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- [00:01]
A
You have this note in our outline about the 1930s, and I'm shocked that you haven't gotten there.
- [00:05]
B
I just thought maybe our listeners needed a break from going back to the 1930s.
- [00:11]
A
Have you met our listeners?
- [00:20]
B
Hello and welcome to Optimist Economy. I'm Kathryn.
- [00:23]
A
I'm Robin.
- [00:24]
B
On this show, we believe the US Economy can be better, and we talk about how to get there one problem and solution at a time.
- [00:37]
A
At the top of our show, we'd like to make a few announcements. First, I'm going to say that this episode is brought to you in part by Teresa in Hallowell, Maine, who joined us as a spiritual sponsor.
- [00:46]
B
Thank you, Teresa.
- [00:49]
A
Also, we are going to be recording another Q and A episode in a few weeks. So you can email us@optimist economymail.com Send us your questions or your concerns about the economy, and we'll. Well, Katherine will talk about them at.
- [01:04]
B
Length, at length, at some length.
- [01:07]
A
You can call us and leave your question. We're also recording audio reviews of the show. We love the reviews that you guys have left for us on Apple podcasts and on Spotify. And if you would like to do an audio version of that, call us at 202-643-0295. God, I hope that number's right or somebody's going to be really confused.
- [01:31]
B
Oh, sure.
- [01:32]
A
Yeah. My last announcement is, as of Today, we have 410 ratings to our show on Apple Podcasts. I found out that if we hit 595, we will be among the top 1% of podcasts and optimists. I think we can do it. You don't even have to write a review. All you have to do is click the little five star thing. So if you would do that for us, that would be excellent. I can't believe that we would be in the top 1% of podcasts, but, you know, wins where we can get it.
- [02:01]
B
And I want to make sure it's clear that if we make it to the top 1% is how I'm going to refer to us in the royal we of like, well, as the top 1%. You know, we should pay more in taxes.
- [02:11]
A
Exactly.
- [02:13]
B
No. All right, well, we have a couple announcements. The first is the show news. I'm burying the lead here, but we are going to take a break for the season. We're burying the lead. I am burying the lead. In about eight to nine weeks, we will be taking a season one break. We will wrap season one and we will take a break and then start season two and in the meantime, consider everything you've told us about the show and possibly get some new theme music. That's for Robin to decide on the season break, because I will be on maternity leave. I'm pregnant. We have to stop recording for me. You know, to bring another little optimist in the world.
- [02:52]
A
Exactly.
- [02:53]
B
Oh, I should do the belly show. Hold on.
- [02:55]
A
Yeah.
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B
Look at this big old belly.
- [02:59]
A
It's shocking that you have hidden it so well for so long.
- [03:02]
B
I don't know why I did that.
- [03:05]
A
Just make yourself nauseated.
- [03:06]
B
I'm sorry. I'm pregnant at 40. Everything hurts.
- [03:12]
A
Oh. So there will be a little break for some maternity leave. So we'll be back probably in January.
- [03:23]
B
Yes. And that's why we're going to talk about paid family and medical leave today.
- [03:28]
A
Because somebody needs it.
- [03:29]
B
Because I need it, and I'm not going to get it because I don't have an employer. So it felt right.
- [03:35]
A
And you live in Texas and I.
- [03:36]
B
Live in Texas, so it felt right to wait to hold on to the pregnancy announcement until we do a show about it. Just to give you all a sense of timeline, you might find this fun. We recorded our first episode, I think, like, within days of me finding out I was pregnant.
- [03:50]
A
Yeah.
- [03:51]
B
So the first season is really, like, it's gonna carry me.
- [03:56]
A
It's like, wait, we can record, but wait, I'm really nauseated.
- [03:59]
B
Oh, yeah, we can record, but I.
- [04:01]
A
Have a doctor's appointment.
- [04:02]
B
Oh, yeah. The first couple ones of, like, well, I'm in the doctor all the time, and then I feel sick. And kudos to Andy for one time pointing out that most people don't prep for an audio recording by slamming down some saltines. Yeah, that's what you want when you're recording a podcast is that nice, salty.
- [04:21]
A
Dry mouth sound in the microphone.
- [04:24]
B
Oh, man. There. And I. And if you can't. If you haven't been able to tell, that's because Andy and Sophie are so good at, like, every, like, pee break I've had to take. Or when I've stood up and you could see the belly. Or. Or like, the two or three episodes where every time Robin was talking, I was leaned back, just eating crackers because I felt so nauseous.
- [04:43]
A
Nauseated.
- [04:45]
B
God damn it, Robin.
- [04:46]
A
Sorry.
- [04:47]
B
Is it nauseated?
- [04:49]
A
Yeah, people use it wrong all the time. It's like lion lay. Makes me crazy.
- [04:53]
B
Well, let's wait till the third one to really dial that in. It was also fun recording the fertility episode because I was like, I really wanted to tell everybody that I'm pulling fertility above replacement in my household.
- [05:07]
A
Yeah, useless lesbians in LA.
- [05:13]
B
On network nearly at replacement. But yeah, this is kid. This is baby number three. And yeah, I didn't get to talk about the fertility episode. So we're going to talk about babies but also paid family leave after we get through the next two segments. Retcon in terms and conditions. So do you have a retcon?
- [05:35]
A
You know what? I, I don't even like my retcon. I'm going to like skip retcon. Do you have a retcon?
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B
I don't have a retcon.
- [05:41]
A
Oh my God. We're gonna do a retcon free episode.
- [05:43]
B
A retcon. Well, our announcement was 30 minutes long.
- [05:46]
A
So actually it's probably for the best.
- [05:48]
B
I have a term and condition.
- [05:50]
A
Okay, Terms and conditions.
- [05:51]
B
My term and condition is gaff. G A F F. Often used in the phrase stand the gaff, which means like the heat, the pressure, the hardship. And it was used by a now famous owner of a Brooklyn laundromat, Joseph Tepaldo, whose challenge of the New York State minimum wage law was held up by the Supreme Court in a truly abominable decision that led to FDR's court packing scheme. Someone asked me what happened to Teppaldo, you know, after he wins in the Supreme Court, he gets to pay sub minimum or, you know, no minimum wage to his workers, apparently. He gave an interview, he thought this would be amazing for him because he's like the flag bearer of personal liberty in the United States. And he said in an interview after the court decision, business looked good for a while because I was able to undercharge my competitors on what I saved in labor cost. Yeah, that's, that's who was his whole thing. But then business fell off. Customers didn't want to be associated with him. His business folded and he said, I'm broke now. I couldn't stand the gaffe.
- [07:04]
A
Interesting.
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B
He actually got caught because he faked his payroll records to make it look like he paid the minimum wage, but actually didn't. And at the same time he was running some kind of kickback scheme where the women had to give their wages that were paid to them over anyway. So this guy was a criminal.
- [07:22]
A
Sounds like on a couple of levels there.
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B
He was a multi level criminal. And the Supreme Court freed him from bondage because he was waiting the decision in jail. And they're like, you're right, this all goes back to the minimum wage that protects women and children, which they're wrong. You're right. Criminal enterprise, runner of a laundromat. And he quote unquote, couldn't stand the gaffe. I quite like this phrase, stand the gaffe. Let's bring it back. When I read it and kind of went through this decision, I couldn't help but think that it's a really good way to express social media comments. That is truly the gaffe of trying to.
- [07:58]
A
You have to stand if you're going to be in the. If you're going to be in the game.
- [08:02]
B
So stand the gaff for me has now become dealing with like hateful and ignorant comments on social media. Okay, that was my term.
- [08:10]
A
That's good. My term. Thank you to the connections game and from the New York Times is contra neyms. And I knew that these words existed, but I didn't know that there was a term for them. So contronyms are words that are their own opposites. Right. So for instance, left. Left can mean I left, I departed, or I was left behind, meaning I have remained. I think that's probably the best example. But anyway, I didn't know that contra nyms was the term for that.
- [08:39]
B
That's a good one word situation.
- [08:41]
A
Yeah, I thought that was left and left. Yeah. It's time for the big pilcrow.
- [08:46]
B
The big pilcrow. In this case, the big belly Pilcrow.
- [08:50]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [08:51]
B
Now that I'm pregnant, I can bring it, I can work it into like the show, like 10 or 12 times.
- [08:56]
A
How many episodes do we have left?
- [08:58]
B
Oh, my gosh, count the days. We are talking about paid family leave.
- [09:02]
A
We are.
- [09:03]
B
Which is also short for paid family and medical leave. Important distinction.
- [09:08]
A
I'm glad you made that.
- [09:09]
B
The idea of paid leave is that you are paid by either your employer or the state or the federal government while you are taking kind of qualified caregiving activities away from work.
- [09:24]
A
So it's not medical leave like you're sick. It's medical leave like you're going to take care of your newborn or elderly parent or spouse.
- [09:33]
B
You know, you could be sick and you need to take time out and that is covered by the program. And then someone else is sick and you need to take care of them. And that is also covered by the program. So.
- [09:41]
A
So it is self too.
- [09:42]
B
It's self too. The unpaid version that we have, the fmla, the Family Medical Leave act, it's one piece of legislation that covers both you getting sick and someone else getting sick. I mean, really what it is is that some people get job protection when they're on fmla Right. Which is the unpaid federal version. And then there are paid versions that some states require. And then there are the voluntary provision of leave that your employer can provide. So last episode when we talked about school lunch, I was like, I think there's a real conservative argument here. Like we like, I think this appeals. Yeah, let's do this. This one is like, I want to pitch the most liberal policy, the most liberal form of paid. I think paid leave is coming on the federal level. And I'm like, this is my chance to convince people. Go for like the most outrageously liberal version of it. And that is why.
- [10:31]
A
And by liberal you mean sort of generous?
- [10:34]
B
Oh, at the very least, yeah.
- [10:36]
A
Says the pregnant lady.
- [10:37]
B
Says the pregnant lady. Like we are going crazy with leave. And I think I'm, my, my goal is like we're going to ask for 100 so we can get 95. Like we're going way, way, way beyond. So that, that is the point of this show is I'm going to try to convince everyone listening that not just that we need paid family medical leave, which is, which polls really highly polls, I think north of 90%. Most people say we absolutely need this. But how liberal do they want to go tune in to find out? So in making my like big liberal case, I want to explain a couple of things. One is that right now current state of the world is really confusing because what we want out of a social program that's federal would be called paid family and medical leave. What exists in its absence has a bunch of different names. So on the employer level, we know that just 27% of workers. We know because the BLS told us. But according to the Bureau of Labor statistics, around 27% of private sector workers have paid family leave, however, and that's.
- [11:47]
A
Offered by, by their employer and not just because it's in the state that they're in.
- [11:51]
B
Yeah, offered by the employer. Okay, so it's around one in four. And weirdly enough, because it's more of a high wage worker benefit, there's some evidence that men are more likely to have paid family leave than women have access to it.
- [12:05]
A
Not necessarily take it.
- [12:06]
B
Yeah, don't necessarily take it. But have access to it through their job. It's so easy to offer paid family leave to a tech company that has that one woman.
- [12:17]
A
And a bunch of 27 year olds whose parents are only 50.
- [12:20]
B
Yeah. You know, or offer it at a law firm where like everybody knows if they take it they'll never work again. Or you know, like it's, it's an easy thing to offer. But if you have been through like pregnancy and delivery, you probably didn't take paid family leave. You probably got short term disability insurance. And about half of workers in the US maybe a little bit under, have access to a short term disability insurance policy through their employer, especially if they have a large employer. And delivering moms do meet short term disability status. And I want to say, oh yeah, there's schedules of like how much disability leave you get after labor and delivery or like feels like a man wrote this. Yeah, I think it's four weeks for vaginal birth and six weeks for a C section. It's not a lot, but that is where a lot of actually taken paid leave comes from. It comes from a short term disability insurance policy that your employer has that they might. Might plus up.
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A
Right.
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B
So that means that people who are uncovered by that short term disability insurance policy are people who don't deliver babies, dads, or any adopting couple because it's not a medical.
- [13:35]
A
Their problems are medical.
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B
So that's confusing in understanding the current landscape that you've got like half of.
- [13:39]
A
Workers that are better about being confused.
- [13:42]
B
Half of workers are covered by a short term disability insurance. That's not that generous, but we'll at least cover a delivering moment. But no other parent. And then a fourth of workers might have enumerated and specific paid family leave. And then there's workers who have sick days and vacations and unspecified PTO that they can roll in together. So the amount of time that people actually spend with a newborn, which tends to be like the banner case for paid family and medical leave, can really vary. But for the most part, the access is far from universal and at best half. The other part that's hard to understand is that in an actual universal paid family and medical leave system, newborns would not be the dominant claim. We think of it as a baby policy.
- [14:26]
A
Yeah, yeah. We think of it as maternity leave or parental leave. Yeah. But it's not.
- [14:31]
B
Now it depends on how obviously how the coverage is structured, but it tends to be. Medical leave is the most common claim. You get sick, you get in a car accident, you have a heart attack, you break your leg. Medical leave is what ends up being covered kind of most commonly. And then depending on how the program is structured, which varies across states, it's going to be caring for a partner or parent that takes up as many claims as caring for a newborn.
- [14:57]
A
Right. And do you have to take this time as a block or. Again, this is probably varies from place.
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B
To place, varies from place to place, like.
- [15:03]
A
Yeah. And if it's for you, there also is probably rules like you need to use all your sick days before you go on to either short term disability. I think in California, we call it short term disability.
- [15:14]
B
It depends on the place. I mean, some places the short term disability insurance policy doesn't kick in until like day eight.
- [15:19]
A
Yeah.
- [15:20]
B
So like if you gave birth on a Tuesday, the following Wednesday, your short term disability would kick in and you have to use sick days or vacation before that. Or your employer might say, we'll just cover it. It depends on like the policy that your employer holds and the policy that they make around that policy. So I think this is very confusing. Right. Like what it actually means that's confusing. What it looks like now. Totally confusing in terms of the policy landscape. The other thing that makes it confusing is that we have a set of states that have passed paid family leave. They have different rules and most of them have expanded their program over time. So they started really conservatively. Like they didn't want to start a program that would go bankrupt within a year. So as you go through the evidence around paid family leave being generated by states, that can also really vary because the states themselves have been changing their program.
- [16:12]
A
Right, right. So, yeah, what California was accomplishing in 2006 is very different than 2018.
- [16:18]
B
Yeah, interesting. You know, most states start out just really modest. Like, they don't, they just, they don't want to like overwhelm people, overwhelm businesses, run out of money or anything like that. And then as they get essentially more confident in more resources, they start to expand. I should stress to our optimists out there, this is actually a really easy policy to do and very simple to understand. So the confusing things about the current state of the. Or, just to give you some context, which I think you should feel free to ignore because here's what's going to happen. We're going to add paid family and medical leave to Social Security, which means it will cover every single worker in the United States, whether they're self employed or not. We already have the administrative and tax structure to collect that. And we have all the data for, you know, how much people will get back. The benefits won't vary across states. It will follow you from employer to employer, no matter where you go, and state to state and state to state, you'll never lose your benefits. And at the same time, this means that caregiving can be added to your Social Security retirement benefits. So if you say take six months out of work because you had to care for a dying spouse. A really popular Social Security policy is to basically credit your Social Security retirement account with the caregiving you provided.
- [17:35]
A
Oh, as. Yeah, as unpaid work. But the gets credited unpaid work.
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B
So, like, I had a paid family leave claim and I didn't contribute for the 12 weeks I was on paid family leave. Social Security will credit my retirement account because I was caregiving for someone in the economy and that should count as work. So Social Security, the agency itself is like, quite neutral in all policies, but in terms of, like, if Social Security were to have a personality, it wants this like, it wants to. It wants to administer paid family leave and medical leave, to put them into one system and to have harmony between the interruptions to work that are small and the overall contribution to your retirement. What's also nice about paid family and medical leave going through Social Security is that you already have a thousand field offices.
- [18:21]
A
Yeah.
- [18:22]
B
Geographically distributed throughout the country. They obviously need more money and they need. We need to need more money and people and not to be fired and gutted.
- [18:31]
A
Just saying.
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B
Just saying. But you have, like, a means of administration that's already locally distributed.
- [18:39]
A
Right. You know, we think of Social Security being only a retirement program, but it's. It's more than that.
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B
It's a disability and survivors program as well. So aside from all that confusing stuff that I wanted to lead with just to make sure people stayed on the.
- [18:50]
A
Line, it's like a test. Are you still with us?
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B
Are you still with us? After the web of ways that workers in the US Try to piece it all together? Well, then let me reward you with this nugget. It's common, it's going to be universal. It'll be in Social Security, and they'll never be able to touch it again. So that's something to look forward to. So right now, Social Security has Old Age, Survivors and Disability insurance. Oasde. It is going to be FOASDI Family, Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance.
- [19:17]
A
Well, that's good. We're going to get a much better.
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B
Oh, yeah. Foasdi.
- [19:21]
A
FOASDI out of this. Yeah.
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B
And there's legislation that has been introduced in several sessions of Congress to add paid family and medical leave to Social Security.
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A
Oh, so you're not just. You're not just speculating, an optimist and speculating and saying this is definitely how it's going to work out. People have proposed this.
- [19:41]
B
People have proposed this. This is quite popular. It's incredibly efficient, and it's probably the cheapest way for businesses to have it. Because the alternative would be for someone to say, I'm just going to require that you have to provide 12 weeks of paid leave for every employee you have. That would be a really high cost for business and they would have to.
- [20:02]
A
Go buy a private policy if the state didn't provide one. Yeah.
- [20:05]
B
And so this is saying like, listen, business, like you can plus it up if you want to, but you're going to give us a marginal tax contribution and Social Security will deal with this.
- [20:14]
A
Nice.
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B
Yeah. So it's going to come and it's going to be great and it'll be simple.
- [20:19]
A
Is it up there with like on the timeline of, you know, universal school meals?
- [20:24]
B
Oh, neck and neck. I think the big delay that's going to come from paid family leave is that Congress is too cowardly to fix Social Security before the trust fund runs out. That is the real problem. And I think I've written about this before in Bloomberg columns, that the reason why we don't have paid family leave is because Congress is afraid of Social Security. And that is the clearest.
- [20:48]
A
There's like a tail wagging the dog there. Yeah.
- [20:50]
B
As we talked about in the Social Security episode, they just don't have the guts or the willpower to do it before the money runs out. So they're going to wait till the very last minute. And if they added paid family leave, people would say, well, you're, you're expanding Social Security without having addressed its long term shortfalls. So they really do have to.
- [21:06]
A
That would not be untrue.
- [21:08]
B
Yeah, would not be untrue. I mean, what's interesting about paid family leave, every state that has it has worked through their own social insurance system. On the state level you have unemployment insurance, which runs very similarly to Social Security. It's a payroll tax contribution. It doesn't cover self employed workers, but it covers all payroll employments. And states have built off of that social insurance program basically the exact same thing we would do at the federal level, but just for payroll employees in their state. And what's interesting about it is that almost every program started with like, let's keep that tax low, let's keep that benefit. Like you can have five weeks. And now and then of course, like they raised a ton of money and they, the program went very differently than they thought. Businesses were much happier with it than they thought they would be. And now they're expanding the program. So all the proof is there that this will be successful federally and will cover every gig worker and self employed.
- [22:05]
A
Worker and what kind of tax rates are you talking about?
- [22:07]
B
Like, so California's paid family leave program is part of the state disability insurance tax, which is 1.2%.
- [22:15]
A
So that 1.2% is actually covering both of those things. Yeah.
- [22:20]
B
And all wages are subject. So there's no cap. It's a unlimited 1.2% payroll tax, which I think on the federal level that would probably be similar. I would bet it would be like 1%. Now, the real question is, do you have on state level programs? Workers don't pay it. It's built onto their unemployment insurance tax, which almost no state has a worker pay. So all on the state level, all of the programs are employer paid. There's no wage contribution on the employee side like you get for Social Security. I think the big question that a lot of advocates have is if you have a federal program, should you make workers contribute to. And I would say yes. Yeah, they should. Because evidence shows that when workers see the payroll contribution on their paycheck, they'll apply for it more. It's like a program.
- [23:07]
A
I'm paying for this. I might as well use it.
- [23:09]
B
Yes, it's. So it builds a program participation in that you're more likely to take it if you see that you've paid for it. So it's like an awareness and ownership.
- [23:18]
A
When you take that kind of leave, is it always consecutive or can it be, I'm gonna work part time for 12 weeks?
- [23:24]
B
It depends on the state. Most states don't make you take it consecutively.
- [23:29]
A
And you were saying that people most often use it to take care of themselves or to take time off when they are recovering. I assume from physical, you know, I needed a new knee.
- [23:40]
B
If we wanted to make the program really liberal, we would have medical leave apply to mental health issues as well.
- [23:44]
A
Yeah.
- [23:45]
B
And I'm saying liberal here in, like, the best, truest sense. Lots of uses, lots of instances. Like you say you're pregnant with your second child and you also are an avid recreational soccer player and you know you shouldn't play another game.
- [24:01]
A
And yet you do.
- [24:02]
B
And yet you do. And you're playing savage because there's no subs and you're really tired and you should walk off the field, but you don't because you have a problem with how competitive you are and how much you get out of playing soccer. And you tear your ACL at like, the age of 37 playing rec soccer. It's embarrassing how many people have to carry you off the field and out of the stadium so that you can go get a X ray. You know, part of your medical leave in that scenario is that you have to go to physical therapy, right? Three times a week for two hours a day afterwards, and you use your, you know, medical leave claim to cover that time. Medical leave is a version of short term disability insurance. It's just called medical leave. And it typically kicks in after a certain amount of time. If you have an illness or incident that's longer than seven days, you use sick days for the first seven, and then on the eighth day, medical leave, AKA short term disability insurance kicks in. So had I been able to. Spoiler, it was me. Had I been able to repair my ACL when I tore it, I would have gotten like sick days to cover the surgery in the aftermath. But then by like day eight when I needed to stay at home and then go into therapy, that's when the short term disability insurance would have picked up.
- [25:24]
A
You weren't able to repair your.
- [25:25]
B
You can't actually have ACL repair surgery when you are pregnant. Oh, I got in there and they're like, is there any chance that you could be pregnant? And I was like, hi, 100%. I was like, it's a pretty, it's a pretty high chance. I'd peg it in like the 90s. And. And they were like, oh, okay, well, let's talk about mobility adaptation. And I was like, what. What's funny is that you can have the surgery, you just can't take anything. Anti inflammatory. Oh, there's no Advil, so it's just.
- [25:53]
A
Gonna be very painful.
- [25:53]
B
I spent the first like three weeks of that pregnancy on the couch with my leg elevated in ice on it because I tore my ACL and I couldn't take Advil and it was 100% my own fault.
- [26:05]
A
So we think of this as being something that a lot of women who've just had children would, would use, but that in fact, it's often used to take care of yourself, but then also to take care of spouses and, or siblings or siblings or children or aging parents, which, you know, we have a lot of and we're going to have more of.
- [26:27]
B
Yes. This is like you get the call from your parent that, you know, they've been going to the doctor because something hasn't been right and they've got, they probably have six to eight weeks with some type of terminal cancer. Like, you leave and you go on family leave, you go home and you spend time with them and you. That time is covered. This is one of the ways I want to make it as liberal as Possible. Like, I think it should be the case in the United States that if you find out that you're dying and you only have so long to live, your kids can come. They might not come for other reasons, but work should not be an impediment to your kids coming and spending time with you at the end of your life. I think this is. I've always thought it's not short sighted, but almost cruel that we don't talk about paid family and medical leave from the point of view of the dying.
- [27:19]
A
Yeah.
- [27:20]
B
This is about their last eight weeks, last 12 weeks. Like, what do they deserve? Sorry, the labor market can't spare your children, so now they have to choose between keeping their job and income or spending time with their dying mother. That's just the choice we make them.
- [27:38]
A
Yeah, that's a terrible, horrible.
- [27:38]
B
No, it's. It's a horrible. It's a horrible choice. And people who have had family members get sick, like, it's. How great are you at work anyway?
- [27:47]
A
Yeah, that's kind of what I wonder.
- [27:49]
B
And I hate to make this policy about productivity, loss of the grieving, but maybe that's what it would take to make the case on that side. But I've always wanted people who benefit from this on the elderly side to be more vocal of like, let my kids come home, make this easier. And we don't really hear that argument being made. Yeah, these would make for amazing movies, too. Of like, your mom knows that you have paid family leave. She's like, I'm dying and you have to come home. And like, and now you're. You and your siblings are back in your childhood home, is, your mom's dying. I'm like, I'm just like, seeing Oscars, like, flying, falling out of the sky. I was just like, oscar, Oscar. I mean, come on, y'. All. These movies will write themselves. For me. It's a policy change that could usher in a cultural change around how death and dying occurs in the United States. Yeah, that's. That's my first aspect of liberal paid leave.
- [28:51]
A
Liberal paid leave is. Yeah, go, Go be with your dying parents.
- [28:54]
B
Yep.
- [28:56]
A
Okay. And what else is in your super liberal. I'm guessing there's something about babies.
- [29:02]
B
All right, so you have a woman that is pregnant that is going to give birth to Tyle baby. There's, like, several scenarios of family types that that woman exists in, and each scenario could have potentially a different number of paid family leave claims. Okay, okay, so let's say that the woman is a single mom and she's on her own, she's gonna get paid family leave for herself and nobody else because she doesn't have a partner or she's partnered. She has the baby, her partner stays home. So compared to the single mom that got one claim on paid family leave, the partnered mom has two claims, right? The mom and the partner. Okay, well, now let's say that she's a surrogate or she's giving the baby up for adoption to another couple. Now you've got three claims because now the delivering mom is going to get medical leave for herself, and then the two parents now have family leave and they get the claim. So depending on the family type, the kid basically takes either one or up to three people into the paid family leave system.
- [30:09]
A
Okay, where are you going with this?
- [30:11]
B
One of the consequences of this non system that we have now that's the patchwork of private short term disability insurance and sometimes paid leave from the employer and sometimes paid leave in a small number of states is that we have backed into a system in which delivering moms are shortchanged on leave because their short term disability insurance pays for them to be at home while they're recovering from delivery. But that kind of gives employers this like, well, and now I don't have to pay for anyone else to take care of the baby because she's already home. And so they're getting this like two for one off of delivering moms where her disability insurance window is also treated as the newborn caregiving window. And y', all, they need to pay for both. And while we're at it, she deserves a caregiver too. Like, it's really not fair that like, no one takes care of her. Yeah, I've had two kids on paid family leave through an employer, and in no instance did it ever come up that I deserved a caregiver.
- [31:18]
A
That's actually a really interesting point. Yeah.
- [31:21]
B
I mean, especially when you consider the advice that is given and like the warnings given to women after delivery. So, like, try this on for size.
- [31:28]
A
Don't lift anything.
- [31:30]
B
No, no, no. You're gonna lose a lot of blood. You need to call a doctor or an ambulance if you lose more than a golf ball size of blood. Now you tell me if you can figure out if a lot of blood comes out if you know it's a golf ball size. Like, how do you. I'm like, do you take it and you like shape it like. No, you don't. You just, you're like, wow, that's okay. So what happened to me? What happened to me after my first kid was that my husband didn't have hardly any leave. And I was home alone. The kid was in the crib asleep. And I was taking the bath in the middle of the day, and I looked down and the water's red. And I'm, like, sitting there thinking. So, like, let's just think of the volume of the tub relative to a golf ball. Size of blood. Like, what? What are we doing here? Like, what? Like, so I didn't have my phone near me. I'm home alone, the baby starts crying, and I get this, like, very deep sense of, like, if I stand up and pass out, like, would I hit my head on something? And this is the scenario planning I'm going through on one side, whereas on the other side, I'm thinking, how diluted would a golf ball be?
- [32:40]
A
This one? God.
- [32:43]
B
And I just, like, I'm really struggling with this. And then I make. I make the heroic decision that I'm not going to stand up and step out of the tub. I'm going to slide out of it like a monster and an army crawl to the baby's room just to see if they're okay. And I remember thinking, no legislator in this country has said, you, Catherine, who brought life into this world, who had reconstructive stitches afterwards and has been told, watch out for that golf ball coming at you. No one thinks you deserve a caregiver.
- [33:22]
A
Yeah. Yeah.
- [33:26]
B
For the record, my husband hates this story, and he hates it because he wasn't there and he didn't have leave. For what? He's not an ER doctor. There weren't lives on the line. He just had to be at a desk an hour away, I don't know, answering emails in a meeting for something that we don't even remember anymore. And so he hates the story. And the next time I had a kid, when my husband's employer said that he didn't have paid leave, he quit and got a job that would give it to him. And he did really well. He overshot it. He got, like, 10 more weeks of leave than I did on the second kid. So we've had a couple scenarios with this, and it is much easier to recover from childbirth when you have someone at home with you.
- [34:11]
A
Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I think that that is a more. You know, why do we think that somebody needs a caregiver after they've had a knee replacement and not after they've had a baby?
- [34:21]
B
Yeah, it was.
- [34:22]
A
For.
- [34:22]
B
God, it was ridiculous. And I mean, my second birth went really. I mean, it was Very different. It went really well. I had much less stitches. I have so many labor and delivery stories about that first labor and delivery that I don't say because I don't want to do my part to bring down the fertility rate. But what this would mean is that the paid family medical leave system you want to Is that when you have a newborn kid, the delivery mom gets medical leave and a caregiver, and the baby gets a caregiver, which means for people who have pieced this together, this means you could get your mom or sister on paid leave when you have a kid, not just your partner. Now, I'm not saying that partners aren't useful. I'm just saying that, like, it's a lot to take care of. Like, how's this for another, like, really frightening statistic? Like, they don't give the depression screen to women who have just delivered because almost every woman would screen positive for depression.
- [35:23]
A
Yeah.
- [35:24]
B
So you've got medically recovering depressed people with newborns. What could go wrong? What could go wrong? And they don't have a caregiver. And so you want two people on this. This is man to man. Yeah, we are not doing zone. We are doing man to man.
- [35:42]
A
I'm not doing zone.
- [35:44]
B
The mom gets somebody, the baby gets somebody, the husb and the grandma. Like, they'll figure it out. But yeah, this would basically mean that, like, you have a mom or a sister or a brother or a brother that would be able to take some amount of paid leave to help with the kid and the mom.
- [36:01]
A
Yeah.
- [36:01]
B
This is my push for, like, the liberalist paid leave. It's not like, do we get 10 weeks versus 12 weeks, or do we get, like, higher benefits or lower benefits. It's liberal in the sense that the dying parent gets to have all of her kids take a paid leave claim and come home and the newborn baby, like, the mom gets a caregiver, the mom gets leave, and the baby gets a caregiver. And if it's a surrogate situation, then she'll get another caregiver. And it's, you know, at least three people for each kid. I think this is what liberalness means to me in the paid leave conversation is not some length of time in the extra week. It's the person and who gets care and what care means.
- [36:45]
A
Well, you know, and it would be reasonably cheap to implement since we don't. We're not having any babies, apparently.
- [36:51]
B
I mean, this is the cheapest time to do it, for sure. Yeah.
- [36:53]
A
Do it now and build up that baby trust. Fund.
- [36:57]
B
Build up that baby trust fund. Yeah. And I think it would. I don't know if this would make a dent in the maternal mortality rate, but I do think it would probably make it a lot easier for families who are going through, like, the first. Especially the first kid. It's a really tough time. And if you had a hard delivery, it's not that tough. Time is.
- [37:13]
A
It's tough.
- [37:14]
B
And then, let me say, still a heartless economist. Even underneath these mom overalls, the mom coveralls, the mom. The mom pregnancy, the mama rolls. Okay, so my asterisk on the big liberal leaf is it's not expensive.
- [37:33]
A
What?
- [37:34]
B
It's really not that expensive.
- [37:36]
A
Okay, like how. I mean, how expensive?
- [37:39]
B
So, yeah, you. You have a social insurance program with a trust fund. Let's say you took, like, 0.75 paid by the employer, 0.75 paid by the employee. You start off with a program that's, you know, no more than eight weeks.
- [37:56]
A
And then you just kind of. And then you can sort of see over time, like, what. What the usage is, what the demand is.
- [38:03]
B
Yeah. I mean, I think. I worry that in the US you'd have to make it a little higher because of the elderly population.
- [38:10]
A
The tax would be a little higher.
- [38:11]
B
Yeah. Or you would have to structure it so that, like, the amount of leave you can take for, like, partner versus parent versus newborn. You might want to structure that to, like, kind of just hedge a little bit at the front end that your more common claim will probably be a dying parent for the next two decades. But, no, this is, like, imminently affordable. And we know that because every state that has a trust fund which is funded the exact same way, just. But just on the employer side, pegged at around 1%, those trust funds are healthy. They can afford it. And there's. I would say the new thing is that we're starting to get some very good data that men are taking leave.
- [38:54]
A
Oh, yeah. Parental stuff or for other things.
- [38:57]
B
I think just in terms of total claims, it comes down to 20 to 40% of claimants are men. Now, probably a lot of that is coming from the medical side, but this is not necessarily a women's program.
- [39:09]
A
Yeah. We assume that women are going to be the caretakers and that women are going to need it for childbirth and maternity leave.
- [39:16]
B
But to be fair, like, you know, if you had a caregiving situation, and we have a 20% wage disparity in the United States, that tends to be larger between married men and women who have children, like, who does it make sense to drop out of the workforce, the low paid one or the less paid one. So I think some of that is just we can't know how the legacy will be projected forward. The legacy is that women earn less and that they're the caregivers. But we've also like never really opened it up to men the way that a universal program would allow. I do know a lot of economists listen to our show. So I will say something controversial in terms of my big liberal leave policy, which is that it actually does not matter to me if men take it. There are people who are like, you have to have like mandatory leave or like, the woman gets more leave if the husband takes it too. And like this leads to parody in the workforce. And there's, there's this like, very vocal arm of the paid family leave movement that are like, how to make sure men take it. I just doesn't matter. It doesn't like.
- [40:20]
A
Oh, so you're saying you don't care if they don't take it?
- [40:22]
B
I don't care if they don't take it.
- [40:23]
A
Oh, okay. Yeah.
- [40:25]
B
I think it matters to a lot of people that you somehow design the program so that men are basically like.
- [40:30]
A
Encourages men to take it.
- [40:31]
B
Yeah, encourages are incentivized. And that's not one. I just. That one, I'm like, you just gotta give people a choice. They might not choose this. Like, I don't care. That one gets like too, too, too controlling for me of like, what if, what if the guy's a dick and like the wife doesn't want him at home and like he, you know, like he wants to see his baby stop working. There's great evidence that if you incentivize paternity leave in particular, that you can do a lot for like household bargaining or men will do more chores or, you know, women will earn more in the longer run. And I'm like, I don't know. That's too much policing of a marriage for my taste. Yeah, yeah, I don't like it.
- [41:15]
A
I would also like you to be able to use this to take care of your in laws.
- [41:19]
B
Yeah, I think the in laws one is if it would be a failure of design if that's not covered because, you know, what if like my husband's mom is sick and it's easier for me to take leave than him? Is it not allowed? Like, should you just put a cap? Like you get two claims and maybe it's like a kid and a partner. Maybe it's both of your kids partners. I think that with the two examples I gave of childbirth and death are a way of saying that we should not focus on a strict definition of what is family.
- [41:52]
A
So many people I know, so many gay friends I know who are, you know, operate as family to one another or chosen family or you need them all.
- [42:00]
B
Yeah, there should be some kind of system that comes from the preference of the person who needs the caregiving of who they get to pick and does it. I mean, how do you convince, like a Republican lawmaker that like, a gay woman should be able to pick her best friend to be there for her illness? Or that maybe like a trans person who has lost contact with their entire family also still deserves to have someone take care of them if they get sick, even if no one in their family speaks to them anymore. These are the questions that we need to fight for, and we should be out in front fighting for them. Now. Congress does not get to say who my family is. I think that this is something that Americans would agree with in their own life.
- [42:44]
A
I think you're right. And I think that we. I feel like we're in this shift of our culture to understanding that we're not. We talk a lot about how kind of independent and individualistic Americans are, but the truth is that we need to be embracing the future of where we actually, what we do is we take care of one another. And I see that in a million ways on all sides of the political spectrum. I see it in the Cajun Navy going to Houston, and I see it in my peers taking care of their parents and a recognition that that's also who we are. And in part because the government isn't doing it for us.
- [43:23]
B
We don't have long term care, insurance. We need people. And this to me is the fight. It's not for paid family leave. We're going to get it. I think the real fight is putting the paid family leave conversation in the context of that word family. So that is my big liberal leave. It's liberal in the truest sense of the word liberal. That people who are dying, people who need medical care, little babies, we shouldn't be stingy with the number of caregivers that they get. And that at the same time, we shouldn't be dogmatic about who gets to be a caregiver. It should be liberal. It should be up to the person and that. I don't really love the idea of people in Congress sitting down and being like, you know, okay, so we've got one. The baby gets one caregiver for 10 weeks and it can Only be a blood related and it has to be this and like, that's it. Like, I. No, no. We are doing this big liberal leave. I say who my family is. We're not gonna be tight fisted with the caregivers. Big liberal leave.
- [44:31]
A
Big liberal leave. Great.
- [44:34]
B
Okay. Are you on board?
- [44:35]
A
I'm on board.
- [44:36]
B
Okay.
- [44:38]
A
The next section of our podcast episode is called Executive Orders where we announce how we would run the world. I think you get to go first.
- [44:49]
B
My executive order, I've been sitting on this one for a minute, is that there's going to be a list of things that you're not allowed to say to a pregnant woman and that just becomes law. So I don't need to be the only one that defines what's in this list. I think we can crowdsource this. Women who have been pregnant or have given birth, we all get to contribute to the things we don't want said to us while pregnant. And then it's just a lifetime. You would never get to say it again. Funnily enough, I was gonna start with, you can't touch pregnant women. But then I'm like, actually, you just shouldn't touch anybody.
- [45:22]
A
Fair.
- [45:23]
B
So I don't need to waste the authority I have here on saying you're not allowed to touch my belly when I'm pregnant because you shouldn't be allowed to touch me anyway.
- [45:34]
A
Full stop.
- [45:35]
B
Full stop. So, yeah, I think the one that I get a lot that I really, really struggle with is, oh, you look ready to pop. And I'm not gonna lie, that's actually not how it works. So I hope I don't pop because that would be really alarming. I don't pop so much as empty. So, like, I don't. I'm not really thrilled when people are like, you're ready to pop. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The visual there is all wrong. So that would be. That would be one I'd add to the list. And then there's lots of like, don't.
- [46:09]
A
Share your horrible labor story. I think would be on the list.
- [46:12]
B
Yeah, don't walk up to me and share your horrible labor story. That would be one. Oh, yeah, this is a good one. You're not allowed to walk up to a pregnant woman and ask her if she's changed her mind on abortion. Sorry, Robin, look at your face. I'm getting in the studio chat. I'm getting in like, Robin's face of like, no one would actually do that. And I'm like, oh, really? No one would walk up to me on the D.C. metro, clearly visiting while I'm on my way to work and come up to me and say like, and now you know what those abortion activists get wrong. And I'm just like looking like, I don't know. That was tough. I actually had two horrific strangers walking up to me on the Metro while pregnant. Stories that I'm like, y', all, this ain't right. One of them is like quite sad, which is a woman who had just had a miscarriage came up to me. That one was quite extended. She like straight up just sat next to me and put my hand, her hand on my belly as I was reading a book and started talking to me about her pregnancy loss.
- [47:14]
A
Oh God.
- [47:15]
B
And then same pregnancy, but like two weeks later on the Metro on the way to work. And this like family came up like right next to the Smithsonian stop. And they were like. The mom was like, now you know, that's what they get wrong with abortion. And I was like, what are you do. What are we. Hold on, sorry. What is your objective here? Those would be like two things I would put into my executive order of things you aren't allowed to say to.
- [47:42]
A
I'm sure other people would have a lot of.
- [47:43]
B
Oh yeah, listeners, we want to hear from you. Things that you're not allowed to say to a pregnant woman. Let us know. I would say those two are like on the list, but definitely, you look ready to pop. I ain't a balloon, I'm a lady.
- [48:01]
A
My executive order is. I'm suddenly fearing that I have used this before. So you have to tell me if I did. My executive order is if you can order a service online 24. 7, you need to be able to cancel it online 24 7.
- [48:16]
B
Isn't LA Fitness being sued for this right now?
- [48:20]
A
I don't know if they are good.
- [48:23]
B
I'm almost positive that they are being sued. They're becoming under the FTC because it's so hard to cancel your gym membership.
- [48:29]
A
My particular complaint is Internet service providers, right? Where it's suddenly. And cable is of course notorious for this. You can sign up online and get your service all set up and then you try to cancel it and suddenly you've got to have a three hour phone conversation that can only happen between 8am and 3pm Central Time. It's infuriating. So anyway, that's my executive order.
- [48:55]
B
Oh, be better when we move to.
- [48:58]
A
Out of Spokane to la. I tried to cancel our cable subscription and they called me after I'd canceled it. To say that I could take it with me if I was moving. I was like, you don't actually do business where I'm moving. And they still wanted to talk to me. I was like, stop talking to me. You are not actually in business where I am moving.
- [49:17]
B
This is actually a good cue, I think. I mean, don't talk to Robin. And I just really.
- [49:22]
A
Don't call us. Don't call us, except call us and leave a review at that number we left earlier. But you don't have to talk to us. And again, that number is 202-643-0295. Who.
- [49:34]
B
Is your spiritual sponsor for the week?
- [49:36]
A
My spiritual sponsor is my friend Susan, who retired after 34 years at the Los Angeles Times. And you know how you talked about your economics professor? She's the reason I got into opinion journalism. I think that she. She might have edited your first op ed.
- [49:55]
B
Really? That's Susan?
- [49:56]
A
Yeah.
- [49:58]
B
She's made careers, people.
- [50:00]
A
Yeah. So anyway, it's her first week of being retired. I messaged her Monday and said, how's it going? And she said, I keep feeling like there's a deadline I'm missing, man.
- [50:12]
B
Some people are no good at retirement. And some people are like, I'm gonna be amazing.
- [50:15]
A
She's gonna be fine. She's gonna be fine.
- [50:17]
B
She's gonna be great. She's gonna be great. Wow. Oh, man. Oh, y', all. Like, the only reason why any of y' all know me or I have a column at Bloomberg and a public Persona is because right at the start of the pandemic, when I was still on maternity leave, I got drawn into a chat of, like, does anybody know, like, what are your predictions for what this pandemic is gonna do? And I said, a bunch of people are gonna be unemployed and find out just how terrible a program unemployment insurance is. Robin was like, you should write that down. I put it together into what has to be one of the most wooden, not great Wikipedia entries that Robin, with her genius put into, like, got down to, like, 750 well written words. And it ran in the LA Times, I mean, within, like, two days. And it ran on the Sunday, and that was the Sunday before the shutdowns. My phone never stopped ringing. My life didn't go back to the way it was before because then the pandemic was declared. People did apply for unemployment insurance. What I said in the op ed was right. And I think I spent three hours of every day for the first six months of the pandemic on the phone with journalists.
- [51:28]
A
And here we are.
- [51:29]
B
And here we are. Robin's still paying for that. I'm like, well, you have to come with me because it's all on you. Anyway, bye. All right. My spiritual sponsor for the week is, with the caveat that you are not supposed to come up and talk to me about it. It is actually the baby moving around in your belly. It is quite a special, unique feeling. I never thought of it as kicks. I definitely feel this one. That's a barrel roll. This is not a little tap on the belly. This one's exploring the space. But it is an irreplaceable, indescribable feeling to feel something inside you moving. There's like a real warm glow to that of, like, well, I'm bringing life into the world. But then there's also the, like, Alien movie. This ain't right. There's an aspect of it of, like, you know, I'm a little uncomfortable. But for all the moms out there who have put their hand on their stomach and, like, felt something and it's been this really warm moment, versus all the moms that are like, I don't know if I like that something's moving inside my body. I'm with you on both fronts because I feel it both directions. But it is still my spiritual sponsor because it is just. I know for a fact nothing will ever come close to the, like, seeing. Seeing the kid and feeling the kid moving around in there.
- [52:53]
A
Yeah. Don't talk to me about it. Great. Don't touch and don't touch me.
- [52:58]
B
Don't touch me. Don't talk to me. Give the show money. We are are done here.
- [53:02]
A
Oh, right. Oh, right. Thank you guys for listening as always. We really appreciate the time that you spend with us and also the financial contributions that you make to keep us going. At least until Catherine goes on her maternity leave in some weeks.
- [53:21]
B
In some weeks. You know what, though? We should at some point ask people, like, what do they want to hear? Or not just for questions and answers, but, like, what do you want to see for season two?
- [53:31]
A
Yeah, what do you want to see for season two?
- [53:33]
B
Follow up episodes.
- [53:34]
A
That's right. We're going to have a little time to think about it.
- [53:37]
B
Yeah.
- [53:38]
A
We have had people say that they've been introduced to the show and then they've gone back to listen to the beginning and they feel like they've just been let in on all the jokes. So I sometimes feel bad for the people who have joined us recently. We should put together a starter kit. Optimus starter kit. Listen to these couple of episodes. You'll get the gist anyway. We do. We too. Still. We still take your contributions on Substack. Buy me a coffee, Patreon. Also just on PayPal. Also, as we have said before, bags of gold. Totally welcome.
- [54:11]
B
Burlap sacks with dollar signs on the side delivered.
- [54:16]
A
Totally fine. Totally fine.
- [54:18]
B
We have to end our show by snapping out Andy and Sophie.
- [54:21]
A
Are they still there?
- [54:22]
B
Who knows?
- [54:26]
A
Thank you, Andy. Thank you, Sophie.