There's a lot of truth in the saying: If you want more of something, subsidize it. If you want less, penalize it.

Maternity leave is the kind of social engineering that a government can reasonably do, if the populace supports it. Currently, welfare rules (inadvertently) encourage the indigent to have more kids. This has worked rather well, to most people's dismay.

Would it not be better to encourage people to have children, who have the education and temperament to hold a job? Subsidize them with some paid time off. To make this gender-neutral, go a step farther: make it "parental leave", and let the couple decide which parent takes how much time; many couples will decide to split it.

tl;dr: This is a better application of government than lots of other things...

Truth be told, I like Trump's idea. You can collect unemployment (which is always less than your salary; unemployment is a safety net, not a hammock). Why should the employer pay you to take time off because you had a kid? And what is especially disgusting is this idea that you're entitled to the same salary for six weeks for zero work. For that matter, why should be entitled to keep your job if you're going to be out of the office for six weeks?

If you choose to have a kid, then you should realize that taking this time off will come with risk. You'll collect unemployment, which will be considerably less than your salary, and when the other workers have to pick up your slack, your boss has the right to decide that it's working adequately without you, and may choose to eliminate your position altogether.

And if anyone thinks that sounds harsh, it's the same kind of risk that anyone lives with, even if they stay on the job. Why does giving birth suddenly give you immunity from the dog-eat-dog world?

You don't like it? Then don't have kids. You don't have the right to have kids, either.

You do not have a right to keep your job. Your employer can fire you for any or no reason. In fact, you don't have a right to a job at all.

Moreover, when do men get paid time off that isn't deducted from their vacation time?

Bradley, regarding letting the couple decide which one gets parental leave, how does that work? Do their separate employers notify each other as to which one of them is taking time off?

@Patrick: Well, your position *is* a little harsh.

Do you get vacation? Why should you be paid for doing nothing for a couple of weeks? Why should you get your job back afterwards? I don't see why parental leave is necessarily any different.

BTW: As I wrote above, I see no reason why this should be tying to gender. Let the couple pick, who takes the time off.

Like it or not, governments do social engineering. If the government is going to encourage some part of the population to have kids, then I'd prefer that to be the successful, educated, job-holding part of the population.

This is a matter that should be entirely between an employer and an employee. The government has no proper role in deciding conditions of employment. If it is to the mutual advantage of workers and employers to provide maternity leave, then that is something they can work out between themselves.

It should be noted that all of those enlightened, progressive nations that force employers to provide paid maternity leave have had declining birth rates for two generations or more, and are now almost-universally at below-replacement rates. Whereas nations that do not have these policies generally have much-higher birth rates - including the US. So the idea that these policies have a 'pro-family' effect is not borne out by the data.

Face it - paid maternity leave is a feel-good policy that overwhelmingly benefits white-collar, middle-class women. If implemented at the employer's expense, the natural result will be the same as it is when higher minimum wages are mandated - reduced employment for the lowest-earning sectors of society. The cashier at CVS will simply be replaced with a self-checkout. If implemented at taxpayer's expense, as Trump proposes, it simply increases public expenditure and public debt, which is already too vast to contemplate. And every program which is promised to be funded by eliminating waste and fraud - never actually is.

Incidentally, it should be noted that Trump's proposal expands even-further the truly-evil Earned Income Tax Credit, which is nothing but a huge income-redistribution mechanism that is used to buy votes by giving money taken from taxpayers to non-taxpayers. Interesting to see him exploiting the favored vote-buying tool of the Democrats. Mind you, we're talking about Trump here, so the plan may be completely reversed, and the current plan totally denied, by Friday.

llater,

llamas

Bradley: Do you get vacation? Why should you be paid for doing nothing for a couple of weeks? Why should you get your job back afterwards? I don't see why parental leave is necessarily any different.

Wrong, Bradley. Paid vacation is given to me after I've served a certain length of time in my job. It is therefore part of my compensation.

As opposed to say, a woman who gets hired, then, six months later, "Oh, didn't I tell you? I'm three months pregnant. That means you have to give me six whole weeks of time off after I have my baby. And since at the end of my six weeks off, I'll have completed a full year, that means I get two weeks paid vacation, so I think I'll be taking it at the end of my maternity leave! See you in eight weeks, love."

Paid vacation is earned, no matter what you think of the justness of requiring employers to give paid vacation. Employers know the law, and know they are required to do this and plan for this expense. Maternity leave is not earned. You don't earn paid vacation from your job because you got pregnant. Getting pregnant is not a job related function. It's a personal life related function.

Agreeing w/those that tell the gov't NOPE!.

This should be an advantage/benefit offered by employers to attract employees. Why encourage people to work at minimum wage jobs 4ever!

I am tired of slick gimmicks being offered up as solutions to problems. Just offer a straight-forward "let's try this" solution and follow the money to see if there are positive results. (Kinda the opposite of what's done for public education.)

Currently, welfare rules (inadvertently) encourage the indigent to have more kids.

It's inadvertent if you think the federal leviathan doesn't want a permanent underclass. What, precisely, makes you think that?

Do you get vacation? Why should you be paid for doing nothing for a couple of weeks? Why should you get your job back afterwards?

Because vacation and sick leave is part of my compensation package? but thanks for bringing that up. I have a question:

Would you support paid vacation if it were to be implemented in the same manner as Trump's maternity leave proposal?

If a company, as a recruiting or retention tool, wants to offer a certain level of paid maternity leave, good for them.

Forcing companies to do this? don't worry about it, you and I will pay for it, either in taxes, or because the cost of doing business just went up. And such costs are baked into the price of goods and services. Because businesses that can't figure out how to do that go out of business.

As others have noted, eliminating "fraud" and "waste" almost never happens. There's no upside to the bureaucracy, and probably involves a great deal of actual work on their part.

paid maternity leave is a feel-good policy that overwhelmingly benefits white-collar, middle-class women

Is it wrong to note that a sizable number of them are also white?

the natural result will be the same as it is when higher minimum wages are mandated - reduced employment for the lowest-earning sectors of society

Geez, it is almost like they do want a permanent underclass of government dependents.

I will also note that for giant mega corporations, this is a rounding error in their earnings, and they will jump on board and encourage these types of policies.

There's a reason why Walmart supports Obamacare. It ensures they will never face serious competition from a smaller, faster, nimbler upstart because they'll never grow beyond a certain size.

To me, the obvious unintended consequences: Employers will want to hire men.

http://fusion.net/story/347103/donald-trump-maternity-leave-gender-wage-gap/

European countries with generous paid parental leave programs, because women are far more likely than men to take the leave, tend to have larger wage gaps.

Personally, I think if you want to have kids and take time off afterward, you need to save up for that and not impose the cost on your employer, and by virtue of that, on other employees.

I think it's often devastating for small employers to lose an employee for months and then have to give them their job back afterward rather than replacing them.

That may not be cuddly or nice to say, but it's the reality.

Right, and I see in it something that's distressingly common among people who ought to know better: the tendency to "address" the concerns of small business by simply dismissing them out of hand. We're already in a period of record lows for business new starts, as the costs of regulatory compliance strangle small business. I've written here before that, out of the staff of 12 or so that my wife manages, one of them (and one of the highest paid) is a "compliance officer" who does nothing but regulatory paperwork -- the actual value added to the business by that person is zero. But that person is necessary to keep the rest of the employees out of jail.

So there's a lot that could be said about Trump's proposal. But taking a step back, this and all similar proposals are effectively bribes to have children. As llamas pointed out up-thread, most Westerners have birth rates below replacement level, and so they risk being overrun by intolerant and tribal third-world cultures taking root in their countries. Why are Western birth rates so low? Because nobody today has any trust in our government or institutions. They have let us down and expressed their contempt for us, time and time again. The real answer is to fix those institutions so that they once again work for the citizens, or at least not at cross purposes to the citizens. Instead, we (certain ones of us) get bribes to overlook the bad behavior of our institutions.

I think paid leave for health issues should be given, particularly when there is a recovery window and an end in site.

Do you really want an aching person who can barely walk, with maxipads the size of mattresses, gushing volcanic amounts of blood in your office?

Here people usually get three months which seems reasonable. Certainly 6 weeks, as that's about the time it takes to recover physically.

I am more in favor of incentives, perhaps tax breaks, to favor families with a single breadwinner, or two part-time earners as I think there are many benefits to societies with a stay at home parent. Doesn't have to be the mom. If not tax incentives, then at least not forcing families with a singe earner to subsidize the daycare for the higher earning two-earner families.

Robots don't take time off for this.

The dumbest thing an American can possibly do is hire an employee.

It's really very simple economics. Mandated maternity leave (whoever pays for it) makes the average cost of women's labor higher. If the employer has to pay a woman's salary, or find and train a replacement, for the time that she's not working, the cost of employing her is higher than it would be for a person who does not take maternity leave. Add to that the other value-reducing aspects of employing a woman - they work fewer hours, they take more sick days, etc, etc, - and employing a woman is just made a lot more costly. If the you increase the cost of anything, the consumption of that thing will fall. Mandating maternity leave for some women increases the average cost of labor of all women, therefore reducing its value and consumption.

Comparisons with paid vacation time are completely inapplicable. Paid vacation time is negotiated, in advance, and is clearly defined - so many days per calendar year. Mandating maternity leave, by contrast, would be like me starting a new job and then telling my new employer "Oh - by the way - I'll be taking an additional 6 weeks vacation sometime next year, and another 6 weeks the year after that. As well as my paid vacation. OK?"

It's interesting to note that the nations which have the fewest 'pro-family' policies like this - mandated maternity leave, subsidized child care, attempts to obtain 'diversity' in the workforce - generally have both higher birthrates and much-higher proportions of women in high-paying and high-status jobs like STEM. Where women have few choices, but many opportunities, and the cost of their labor is not artificially increased - they thrive in the workplace. In nations like India and China, tech fields have much higher proportions of female employees than any nation in the West - and especially in the social-democratic nations of Europe and Scandinavia.

When women are given lots of choices, all of which tend to incentivize motherhood, they tend to take them - and typically in ways which remove them from the workforce (wholly or partly), but in a peculiarly Western manner - as the mother of a single child, often born to a significantly-older mother, who becomes the focus of the family unit. She may return to work, maybe part-time, but in some low-key, low-stress job, supported by government subsidies and benefiting from 'family-friendly' policies - all of which have the effect of making her work less, and cost more when she is working. And the increased average cost of women's labor that her choices have created, tends to suppress the employment of other women.

In India or China, by contrast, women have many opportunities, but far fewer choices. And they recognize that the path to success and wealth lies in getting a good education, and then using it. And the best money is in STEM jobs, so these nations are awash in female engineers and technicians. And then they go out to work, and they stay working, even if they decide to have children. Their choices are far fewer, but somehow they manage to find ways to have a good job and a family, without mandatory maternity leave and other 'pro-family' policies. And, since their labor is not devalued by the impacts of maternity, they do not suppress the employment of other women.

If we wish to support and encourage motherhood, and women's employment (whether these are proper functions of government is another debate), then what we should do is look for policies which do not increase the cost of employing women. When the costs of employing a woman (including the unknown risks of added costs/lower value that she brings with her) are made equal to the costs of employing a man, then both women's incomes and women's workforce participation will equal that of men. Not before.

Unfortunately, all the major parties and candidates seem bound to policies which increase the costs and risks of employing women. Presumably they do this to attract the votes of the small number of women who greatly benefit from these policies, namely, white-collar, middle-class women. Apparently, the impacts on most other women (of reduced employment and reduced incomes) just don't matter very much to them.

llater,

llamas

Oh, but don't forget, a woman has to work ten times harder than a man to attain an equal position. So, even with paid maternity leave, you're still getting much more work out of a woman. /sarc

If a private employer wishes to offer paid leave of any sort (or any other compensation) that is their right to do in order to attract better employees.

However, the government needs to butt out!

It isn't up to the government busybodies to tell me and my employer what they owe me or I owe them.

Not even minimum wage.

I want an economy in which the employer to free to hire, fire, pay, and give other compensation based upon the free market. And I want that free market to include jobs - so many jobs that if an employer doesn't pay well or doesn't give the compensation that *I* want I can go elsewhere.

THAT economy only comes about when government butts out!

Mandate too much and employers stop hiring - something that has been going on for a long time now. Despite the "low" unemployment rate too many folks have dropped out of the workforce altogether because the jobs simply aren't there.

They will never pay for this out of reduced fraud in gov programs. If they could reduce fraud they should do it anyway.
Free stuff is always great but the tax payers end up paying for it.
It only benefits those who use daycare. Many people don't want to, especially for infants.
In most countries, paid maternity leave is mandated for the employer to pay for. It is a benefit like healthcare. Mandating more benefits effectively raises the cost of employing someone. It has been shown that in countries with forced paid maternity leave, employment for young women is reduced--their costs have gone up so employers are less likely to hire them. duh.

"Personally, I think if you want to have kids and take time off afterward, you need to save up for that and not impose the cost on your employer, and by virtue of that, on other employees."

Two ways to look at that. It carries a paternalistic element: why not pay everyone an additional six months, and let them use it for whatever they want? That's coupled with a public goods argument. Children - allegedly - enhance common welfare and that - allegedly - is not fully compensated. The claim is that others' free-ride on women. Well, on what they/parents do for children. I'm not convinced of these claims, nor of that the principle is applied consistently (elsewhere). One particular, holding jobs open for women who leave is costly. I very much doubt that the proposal makes sense on utilitarian grounds. Interfering with the market rarely does, and this particular "benefit" does not address an instance of market failure.

Further, part of the argument is to close the (wage) gap. The opposite happens.

I don't believe it is the government's job to provide incentives or disincentives for this kind of thing, either way. If anything, it should discontinue the kind of "social engineering" strategies it is already pursuing.

I don't believe it is the government's job to provide incentives or disincentives for this kind of thing, either way.

When a policy or concept is called "pro-family," I keep one hand on my wallet and the other on my rights.

Fascinating that Trump is proposing this largesse extend to what are now called "stay-at-home parents."

Why should the employer pay you to take time off because you had a kid? ~ Patrick at September 15, 2016 12:35 AM

To keep the employee after she decides to return to work. A solid family life makes for a happier employee and a more productive employee.

However, to offer paid maternity leave should be the employer's choice, not a mandate from an intrusive and over-reaching government.

...paid maternity leave, a humane and inexpensive provision available to women in virtually every other country with a developed economy....

Inexpensive? To whom?

What price did these developed economies pay for this "humane and inexpensive provision?" And who bore the cost for the government spending that was diverted to pay for them? We did, the US. With less being spent on defense, Europe was able to increase the social welfare net it provided. It was inexpensive to Europe, but expensive to the US.

Part of this is because the US wanted it that way. FDR's goal for the end of World War II was to disarm Europe. The Europeans had engaged in something like 10 wars in the 20th century by the end of WWII, the last three drawing in combatants from around the world and endangering a fragile world order. An emasculated Europe became a worker's paradise and was no longer a source of widespread discord and violence.

But to say European social welfare was "inexpensive" is to ignore the fact that the price for it was paid by others.

Cousin Dave wrote:

As llamas pointed out up-thread, most Westerners have birth rates below replacement level, and so they risk being overrun by intolerant and tribal third-world cultures taking root in their countries. Why are Western birth rates so low? Because nobody today has any trust in our government or institutions. They have let us down and expressed their contempt for us, time and time again. The real answer is to fix those institutions so that they once again work for the citizens, or at least not at cross purposes to the citizens. Instead, we (certain ones of us) get bribes to overlook the bad behavior of our institutions.

I'd propose a different reason: The more advanced/educated the society, the more its citizens are able to operate birth control — and the more they realize that having children is an easy opt-out, the more they're opting out and having happy lives without kids.

Conan the Grammarian wrote:

'To keep the employee after she decides to return to work. A solid family life makes for a happier employee and a more productive employee.'

This has not been my experience - or rather, the improved happiness of the new mother is often offset by the decreased happiness of all the other workers who have had to stretch to cover for her absence and continue to be called upon to make up for her unplanned absences and lack of availability.

However, regarding this:

'But to say European social welfare was "inexpensive" is to ignore the fact that the price for it was paid by others.'

Bingo. +1. Spot-on. Only to add that it should not be overlooked that a great deal of the cost of rebuilding the shattered remains of Europe after WW2 was borne by direct grant aid from the US aka Marshall Aid. The Europeans managed to lay waste to an entire continent, and then the US paid to clean up the mess.

When my grandparents came out from the shelter, every mother-loving thing that they had worked to build had been either wrecked by the passage of war, or looted by the departing Germans, down to the tires from their bicycles. And they only survived the winter of '45 thanks to US food aid. 6 months later, they were back in business, trucking cut flowers to market - in 7 International straight trucks, courtesy of the United States, which cost them not one thin dime. That business is still successful and profitable today, 70 years later, and it's all down to Uncle Sam.

llater,

llamas

Conan: To keep the employee after she decides to return to work. A solid family life makes for a happier employee and a more productive employee.

In a word, baloney. A new mother makes for a distracted employee. One who leaves work early for kid-related functions. One who comes in late and will call in when the kid gets sick.

When a policy or concept is called "pro-family," I keep one hand on my wallet and the other on my rights.

Ain't that the truth. I don't think my earlier comment was strong enough. Just saying "it's not the government's job" to encourage or discourage something isn't enough. It doesn't communicate the overwhelming irritation I feel when the government over-reaches and does things which are not its job. My thinking is not, 'Oh well, it's not their job but so what?' What I think is that this kind of meddling is awful and I hate it.

I think Trump is just trying to boost his sagging ratings with female voters.

Oh, hang on a minute.

Most Westerners have birth rates below replacement level, and so they risk being overrun by intolerant and tribal third-world cultures taking root in their countries.

No, no, NO!!! That only happens if you let the barbarians in the gates! Fewer births in the USA absolutely does NOT mean we have to let inferior cultures take root.

If you look at the numbers on jobs, every year yes there is a net increase in the number of jobs added to the economy, and that's good. But there are ALSO more people trying to get into the workforce! The second number is - every year - larger than the first number, even BEFORE we start letting immigrants in, and that's where our problem lies. The millennial generation is huge, and every year more of them turn 18 than there are new jobs added to the economy.

I hate to break it to the special snowflakes, but human beings (or, more to the point, their labor) are subject to the same laws of supply and demand as everything else! The USA simply does not need more people, when there already aren't enough jobs to go around for the people who are already here.

If the number of births in the USA declined, it would be a good thing as it would bring us ever-closer to full employment. There is absolutely NO reason to think we need to ruin that advantage by letting more people in.

Not every demographic in the U.S. is having fewer kids. The indigent minorities who subsist on welfare are being incentivized to make more babies.

"No, no, NO!!! That only happens if you let the barbarians in the gates! Fewer births in the USA absolutely does NOT mean we have to let inferior cultures take root."

That's true, but our self-appointed superiors will fight tooth and nail to prevent it from being stopped. Without illegal immigration, where would they get people to mow their lawns cheap?

That's true, but our self-appointed superiors will fight tooth and nail to prevent it from being stopped. Without illegal immigration, where would they get people to mow their lawns cheap?

And there you have the appeal of Trump.

People think he'd keep immigrants out until we had full employment among people already here.

In a word, baloney. A new mother makes for a distracted employee. One who leaves work early for kid-related functions. One who comes in late and will call in when the kid gets sick. ~ Patrick at September 15, 2016 11:50 AM

This has not been my experience - or rather, the improved happiness of the new mother is often offset by the decreased happiness of all the other workers who have had to stretch to cover for her absence and continue to be called upon to make up for her unplanned absences and lack of availability. ~ llamas at September 15, 2016 11:47 AM

I've worked with both distracted new mothers and highly productive new mothers, so I'll stay neutral in that argument. The only counter-argument I'll offer is to ask, how productive were these shiftless new mothers when they weren't yet new mothers. I'm guessing they weren't in the running for employee of the month then either.

The alternative is to tell women who want to have children to choose between their jobs and having a family. I'm willing to bet the effect on employee morale of that strategy will be negative.

So, maternity leave can be a way of keeping a decent employee. It can also be abused by a less-than-stellar one.

I think a lot of it depends on the job, too. A job that requires an 8-hour physical presence means a parent needing to leave for a child-related matter leaves a staffing hole to be filled by other workers. A job that can be done on a computer with a VPN leaves less of one. I've worked with men and women parents who have worked from home due to a child's illness or school meeting with little interruption to the day's workflow, but I've mostly worked in offices doing back office type work, so that may be part of my ambivalence.

Like Kevin, I'm wary of any policy that is "pro-family" since it too often means that an employee who abuses it will not be held accountable for fear of the employer being branded anti-family or sued.

If anyone's interested, I found something on why many millennials are not having kids - at least, not right now:

http://www.refugees.bratfree.com/read.php?2,410874

This is the thread. The actual article has a link at the top. It's at The Rooster dot com.

There are nine reasons. Here are a few:

We (young people) are poor as hell.

Traffic and high rents make life miserable for the people who already exist.

We want careers. So sue us.

Because (babies are) not going to solve anything.

However, as one person in the thread pointed out, the younger millennials just might have babies later in life. I do think it would make more sense to focus on generations of women only after each generation turns 50, since at that age, you can't even adopt kids, as a rule, so the percentages of mothers would not change within each group. Of course, one would have to count adoptive mothers as well as birth mothers - as well as counting those women who gave up babies for adoption but who never became "practicing" mothers, for whatever reason.

"A new mother makes for a distracted employee. One who leaves work early for kid-related functions. One who comes in late and will call in when the kid gets sick."

Ten years ago, it was prohibited to consider whether an employee had children for the purposes of evaluation for promotion. When I was told this I was amazed, and asked, "Really? Do you not think she'll want to KEEP this job in order provide for them?"

Didn't matter. Prohibited in Federal contract negotiations.

Funny how the activist wind blows. Not allowed to figure out how it will affect them, must be considered for compensation packages.

And the reason for THAT is that to some, only the Feds should determine what you pay and to whom.

We do not need ANY more people on this planet. We should not be making it easier to reproduce.

Hubs and I had 4 kids, miraculously without any paid leave for either of us, without any daycare costs, no EIC, no welfare. If we can do it, others can too, the same way we did. It's a matter of prioritizing and realizing you can't have everything.

We need to go back to expecting people to care for themselves, and providing soup lines and dormitory housing for those who can't.

It's not a matter of keeping the barbarians out of the country-they're already here, filling the inner cities courtesy of their "baby-daddies". We need to quit paying them to do so.

As a career freelancer, I could take all the leave I wanted, but not get paid. Not everyone on the planet has a 9-5 gig in a cozy cubicle.

Politically correct: Anyone opposed to paid maternity leave hates women and families and probably puppies.

Politically incorrect: Having children is a personal choice that you should bear responsibility for. If you can work out voluntary arrangements with your employer that's great, but government should stay out of it.

Super politically incorrect: It's good for society if smart people have more kids. High IQ tends to correlate with higher incomes, so paid leave provides a greater incentive to them.

I think there is a better basis for mandatory paid sick leave, maternity leave, and vacation than for most government regulation: workers that don't get these are likely to become ill(er) and wind up on welfare and MedicAide at taxpayers' expense. It's also likely that on the average sick leave and vacation pay for themselves in fewer infections spread to co-workers, healthier and more productive employees, and less turnover. Maternity leave, paid or not, may be different, in that an employer could often save more by just not hiring women of an age to get pregnant, especially for jobs where training or job experience are important.

Trump's idea of paying for maternity leave with unemployment pay is a clever way to spread the cost to the business over more time and businesses. But it is still paid for by the businesses in the end. It's paid by a payroll tax on businesses, and (at least in Michigan), the tax rate varies depending on the business's history of layoffs, so in the long run most businesses pay as much as their employees drew from the system.

As for paying for something by "reducing fraud and waste", when I hear that I know that either I'm hearing a bald-faced lie, or I'm hearing from someone with no idea how fraud and waste occur in government. (In the mail I recently received from Trump, he promised to immediately repeal Obamacare - not to work on Congress to repeal it, but to repeal it himself - so it's entirely possible he has no idea at all how government works. Darn it, that's still better than Hillary, who knows how government works and how to get away with abusing the process.) I have experience in defense contracting: "fraud" may be overbilling for material and services, using inferior material, or not actually doing the service, but usually it's that accidentally or intentionally, someone entered the wrong code for parts and work, so it's paid for out of a different bucket of already allocated tax money without changing the total cost to the taxpayers at all. "Waste" could be seen just by looking around the office - so that we avoided "fraud" and kept records proving it, there were two people (accountants and QA) overseeing every person actually working towards the goals of the project. And generally the non-productive employees were higher paid. So a government contract inherently cost 3 times as much as a contract between two private companies that trusted each other - that's waste, it was _required_ in the contracts to avoid fraud, and I suspect usually the government spends more on avoiding fraud than the fraud it possibly avoids would cost.

The second reason fraud can't be eliminated from government social programs: The staff is ideologically opposed to eliminating it. Warren at Coyoteblog often comments about this in regards to unemployment insurance, especially in California: Unemployment is supposed to be pain only to those actively looking for work, but not only do his part-year employees (for parks and recreation sites) draw unemployment during the part of the year that they knew from the beginning they would not be working, but they frequently go out of state or even the country on vacation. They'll even send him postcards from places like Apapulco. But the UI workers don't want to hear about that, and threatened to sue _the employer_ for attempting to expose this fraud by the workers.

So, is Trump unilaterally going to change how _state_ agencies operate and interpret _state_ law? Not likely... And if he did get Congress to create a federal enforcement agency, almost certainly it would cost more than it recovered.

And I didn't even get around to commenting on how his plan seems to extend unemployment payments to stay-at-home parents...

Perhaps Trump is unaware of the massive child subsidies that are already built into the federal income tax law for middle income families. That is, with three children as dependents and standard deductions and tax credits, over $70K in income is tax free. Trump probably never got any of that, since AFAIK his income was never low enough to use the standard deduction or child tax credit, and most of his children grew up when the tax system was less generous to parents.

The real "social engineering" has been the denigration of full-time motherhood, and convincing women that they have to go out to work.

In Japan middle-class women work until they marry - then run the house while their husbands support them.

This voluntary absence from the workforce has the effect of raising the husbands' salaries.

Even after decades of feminist brainwashing, a significant number of women still view marriage and children as core achievements of a fulfilled life.

These women should suck it up, save some money after college, and exit the workforce for a decade or so following the birth of the first child, depending on how many siblings come along.

Of course, that would require a solid commitment to marriage.

The weakening of marriage is what the Left is REALLY "incentivizing" in all these "empowering" subsidies.