It is interesting to watch mayors across America state that their cities will remain sanctuary cities. I wonder how much federal funding the fedgov can withhold from them to change their mind. Riots are good and fun in Blue cities. Suddenly, the Left supports local control, states’ rights, and even the idea that armed resistance is good. Humpty Dumpty Progressivism—whatever works at the moment for them they deploy to the argument battlefield.
Lost in this all is the progressive foundation of weak governance.
Ready for a solution that hurts employers and will find a way to hit your pocketbook? In April 2016, San Francisco passed a city-mandated paid parental leave program. It goes into effect in roughly 45 days. This policy hits employers who employ 50 or more people regardless of where all 50 employees work. Employ only 15 in SF but 35 elsewhere?—sorry, you have to comply with paid parental leave. In July of 2017, it hits employers who employ 35-49 employees. Do not fret, in January of 2018, even micro-businesses of 20 employees or more will have to comply. They must pay parental leave.
But not for all employees, which is where SF punishes the rest of America for San Franciscans’ benefit. For an employee to be eligible, they must work at least eight hours within the geographic boundaries of the city of SF. They also must work at least 40% of their weekly hours within said geographic boundaries. They also must be eligible for California paid family leave. Yes, California already has paid FMLA.
The twist on this is that when a SF employee receives CA-paid FMLA benefits for child bonding, the employer must supplement those benefits so the employee receives 100% of their pre-leave earnings. This is six weeks of fully paid parental leave. One condition is that employees must agree to use unused vacation/sick time for the beginning of that period. Ultimately, each vacation day becomes a sliced 40% (hypothetical) that runs for the first few weeks if they have vacation time. While America does not have mandated vacation time like EU nations, all have some form of vacation time.
San Francisco installed this policy, and you will pay for it, as the cost of business now rises for all SF-situated businesses. That this affects companies that might just have a headquarters in SF but employee people elsewhere poses an interesting situation where employers with that HQ in SF and everyone else scattered around might relocate and have just a single liaison in SF. Restaurants will have to pay a pretty price, so enjoy your meals costing a bit more. This also crushes the franchise businesses located in SF.
No one else asked for this. No one else thought full income replacement was the way to go. States have state-mandated disability that pays women after their pregnancies with a reasonable replacement of income. None for dads. It is a partial income replacement for six to eight weeks for maternity, as maternity is treated as a disability by those plans. Some major employers with massive foreign exposure like AIG already have programs like this in place.
Unspoken is that the policy is a consequence of the need for dual-income families and working moms. Remove that need and this problem does not arise. The system messaging is that working moms are higher status while stay at home moms, formerly just moms, are lower status. This messaging is steady in news and entertainment media. It is so strong that there are families that have a lower income earner, often the mother, who works and after paying taxes, is in essence working to pay daycare. It feeds college demand, as a degree means a higher status job and besides, “you won’t have to rely on a man.”
The rise of women in the workforce also feeds into another need for progressives who control the federal government. The need to destroy competitor institutions and shift more and more reliance on the centralized power is helped, as women must work and cannot volunteer in civic or religious institutions. Volunteering is down and with significant drops from just 2003. It is not just lower social trust due to diversity, but working moms do not have as much time or energy to devote to civic institutions as in years past. Progressives will find government solutions to keep them working and never address why they have to work in the first place.
Buried deeper in this is that poor governance has created hellish cities. Poor progressive governance created the need to have two incomes to avoid the underclass. Bedroom communities do not spring up because people want to live thirty, fifty or ninety minutes from where they work. The commuter tax, the time tax, the mortgage tax are all real—but not official—taxes on families escaping poorly governed municipalities. These nice bedroom communities are well-designed and furnished refugee camps for people escaping the underclass clients of the ruling regimes of the cities.
This is why so many offered solutions are treatments of symptoms rather than root causes. The poor governance of our cities and the ruling regime’s reliance on the violent underclass can never be addressed. There is always an underclass, but formerly with freedom of association and a homogeneous population, often the underclass near you held the same values and norms just were slightly ne’er-do-well. The new progressive underclass is increasingly alien in norms and mores, and has no problem imposing its threshold for violence and criminality on others. Our current system cannot discuss that. The solution for the Left is never the way back, only forward, only progress.