, but they would be forced/incentivized to turn to family and community (including religion) as support networks. And for the neoliberal state this is no good. So, by promoting paid maternal leave (among many other measures) the state can weaken the family, church and other support structures they dont control, again to maximize wealth transfer to the elites that control the levers of the state.

And obviously, it goes without saying that paid maternal leave, among all the other important components of the neoliberal state, will facilitate stratification of social caste so that the children of elites will have a dependable labor/servant class to serve them for generations to come.

Oh yeah, and another incentive of government paid maternal leave is that the middle class is bearing a disproportionate amount of the burden, and elites a relatively much smaller portion; as elites pay lower effective tax rates due to our highly corrupt legal codes and global banking economy. So another win for the elites.

Kelhus,

Is society today, ceteris paribus, better off by your standards if we ban women from working outside the home? Or if instead, we as a society foist the entirety or bulk of child rearing on them and let women choose between having children and labor?

This would be an absolute disaster. It would make it so obvious how much the neoliberal elites are ****ing over the lower classes that it will be impossible to hide.

Imagine a society where it was that blatant that having children was a privilege that only the elites could have. I guarantee there would be a real revoution real fast if the elites every made their tactics and goals this obvious.

So, uh, in response to what is hopefully a transient state of poverty, you recommend an invasive surgery and permanent sterilization?

Why is it that it always comes back to eugenics in this forum?

you've been watching too much alex jones.

this is a perfect example where the phrase 'never attribute to malice what could as easily be explained by stupidity' applies.