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On this week’s episode of Banter, Heather Boushey and Doug Holtz-Eakin discuss paid family and medical leave. Boushey serves as the executive director and chief economist at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth and Holtz-Eakin serves as president of American Action Forum. Boushey and Holtz-Eakin participated in the AEI-Brookings Working Group on Paid Family Leave organized by AEI resident scholar Aparna Mathur and the Brookings Institution’s Isabel Sawhill. The working group produced a report titled, “Paid Family and Medical Leave: An Issue Whose Time Has Come.” The links below will take you to the full report as well as the video from the report’s launch event.
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Published in: Economics
mainly in the plain
Lily Bart (View Comment):
Big government programs! Income redistribution! Everyone happier! Unicorns pooing skittles! No Downsides!
BTW, why would the father need mandated 8 WEEKS OF PAID LEAVE if their partner has a child? (speaking as a mother who has birthed a child myself). Sure it sounds like a super nice thing if your employer wishes to provide this benefit, but government mandated? I have no problem understanding why Heather Bouchey, Senior Fellow at the Center of American Progress – a liberal think tank and economist “concerned about income inequity” thinks there will be only upside to this idea! But why does Holtz-Eakin or Marco Rubio support these ideas?
Hey, @ricochet thank you(!) for this rather one-sided, un-critically examined presentation. The whole podcast sounded like an infomercial. I have higher expectations for this site.
AEI supports this? Another government program funded by your tax dollars? Get lost!
“The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.” Only an American would say mostly, but then Americans haven’t used English for years.
What does “conservative” mean anymore? I confess, I’m not sure, but if it means pushing a federally mandated paid leave supported by “Tax Credits” (apparently, ‘conservatives’ think tax credits are magic money – its their version of income redistribution), then I’m not a conservative.
Does anyone ever stop to think that we’re $20 trillion in debt before they recommend another spending program?
Don’t worry – it’ll be funded by “tax credits”! Magic money!
I’m just so profoundly sad to see Republican wed themselves to socialism. It’s going to lead to heartache and ruin. There is not enough money in the world to satisfy everyone’s “needs” once they determine they can make their neighbors fund them. In the end, we’re all poorer, expect the political class and their cronies, who’ll get rich and powerful. Its perverse.
I listened to this podcast and was really surprised by the enthusiasm of the participants for a national paid family leave program. I found their arguments to be lacking and unpersuasive. I especially liked how they cited California as a place where businesses support paid family leave. I wonder, did the people that ran the survey that go and ask all of the business that have left California if they supported the program? California leads the nation in this reality. Things like this send companies to states with less government interference.
http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/business/20160809/how-many-businesses-have-left-california-this-report-claims-to-have-an-answer
As economists, you have to realize that a program like this will have major un-intended costs and will more than likely make it harder for women of child-bearing age to find work.