A Veneer of Certainty

A friend recently blogged about the grassroots effort MomsRising, and as a hip, news junkie kinda guy I went to check it out. A number of their ideas are ones even I, as a non-parent, can get behind.

- Equal pay for equal work: Absolutely. Doing the same job for the same hours should be equally compensated, regardless of gender or parental status.
- Flexible work environment: A great idea wherever possible for both the worker and employer.
- After-school programs: Probably a good idea.
- Paid family leave: Maybe, provided that the cost is shared between parents, the employer and the state.
- Universal healthcare and childcare: Probably not.

Often when we see news of starving families in chronically famine-stricken parts of the world, the argument around the water cooler is “Why are they having children that they can’t feed?” That same argument could apply to some of the families mentioned in the MomsRising manifesto. What amount of family planning went into their decision to have a child, then realize at birth that they’ll be in dire financial straits with no access to childcare of a level of quality that suits them? It seems like irresponsible behavior for a parent to subject their child to the results of mom and dad’s poor planning. Maybe this is too simplistic a statement but: don’t have children you cannot afford.

Another issue for me is MomRisings’s reliance on Sweden as a role model for their goals. This strikes me as cherry-picking from a social mindset that is vastly different from our own. Sweden’s paid family leave policy is part of a larger block of social programs enacted as part of a collective agreement between employers and unionized labor, signed in 1936. Union labor gained political power in the form the Social Democratic Party, which mandated reforms for universal health care, education, paid family leave, full employment and project housing. These social welfare programs have become ingrained in Swedish society and are funded by high levels of taxation in the form of income tax and value-added taxes, for example. Yet, even the Swedes are finding such sweeping levels of social support difficult to maintain due to globalization and an influx of immigrants in the late 1990’s, and are scaling back pensions and health care for the elderly.

So it seems to me that implementing a number of the MomsRising goals will lead to great government intervention - and its ugly brother, ineptitude - at cost of higher taxes, all for dubious benefit. I'd also note that nowhere on the MomsRising.org site are cost/benefit studies on the economics of it all.

But in an attempt to offer some ideas along with my whining, I’ll put these out for consideration:

- Increase the amount of the child and dependent care credit.
- Increase the amount of the child tax credit.
- State & federal tax credits for employers who provide paid family leave.
- A non-taxable form of public short-term-disability coverage to compensate for unpaid family leave (similar to California’s State Disability Insurance program)
- State-funded after-school programs, preferably incorporating additional tutoring, time to complete homework, and some form of mandatory PE to help deal with the child obesity problem.

I’m all for the state providing a temporary safety net for those who are unable to provide for themselves due to unforeseen circumstances. A “No Productive Citizen Left Behind”, if you will. But I’m very leery of both government oversight and providing for someone else’s life choices. And if I’ve got to help pay for little Johnny’s/Jenny’s childcare, you can bet I’ll be giving you parenting advice when he/she is screaming at the top of their lungs during the movie or kicking the back of my seat.

To implement the government subsidization of childcare and universal healthcare - and to a smaller degree, family leave – would require a radical modification of our traditional American values of individualism, self-reliance and personal responsibility. Are we ready for that? Unless we are *all* ready to take on a welfare state mindset like that in Sweden then there will never be widespread acceptance of its burdens as well as its benefits. The balance between the economic growth of a free-market economy and the social benefits of a welfare state is something we’ll have a hard time finding.