Conference turris::womannotes-v3

    To kick things off, here is my position:
    
    I was never very aware of this before becoming a parent myself. 
    
    The most generous companies in the US grant 6 or 8 weeks of paid leave
    to new mothers, and most have none for fathers.  Either parent can take
    a number of weeks of unpaid parental leave.  
    
    Other countries, including all of Western Europe, Canada, Japan, and
    nearly all other industrialized countries, mandate more paid and unpaid
    leave, especially for care of children.  
    
    The US is profligate in conservation of its resources, including air,
    water, soil, AND children.  We've been blessed with a very rich, large
    land and a steady influx of highly motivated immigrants.  Our
    population has continued to grow despite the lack of a policy.  
    
    On the other hand, employers recognize that the demographics of the
    work force is changing.  Women (and minorities - which will become
    MAJorities) will constitute much of the skilled workforce in coming
    years.  This is why DEC supports Valuing Differences.  If there is no
    support for parental (and family-care) leave, employers will have a
    hard time holding on to their valued employees.
    
    It also needs to be acknowledged that a 6 or 8 week old infant is much
    too young for daycare, even with the best provider.  Childcare experts
    agree that the EARLIEST a baby should go to daycare is 12 weeks, and
    most prefer to keep the child with the mother or father for 6 months or
    more.  
    
    There is a social price for forcing mothers back to work, and young
    infants into daycare.  Not only absenteeism and lack of motivation for
    the mother, but developmental risks to the children, our future
    citizens and employees.
    
    While the need for family leave can be justified in dollars and cents,
    both now and in the future generation, there is also the argument that
    family leave is a humanitarian need.  Most parents struggle on a daily
    basis to juggle their responsibilities.  Do you take care of a young
    infant or sick child, or do you work to provide a roof and bread on the
    table?  Working parents (most parents today) are highly stressed.  Too
    many children are under-supervised.  The stress on families has many
    negative repercussions, from drug and alcohol abuse in parents and
    children, to juvenile crime, to lowered school performance and
    attendance.
    
    We cannot afford as a nation to go without a policy.  The price is
    being paid now, and will increase greatly as the next generation grows
    up.
    
    Laura

    I definitely agree some changes or more flexability is needed. 
    Flexibile work schedules could ease tensions of running a household. 
    New mothers or fathers should be allowed to take breaks from work
    during the day to feed infants.  A longer day with more or longer
    breaks, so parent could take care of children during their peak hours. 
    Daycare on site, especially for infants.  Schools central to work, as
    an option to working parents.  Lunch with your child would be more
    easier.  Central cafeteria, with payment plan, for a whole working
    family.  Different types of schools for our younger kids.  Community or
    Recreation centers also central to work and school area.  Vans
    transporting our kids to the centers after school.  Perhaps, a total
    change of work, school and living enviornment during our waking hours,
    that would let us spend more time with our children. 
    
    These are ideas that would at least give us some choices.  Choices for
    our American families.  
    
    Shouldn't be a crime or hindrence to our work, for us as parents to be
    with our children when they are ill.  
    
    Flexability and options!
    
    cin

    re .1,
    
    Laura,

    I am weary of the "social engineering" the government dishes out
    periodically.  As you pointed out, most employers already realize that 
    in order to get quality work force, they have to provide some sort maternal 
    leave policy.  In other words, it is taking care of itself.  I think
    the concept of parental leave is a good one.  If the employees of a certain
    company push for such policy, I will be the first one to come out in
    support.  The problem I have is with the government mandating it...  In
    general (not to be pushed to the extreme), I have a "thou shall not"
    rule for the government.  That is government should be in the business
    of telling people what they can't do not what they must do.  For example,
    "Thou shall not dump toxic waste on the road" or "Thou shall not
    murder" are good laws, but "Thou shall provide mandatory leave" is not.
    Of course, there are always exceptions.  For example, "Thou shall pay
    ya taxes", but we all hate that, right?
    
    As Anne Wortham (sp?) once said, government can't be our friends...
    The effort to make the society more benign with the instrument of 
    government is always futile.  And that lawyer was right.  For good or 
    bad, people in this country view child rearing as a private matter, and
    no government regulation is gonna change that.

    Eugene

    
    All things worth doing do not necessarily give a competitive 
    advantage to those firms which choose to do them.  
    
    The value of a government mandate is that all firms must comply, 
    and thereby no advantages accrue to firms who might choose to save
    money by not providing for such leave.  
                   
    
    Liam

    re .4,
    
    But a talented man or woman may not choose to work for a firm that does
    not provide the benifit of parental leave.  Big lost to the other
    company.  Also even suppose it is to the company's competitive
    advantage.   Is it wise to mandatorily force the company to give up that
    advantage?  Add to that, we are also competing in the international
    market, losing competitive edge may mean losing jobs.  As we can see 
    the situation is much too complicated for any government mandate to handle.
    
    If there should be such law, it should at least be handled at the state 
    level.   After living under the rule of the "big brother" for the first 17
    years of my life and dealing with the immigration office of this
    country for the last 10, I have become a Jeffersonian democrat.  The 
    governments of the U.S. and China are as different as that of night 
    and day, but surprise surprise, the bureaucracies are the same.
    
    Eugene

    Some context for my reply.  I had my son before I found a job. 
    I looked for work as a married woman with a toddler in the mid-West
    in the early '70's.  I've been a single parent, of one flavor or
    another, for the last 12 years.  I hold a professional type job,
    although my *first* job was a sales position for commission only,
    and my second job was for minimum wage.  My sisters had their jobs
    first, and their children when they were well established in their
    respective positions.  One is an hourly worker, the other is another
    computer professional.  All of their children are under the age
    of 4, they are both married.
    
    I agree with Eugene.  This is one area that government needs to stay 
    out of.  Availability of child care is light years ahead of where it 
    was in the '70's, believe it or not.  As more families have all adults 
    employed outside the home, business will be forced to change policies
    in order to attract the necessary work force.  Many businesses have
    a large training investment in their work force which they don't
    want to lose as a family adds dependents.  But mandating business
    policy changes will simply cause marginal businesses to fold, existing
    jobs to disappear, and exacerbate a macro economic problem we already 
    have.
    
    Government action which can be more family-supportive includes
    providing larger tax credits for dependent care (including subsidizing
    child-care for those struggling to integrate into the economy and
    get off AFDC), recognizing the economic contribution made by
    home-based care-givers (both parents of children and adult children 
    of aged parents providing care to their elders) in social security 
    funds, retirement funds, and tax treatment, and zoning laws which 
    encourage multiple use areas (thus allowing the integration of 
    child-care facilities, schools, homes and businesses in close 
    proximity to each other).
    
    Business can be more family-supportive by providing flex-time,
    encouraging the development of on-site or close-to-site day care
    (for both children and elders), and encouraging work-from-home
    opportunities.  Not all jobs lend themselves to these efforts, but
    certainly more jobs than currently have them are candidates for
    such treatment.  (Why can't a secretary have the office line forwarded
    to home, take messages, and use a terminal for the remaining chores
    in an emergency?  Why can't each worker at the local convenience
    store or whatever have a designated alternate, where the two or
    more workers decide for themselves how to split their time so that 
    all store hours are covered?)
    
    But none of this can be mandated by government.  It must spring
    from the self-interest of the employer.
    
    Alison
    line

    wow!
    
    ya *sure*, Barbara?

Re .5

I thought we were talking about policies for everyone, not just the 
most talented.  Special arrangements can usually be made for the most 
talented, the strongest, and the richest.  The rest of us, the 
relatively disavantaged, weak and less privileged, are usually
the ones who suffer.

I am not sure just what Pat Schroeder's bill proposes, but in general 
family leave policy would only be a matter of levelling the playing 
field, in the interest of justice.  It is not just that a company can 
gain advantage from denying leave to pregnant employees (if that is 
the present position), while those who care for the welfare of their 
employees surrender advantage.

I do not agree that the situation is particularly complicated.  I'm 
writing this from the perspective of Europe, where maternity leave is 
guaranteed.  I know Americans tend to have a deeper distrust of 
government than do Europeans, and I have no opinion in the matter 
about whether these things are best resolved by state government 
rather than federal government.  The one thing I will emphasise is 
that we are talking about democratic government.  The mandate of the 
government comes from the people.  


Liam

    It seems that for many people, their _ability_ to work is determined
    by access to parental leave, child care, and other family-oriented
    perqs.  This is entirely apart from their capability in their jobs,
    which may be high or simply average.  Yet a problem with ability
    can be detrimental to the perception of capability and the rewarding
    of capability with raises, advancement, or even simply retaining
    the position.
    
    Often, in our culture, the woman carries the burden of family care
    -- not always, but often enough that lack of child care is more
    likely to affect negatively a woman's career/job. 
    
    Lack of family-issues policy creates a situation where it is 
    often necessary to not have children, or neglect kids, neglect elders,
    neglect dependents.  It is not on purpose and folks go through hell
    to avoid neglecting family duties, but when the choice is food
    and housing VS a few unsupervised hours, hard-pressed folks
    must choose.
    
    I have friends who are both doctors, they have excellent child care,
    a nanny lives with them and cares for their two children.  Another
    friend of mine, a very talented and capable gardener, often has to
    bring her child (now four) to work because her child care arrangements
    fell through that day. 
        
    For those of us who do not live in the midst of an extended family,
    who do not live in a close-knit village, whose parents (who quite
    probably still work anyway and are not available) live far away,
    who must hold down a job in order to live, family policy is NECESSARY
    to create an environment which enables us to work.
    
    Goveernment is big and intrusive and is not very competent at social
    policy.  However, it is not a question of letting government into
    the family, it is a question of whether or not the government (that's
    us) believes in and supports the family.  Telling us how to do it
    is one thing, making policy that enables us to do it ourselves is
    necessary.  It is a question of does our society support a future
    and is it willing to put policy where it claims its heart is.
    
    I' tired of hearing warmed over homilies about the sanctity of the
    family and not seeing any effort to make a family more possible.
  

Not to rathole this dicussion or anything, but ...

The only manager I have had in DEC (in the 8 or 9 years since my son was born)
who has raised an objection to my staying home for a day to look after the sick
child was a woman.  Worse (but quite memorable) was that this woman manager 
looked me straight in the eye and said "Can't your wife do it?"

Argh!
					Nigel

	Sigh. More government restrictions of our liberty.

				Tom_K

    Re: .11:
    
    Being a staunch libertarian, I also rankle *A BIT* at suggestion of
    that law.  Being a former Denver resident, I rankle *A BIT* whenever
    Pat Schroeder opens her mouth.
    
    However, I fail to see how such a law is a restriction of our liberty. 
    From where I sit, it gives a person the liberty to raise children if
    they want to, with one less thing to worry about.
    
    Being a stanch libertarian with socialist tendencies, I find it very
    difficult to argue against this law.  Having learned to lighten up in a
    political sense, I guess I can see the value in what Pat has to say.

    Just remember one thing. An institution can't be better than the people 
    who run it, and government is run by politicians and bureaucrats.  That 
    is why us neo-Jeffersonians want to restrict the power of the
    government even if it is democratically elected.  Anyone who has ever
    dealt with a government agency (IRS for example) understands that.  
    
    Eugene

    Eugene, I believe that .9 answered your objection better than I can:
    
    >Government is big and intrusive and is not very competent at social
    >policy.  However, it is not a question of letting government into
    >the family, it is a question of whether or not the government (that's
    >us) believes in and supports the family.
    
    I would go a step further:  the law would require *employers* to
    believe in and support families as more than inconvenient appendages to
    a worker.  It would change parental leave from a luxury provided by
    some employers to a cost of doing business for all employers.
    
    TomK, I really don't believe that "liberty", when it's defined as the
    freedom to lose one's job in order to properly care for one's children,
    is worth having.

The argument of those of us who oppose mandated benefits (which 
is what a national leave policy amounts to) is that it will result
in fewer jobs being available.  Marginal jobs (those available for
low wages) will become non-economic to provide.  I know personally 
of several small business owners who have cut back hours and limited
the growth of their business because they couldn't afford the mandated
benefits for part-time employees.  So instead of the freedom to choose
between caring for children or going to work, there will be no work to 
go to and the children will be hungry.

Neither choice is good, but please don't ignore the very real consequences
of poorly thought out public policy.

Alison

>    However, I fail to see how such a law is a restriction of our liberty. 

	They are telling you how to run your business. If they
	are running it, they've become the owner. But they haven't 
	paid you for it, and thus have taken property without just 
	recompense, in shameless violation of the Constitution.

	The person who said they didn't want such liberty makes me
	sad. Those who are willing to trade freedom for security
	are doomed to have neither.

					Tom_K

    Re: -.1
    
    Do you also believe that businesses should have the liberty to have
    unsafe working conditions (eg. Sinclair's "The Jungle")?  Or that
    businesses should be allow to spew whatever chemicals they want into
    the environment?  Or that the owner's of the textile factory's
    shouldn't be obligated by law to pay their employees if they don't feel
    like it?
    
    Jim

>    Do you also believe that businesses should have the liberty to have
>    unsafe working conditions (eg. Sinclair's "The Jungle")? 

	Yes. And all should have the liberty of not working for them,
	as well as the liberty of not patronizing them.

>   Or that businesses should be allow to spew whatever chemicals they 
>   want into the environment?  

	Yes. But of course they must be required to pay for any
	damage cause by the afore mentioned chemicals. I think that
	would be quite sufficient to deter abuse, since small amounts
	of chemicals can cause damage that would be prohibitively 
	expensive.

>   Or that the owner's of the textile factory's shouldn't be obligated 
>   by law to pay their employees if they don't feel like it?

	Of course not. But if a factory reneges on a contract, there are 
	procedures extant to provide for redress.

						Tom_K

    in re .18
    
    so what happens if the dangerous job is the only one
    that is available and you have a family to support?
    
    bj

    
    Let them eat cake?
    

    or maybe Ronald Reagan's version of that same totally-in-touch-with-the
    issues-of-the-day response.  When he first came into office, he said,
    (loose quotation from memory) "I don't understand all this grumbling
    about unemployment.  I just looked through the pages of the (some
    newspaper), and there were pages and pages of job openings for computer
    programmers..."  
    
    Justine
    

    In response to some earlier replies,
    
    The libertarian position is very attractive, its proponents are
    sincere, and they do try to be consistent.  However, anything short of
    a complete scrap and overhaul would result in libertarian principles
    being applied very selectively, if they were implemented.  In this
    case, it would be to the detriment of working parents (the majority of
    workers today).  
    
    A few points to be remembered:
    
    ~ The US has a hard-won minimum wage law.  If you believe that this is
    proper and just, then the family leave proposal is not much of a
    stretch.
    
    ~ Implementing a well-thought out parental leave law (perhaps exempting
    smaller firms?) should not affect our competitiveness as a country in
    the global market.  Remember, nearly all other industrialized countries
    have such a law. 
    
      The "US economy" is a myth.  All national economies are increasingly
    interlocked.  Most complex products comprise components from several
    nations, and are assembled in several nations.  Our real concern should
    be the furtherance of our work force.  Europe, Canada, Japan, and other
    countries have implemented parental leave not only to protect the
    family and implement demographic policy, but to support their valued
    workforce.
    
    Laura

    
    Would this bill will also enable employees to take
    time off to help care for dependent and sick parents?
    I hope so.
    
    TomK: Your attitude makes me physically sick.
    

  Re: Dawn's comment about being "a stanch libertarian with socialist 
  tendencies"

  I think I'm one of those, too.  I'd also like to point out that those
  who oppose "social engineering" by the government should remain quiet
  if they take advantage of the income tax break for mortgage interest.

  JP

    I don't know a single economist who supports minimum wage law.  All
    classic and modern economic text books I have read says minimum wage law
    is a bad economic policy.  The supporters of minimum wage law are all
    "political scientists" if there ever is such a thing as political
    science.
    
    I don't know your definition of libertarian and socialist.  By my book
    "litertarian with socialist tendencies" is an oxymoron.  Libertarianism
    means "get the government off my back" while socialism means "please
    take care of me, big uncle George".  Of course, your book may vary.
    
    Eugene

    and your points would be better made if you were not showing such
    obvious bias.
    Your 'definitions' of libertarian and socialist are not 'definitions'
    at all

    one of them is an encomium
    the other is a perjorative

    re .25,
    
    And people would think that you actually have a point to make if you state 
    your own definitions rather than calling others' biased as I have never 
    claimed mine to be other than mine.
    
    Eugene

The Libertarians have two wings, I characterize them as "laissez faire
capitalist" and "communist." I was a communist libertarian about 15 years
ago, most recently the laissez faire branch has been ascendant. The Libertarians
agree on small government, but that doesn't necessarily imply any particular
economic policy.

I stopped being a Libertarian as I came to the realization that the government's
job was to protect people from each other, and that I WANTED protection from
some of the Libertarians I was associated with, and that there were people in
this country that I thought deserved protection from the likes of me.

Libertarianism, if adopted in it's current form, would result in the worst
tyranny this country has ever seen. A tyranny of the majority, and a plutocracy.

No thank you.

	-- Charles

    i _know_ I have a point to make, and that point is that you have no
    point to make as long as you use distorted definitions.
    (which by the way are not definitions at all but rather are editorials)

    re .28,
    
    So what is your point and your "undistorted" definitions?  As to who
    and who does and does not have a point, I will leave it to the readers 
    be the judge of that.
    ...
    As to myself, I think "socialism" and "libertarianism" (which I defined 
    as "get the government off my back.") are both extremes.  The former
    simply does not work, the latter wants to dismantle all government
    interventions in the market economy including the governmental control
    over the monetary instruments and anti-trust regulations.  I
    classify myself, as you know, a Jeffersonian democrat.  I want minimum
    government intervention both in the market economy and our private
    lives.  The government must show compelling interest before it
    intervenes, not fine tuning the economy and engineering the society
    every Friday.
    
    Our understanding of the economy is very crude and by and large at the
    qualitative level.  However, we do know a few fundamental principles of
    Macro-economics (again qualitatively).  Unlike the "political
    scientists" who take polls and run campaigns, economists do system
    analysis on the economy.  Most of those fellows are college professors
    and liberals.  But they also have the honesty to look at the economy as
    a system and let the chips fall.  Whether a physicist is a liberal and
    conservative matters very little when it comes to the law of gravity.
    And neither professional "liberals" and nor professional "conservatives"
    like them very much; for if one studies the economy as a system, one is
    bound to discover something that is un-PC to someone.  So Samual
    Clemence was right when he said something like, the man worse than a
    scoundrel is the man of integrity.  You figure...
    
    Eugene      

    Two points re .29
    
    1.  Political scientists do just as much science as do 
        economists.
    
    2.  There are many socialist economists.
    
    

Gee, I'm really sorry I started an argument about socialism vs libertarianism.
Actually, I'm not, but I'm sorry it ratholed another thread.  Maybe this is
best taken up in a new note.

For starters, thank you .23 for understanding what I said.  Libertarianism
with socialist tendencies is no less an oxymoron than right leaning democrat
or left leaning republican.  (Although I will point out that a staunch 
libertarian isn't for income tax breaks for mortgage interest, simply because
libertarians are generally against income tax altogether.)

Libertarianism believes that if a person is freed of the shackles we know as
governmental interference, that person will be able to excell and contribute to 
the greater society in ways far beyond what they'd be capable of in the 
presence of that interference.

Socialism believes that society as a whole has a responsibility to see to it 
that each person has the right to a safe, healthy, nurturing environment in 
which they may achieve their life goals without being burdened by forces more
or less beyond their control (such as illness, inherited poverty, lack of
decent available education).

I see neither one of those as bad thoughts.  I see both of them as being quite
admirable, and sadly, I see both to be equally unworkable.  This leaves me in
the rather uncomfortable position of trying to find some balance or middle 
ground between the two.  Yes, I do believe that they are at precisely the
opposite end of the spectrum, which means I can't have both.

If I could, I'd wholly subscribe to both at the same time.  In the absence of
such dreams, I have to deal with realities.  The realities (for me) are that I
find both the republican and democratic positions to be incredibly (and
inherently) hypocritical.  The only consistent messages I hear from any parties
(and again, this is just my assessment) are from the Libertarians and 
Socialists.

So, what do I do in the voting booth?  Well, seeing as how just about every
government sponsored program I've seen has been something of a boondoggle
(opinion again, not fact), I usually opt for lack of government as the lesser
evil to the possibility of still another boondoggle.  What I'd really like is
to be able to vote for my prefered spot on the political spectrum, but I can't.
This means that libertarians usually catch my eye first (for lack of a better
party) with the socialists coming up a very strong second (again, for lack of a
better party).

What does this have to do with parental leave?

Well first, thank you, Tom K, for clarifying that position.  It clicked with my
libertarian side, and makes perfect sense.  It managed to align my gut reaction
with logic, so that I could understand the emotion I feel on the point.

But:  I have this socialist side that keeps kicking in, and at all the worst
possible times, so bear with me.

I was born to an upper middle class family, more or less in this country, 
subjected to quite a nice education (contrary to my best efforts to resist it),
and have been regularly classified as being "sort of smart".  I see all of those
as sheer dumb luck.  I could have been born dirt poor, I could have lived in
the inner city, gotten a lousy education, and I could have been stone cold
stupid.  Whether the "smart" part is a result of genes or education, I cannot
avoid the reality that things could have been a lot different.

In the position I'm in now, I have some pretty salable skills which enable me
to more or less pick my employer.  This empowers me to find an employer which
has benefits which are as much to my liking as the industry (and my skill's
value) will bear.  That's a heck of a nice position for me to be in, and it
would be fairly ignorant on my part to think otherwise.

Had things been different:  Had I been lacking in a basic education (which I
sort of am anyway), had I found myself with a family due to some muddle headed
adolescent non-thinking, had I been lacking the support of some fairly well off
parents, I could have found myself in a position within the job market that I
can only describe as human cattle.  If I was not fortunate enough to be gifted
with average mental powers, I might find that there was no way out - whether or
not there really was.

Being human cattle in the job market puts you in a very unfortunate position.
Having nothing more to offer the employer than an average dimension warm body
means that you have very little to offer the employer.  At that end of the
job market, the competition is not between employers to see who can employ you,
but rather to see who can employ cattle for the least cost.  Without salable
skills, there's nothing you can use as a lever on any employer to give you
decent benefits - other than your vote.

Let's face it:  when you're at the bottom of the market, there's plenty others
like you to fill in if you aren't going to play along.  This is simply reality.

It would be very easy for me to excuse it all away with the assumption that I'm
just smarter and better than all that cattle, and further excuse it with the
proclaimations that all those cattle need to do is pull themselves up by their
bootstraps (just like I didn't) to where I am.  Well, too bad, because they're
too busy just trying to live and if they do have any spare time, they're trying
to make some sense of the world.

This can be extremely overwhelming.  I've only had a small taste for it, but I
know how being in this position can rob you of everything, including your
humanity.

The irony of leaving the decision of whether or not parental leave is available
to the employee up to the negotiations between the employer and employee is that
the very people in the position to wrangle this out of their prospective 
employers are generally those who need it the least.  Sure, not having that
leave would make a big dent in anyone's budget, but it hurts the full time
employee below the poverty line the worst.

It would be nice to believe that employers would demonstrate a bit of altruism
and offer that leave without any external pressures.  Of course, if they did,
then this wouldn't be an issue.

Back to the libertarian side:

I shudder to think what good little libertarian me will have to end up paying
when all the children being born to poverty grow up with none of my advantages.
Yes, requiring parental leave is an intrusion into the liberty of the employer.
Equally true, though, is that I can pay for this now, or I can pay for it 
later.  This again is reality, and there ain't any point in getting upset about
what is.

  Yeah, I knew this was going to cause trouble and started a reply yesterday
  but gave up.  I am guilty of using sloppy terminology.  By socialism, I
  do not mean "ownership of the means of production by the workers."

  The concept toward which I am groping is that it is reasonable to think
  about how society might work better, and then to act in support of that
  goal.  That is what prompted my remark about people who are against what
  they consider to be social engineering.  Heck, we've all got to live 
  together in this society, so what is wrong with trying to make it better?

  I adopt some Libertarian views because: 1) there is always the danger 
  that coercion will be used in setting or reaching those social goals and
  2) reduction of government interference where it does not make sense (e.g.,
  anything having to do with the legislation of morality) means that people
  are more likely to achieve their respective potentials.

  And increasing the likelihood of achieving those potentials is the best
  we can do.  I'm convinced that America, and for that matter Digital, succeeds
  to the extent that capabable people have the freedom to "do their thing,"
  if you will.  But I also believe there is a place for social goals that
  are reached by consensus.  And there is _certainly_ a need for rules
  to prevent   harm to society (e.g., environmental laws).

  JP

    Maybe the moderator will move this reply string to a new entry called
    "Libertarianism"
    
    ?
    
    Hopefully,
    Laura

	re .19

	I don't know. I think it is best for the individual affected
	to make that decision.

	re Ellen:

	It makes me sad that my advocacy of freedom and liberty has
	an adverse effect on you.

					Tom_K

    in re .33
    
    Laura
    
    maybe you can start a note on Libertarainism
    
    :-)
    
    hopefully
    
    Bonnie ;-) X 10

    
    I believe TomK ascribes to an objectivist point of view.  (Tom, you may
    be interested in the objectivist note, if you haven't already found it)
    
    I used to find great value in that philosophy, but its (IMO) viewpoint
    of the Individual, (hir rights/responsibilities) with no value/negative
    value given to the concerns of the group, like this issue, now leaves
    me cold.
    
    .9 said it best for me.  OUr children are our future.  Our president
    says he wants a "kinder and gentler nation",(with Grandma Bush at his
    side.)  Does this mean educational reform or improvement? Does this mean  
    more tax credits so I can pay my daycare provider a sane wage, and
    still afford my own bills?  So far, the president (nor any in the
    recent past) hasn't come through with the kinder and gentler promises - 
    though he has spent ???! Billion on a war that propped his ratings up.
    
    My vote is that government SHOULD step up to the plate and support the
    platitudes they avow.
    
    My personal responsibilty is to test the system, to force the change. Be
    willing to make waves. Being a parent has changed many of my views, but
    for the better.  I am a kinder and gentler person... because of the future
    I wish for my children.
    
    JamD
    
    
    PS.  OK, I'm rambling, but how does Europe, etc do it? Their economy
    exists....?
    

    	There are a couple of points that haven't been mentioned here, and
    even though it's stale, here goes:
    1.	As far as I know all of the parental leave bills that have been
    proposed refer only to UNPAID parental leave.  This means that they
    have to give you your job back when you decide to come back.  Nobody
    has to pay you while you indulge in your hobby.
    2.	As far as who will pay for it (it still costs money even if it is
    unpaid leave), we will.  People will have to be hired to fill the jobs
    of those who are on leave.  They will likely cost more and be lacking
    in training than the person on leave.  The kind of people who take jobs
    which will end in some specified or unspecified near term are called
    contracters and we all know that they make more than normal humans. 
    (If an employer can leave a position unfilled for some months, then
    said employer should certainly be seriously questioning whether the
    position can be left permanently unfilled.)
    3.	As it drains the economy those at the bottom will as usual pay the
    most because of the general increase in prices from fewer goods being
    produced.  They will also as usual be primary victims of the gummint's
    efforts to alleviate the "revenue shortfall" caused by fewer productive
    people having to support the existing goverment structure plus one new
    bureaucracy set up to ensure compliance with one new program.
    						John