We already pay for your kid's schooling, along with public health and welfare and CPS. Do we really have to subsidize the parents as well?
If you want money to spend while not working, save it up yourself like the rest of us have to when we choose not to work.
@1 my house never burned down, so I don't want to pay for fire departments. I've never been the victim of crime, so why am I paying for police? I've never been unable to work due to sudden injury or illness, so why have short-term disability benefits? And on and on. Because clearly, in spite of any prevailing societal benefit, if It doesn't directly benefit ME ME ME, then fuck it.
Paid family leave isn't subsidizing parents any more than paid sick & safe time is subsidizing sick/injured people. We use public dollars to support each other in all kinds of situations: food banks, emergency preparedness, ambulance services, public broadcasting, libraries, transit, vaccines, libraries, small business loans, animal shelters, traffic lights...
It is a demonstrated public benefit to people of all ages/across all income levels to care for each other. The rest of the world gets this: people support each other either using longstanding cultural traditions and/or through progressive tax structures. When everyone has their basic needs met, they are able to move through the rest of the stages of Maslow's Pyramid and care for others. When you fail to meet basic needs of a critical mass of people, the whole thing comes toppling down. Failing to provide paid parental leave hurts families, employers, and everyone else. It costs more to fix what's broken than to prevent the harm.
@1 -Thank you for paying for "my kid's" schooling (I don't have kids, but let's play along shall we?). If my kid couldn't get an education the likelihood that he ends up on the streets selling drugs to YOUR kid or robbing YOUR house rises dramatically. Thank you for paying for public health and welfare, too! Keeping me vaccinated kept YOUR toddler from getting measles when we were all at Disneyland at the same time. Your investment in CPS didn't do anything to directly affect your life, but it did keep a child alive and if I have to explain to you why that matters, you're a bigger drain on society than anyone you're attempting to demonize. The money parents need while they're on family leave is money to feed their families - they're not buying flatscreens so they can watch Netflix while you work.
If you want money to spend while not working, save it up yourself like the rest of us have to when we choose not to work.
It is a demonstrated public benefit to people of all ages/across all income levels to care for each other. The rest of the world gets this: people support each other either using longstanding cultural traditions and/or through progressive tax structures. When everyone has their basic needs met, they are able to move through the rest of the stages of Maslow's Pyramid and care for others. When you fail to meet basic needs of a critical mass of people, the whole thing comes toppling down. Failing to provide paid parental leave hurts families, employers, and everyone else. It costs more to fix what's broken than to prevent the harm.