Hacker News Reader

Comment by bronbron | Hacker News Reader

> Most companies provide better benefits than what is legally required

Cool, let's just bank on the generosity of companies.

> Unlike something like cancer pregnancy is not an accident. If you can't afford to pay for children, don't have them.

Did you even read the article? These people can obviously afford to have children. They can't afford to become unemployed because they had children. Short of being independently wealthy or raiding your personal savings, no one can afford to become unemployed for an extended period of time because they're raising a child.

Let's not even get into the fact that this is obviously disproportionately affecting women. I don't need to take sick leave because my wife gave birth - I don't have anything to physically recover from.

View on HN

> Cool, let's just bank on the generosity of companies.

Because banking on the generosity of the government works so well for people. I'm suggesting precisely the opposite of this. Rather than everyone seeing themselves as victims maybe they should take some responsibility for their life choices.

> Short of being independently wealthy or raiding your personal savings, no one can afford to become unemployed for an extended period of time because they're raising a child.

Not true. Many women choose not to work to raise children.

> Let's not even get into the fact that this is obviously disproportionately affecting women.

Sure, where "this" means "reality". It's not a corporation's fault that women give birth and men don't.

Someone has to pay for all this stuff.

> Cool, let's just bank on the generosity of companies.

Or, how about you think about this when finding a job, and weigh the pros and cons of various employers' benefits and policies. We don't always need top-down guidance from bureaucrats in D.C. to solve societal problems.

> Or, how about you think about this when finding a job, and weigh the pros and cons of various employers' benefits and policies

Sure, if you are in high demand you can probably do this. If you work an entry level job you won't have much leverage and since you probably can't afford to take extended time off, you may find taking care of children somewhere near impossible.

> We don't always need top-down guidance from bureaucrats in D.C. to solve societal problems.

I'm glad you qualified it with always. But a look at U.S. history shows a lot of societal problems were helped by those bureaucrats in DC and elsewhere (school segregation, voting rights, equal access to public transport, public accommodations [restaurants can't deny your service based on your race], equal opportunity employment, etc).

YOu do understand that all of the problems you say "bureaucrats in DC" solved, were infact created by bureaucrats in DC and bureaucrats in local government.

Almost the entire Civil Rights act was about ending GOVERNMENT entrenched racism and repealing laws that forced business owners to discriminate.

But hey do not let facts get in the way of irrational worship of government like it was a deity

Reply on news.ycombinator.com