I don't favor government meddling here but there's nothing wrong with sick leave (at least in the private sector - the public sector, where people accumulate a couple of years to be paid, lump-sum, at retirement is another matter). I don't recall ever using more than one or two days a year so, no, I don't use it as more vacation.

One thing conservatives need to figure out is that in a nation where real wages are flat and/or falling, telling people that they should receive even fewer benefits and less pay is yet another big loser.

If the percentage of workers in manufacturing is falling then why would we believe that this won't be the case in other sectors?

We're not far from the disappearance of many retail and service jobs: why do you need counter help at McDonalds? Why do we need cashiers when RFID is becoming ubiquitous? I can think of dozens of skilled, blue & white collar jobs that have disappeared since I started working (and I'm not that old). Do we really need finance people when computers are much faster and never forget? How much lawyering is moving to computer? How long will it be before computers routinely read X-rays and EKGs? Etc.

Is there any serious thinking on the "end of work"?

I'm reminded of the scene in "War Games" where the biology teacher asks the class "who first suggested the idea of reproduction without sex?" to which Matthew Broderick responds "Your wife?"

http://movieclips.com/M9swo-wargames-movie-asexual-reproduction/

Those of us who support capital punishment should refer to the execution as "removing the contents of the holding cell". It sounds so much more humane than to say we're dragging a sentient human being to the death chamber.

 I reluctantly accept allowing abortions through the first few weeks but it is what it is.

But in the last few months... I have never understood how any physician could perform (commit?) such a procedure. We don't even allow food animals to be dismembered while conscious and we insist that euthanasia for pets be painless. I understand that third-trimester abortions are relatively "rare" but, IMHO, anyone who could extract a live baby and then introduce scissors into the brain is missing some of his/her basic humanity.

Bruce - I respectfully disagree. I'm been writing software for 25 years or so and the "profession" has gone steadily downhill.

It's not so much a pay thing (based on a recent article in the Atlantic, my pay with only some college is comparable to a newly-minted grads with PhD.s in the hard sciences) although, it should be noted that pay has been pretty flat which does not indicate a tight labor pool.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/the-phd-bust-americas-awful-market-for-young-scientists-in-7-charts/273339/

I can't speak for industries outside of embedded software and electronics, but in my biz, working conditions have been sliding for years (see about any Dilbert strip). Instead of better management (which would increase productivity and project success rates), business prefers to throw more bodies at the work - which almost guarantees failure (see The Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks).

Finally, you should read Norm Matloff (ComSci prof @ UC-Davis) who has written a lot on H1B.

http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html

Rob (aka SoCalRobert).

I'm not sure I buy all that. State to state comparisons can be difficult due to intangibles (e.g. if you can live on the coast in La Jolla or Carlsbad, CA then you're probably far more willing to pay high taxes than you would be if you lived in, say, Odessa, TX.

I'm an Oklahoma native (40+ years) but moved to Kansas some years ago.

Every time I go to OK, I am reminded why moving to KS was the best thing I ever did. Our roads are orders of magnitude better, the parks are better, and the state is prettier (even the western part).

OK may have a lower tax burden but I feel I get more value from my KS tax dollars.

This has been done for years... you take whatever bad or undesirable story you find and blame it on conservatives and/or cite the effect it has on women and minorities.

It's easy:

World to End on Monday; Women and minorities hardest hit.

Hurricane hits Northeast; Democrats blame GOP for Climate Change.

The more that schools and parents try to shield The Children, the more outrageous things get.

I was never good at dodgeball (or any sports) so, depending on how things were going, I sometimes managed to get hit early so as to sit out the more zealous parts of the game. But I don't remember it being so traumatic that we needed shelter from it.

Maybe sheltering kids from the bad stuff also shelters them from the understanding that comes from getting the short end of the stick now and then: empathy.

I've been through two layoffs and collected UI for a short time. Given mortgage and car payments, I was looking for a new job the same day. Fortunately, I'm decent at what I do and had former colleagues who clued me in about openings so my down times were short.

I am certain there are people who will milk the system as long as possible. I'm sure there are plenty of other people who, like me, need the income.

If "funemployment" is as big a problem as many think it is, the unemployment rate should be falling, the number of employed people should be going up as should wages. I see none of that.

I've tried to make the point in the past that we're starting to see structural unemployment: not enough jobs available for enough people. 

I know we're all supposed to think that anyone can do anything "he puts his mind to it" but the bell curve says "no" and lower-skill jobs are becoming obsolete. Society will need to deal with the unemployable.

From Drudge: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100592545

I don't know about Wal Mart but my other half is in retail and it's all about sales-per-man-hour. Reduce labor cost... reduce, reduce, reduce.

Serve increasingly unhappy customers and keep stock on display - but cut, cut, cut. Make most full-timers work part-time - cut, cut, cut. Pay people poorly and demand a sense of urgency. Push, push, push.

Of course, the overhead, er, management at HQ doesn't ever see cuts.

The lot of the retail employee is not a happy one.

Rachel - I'm not disagreeing with you in any significant way... just making a marketing comment. As QBF noted, there has been a lot of bad law imposed "for the children" (look at gun control arguments).

Social conservatives make a lot of good points and I don't believe we can have fiscal restraint without social restraint (someone has to pay for the welfare kids). But so-cons seem to get caught up with various scolds that turn most voters off.

A lot of people could do with a good scolding but Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee aren't the ones to do it (but I can't think of anyone).

Conservatives need to identify one issue and "focus like a laser". IMHO, the biggest social problem we have is women with no husband and no prospects having kids they can't raise properly. Addressing that without being hammered by the media and labeled as mean and prudish may be impossible.

Just this week at work, we learned that our insurance is going up April 1 (company learned the week before). The company covers 70-80 percent of the cost yet the premium for family coverage, couple + kid(s), is $1100/month. For our blue-collar workers, this is half their take home pay. (One reason why Medicaid is exploding.)

There is a crisis in medical spending. Obamacare is not the answer but conservatives need to realize that doing nothing, laissez faire, is not an answer.

Patients are getting squeezed and doctors are getting squeezed - where is the money going?

I'm agnostic - not as the result of careful study - I've just not given it much thought.

My opinion is that many atheists vote left because conservatism and most religions demand that people assume some responsibility for themselves and that the answer to some questions is "no".

I would suggest a different theme. "For the children" has long been the mantra of the left and it's been my impression that the more we talk about The Children, the less anyone actually does.

Introvert with a dash of misanthropy.

Florence King once pondered where the punishment is in solitary confinement... I've wondered that as well.

#5:: Merina - I would agree that the decline in marriage and the culture's attitude toward marriage is profoundly harmful to society.

I part company when the threat of same-sex marriage comes up. We gays are a very small proportion of the population (the press that SSM gets seems way out of proportion) and, until very recently, were unable to marry in any state. The problem in marriage lies in the 97 percent of the population that is not gay. I would like to see more heat applied to straights that are now producing close to 50 percent of firstborns out of wedlock. Out of wedlock births have been every bit the train wreck Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned about almost 50 years ago writ large.

Keep in mind that there are two factions in the SSM "movement": 1) gays that genuinely want to marry with all the obligations it entails (as Jonathon Rauch has written, marriage creates kin) and 2) the gay left (and lefties in general) who see SSM as nothing more than just another way to bludgeon tradition.

I regret that #2 gets all the attention.