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Comment by 5upplied_demand | Hacker News Reader

> When I read we spent $1B, I think about how I'm responsible for $3 of that.

I like to think about how providing 4-week paid parental leave would cost $2 billion annually and actually help US families. Meanwhile we have spent over $100 billion on this war.

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My back of napkin figures gave me about $20-40b. I'm curious how you got to the $2 billion number?

How do you even estimate that, human productivity is non linear to worktime and often, employees, when given good benefits are likely to be more productive.

also there's the fact of this having a ROI since people generate economic value in the longer run, and hence, more taxes

I'm curious about your napkin math, care to share?

I got mine from a paper published by the University of Chicago: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/735565.

Considering the push for reproduction from this admin and his technocrats, I'm curious if they would consider something like this.

One would think, but the flip-side is that this supports more women in the workforce. Traditional roles of men working and women caring for kids seems like a bigger priority of this admin.

I do think it is a policy point that Democrats should absolutely be hammering them on. This is pro-worker and pro-family at very low cost.

Most of republican’s decisions become much more logically consistent once you realize they just want to control people, primarily women and minorities. It isn’t and has never been about “family values” or “religious freedom” or “small government”. If it was about those things, they would look far more like democrats.

They don't want all Americans to reproduce. Making a law they want still needs a couple of Supreme Court decisions overturned.

California already more or less provides 8 weeks of paid parental leave (PFL program).

That is great, unfortunately almost 90% of the country lives in a state other than California.

88.5%, to be precise.

Here in Norway it's 49 weeks with 100% pay.

Mom gets 3 weeks before birth, both gets 15 weeks each, and 16 weeks can be distributed as parents see fit.

So if mom gets the full 16 weeks, she gets 34 weeks total, and partner gets 15 weeks.

Parents can decide to get 80% pay, in which case they get 61 weeks total.

Some weeks around birth is fixed, apart from that parents can decide how to use it. One could work two days a week and have three days off, for example.

The pay is capped, but many employers will compensate the difference for high earners.

So far….

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