Assuming: 150k/yr salary * 0.5 (paid leave) * .33 (4 months) =$24750 for just raising a kid, damn.
To be the devil's advocate, why not let people who do not have children take a 4 month paid ($24750) vacation every 5 years? I would like to take a round-the-world vacation for 4 months...
TFA said that Facebook paid it his parental leave. If FB thinks it is worth it to retain him as an employee, it's their money.
The US government on the other hand seriously doesn't give a fuck about families since most of their programs are oriented to single mothers. Also there is no federally mandated parental leave http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave
Why not, though? Assuming a democratic government represents the interests of it's voters, apparently a significant fraction (ok, at least one) of the population would be interested in paid 4 month vacations.
This illustrates very well why you shouldn't become a slave to the money. Earning more money won't make you happier. Spending more time with your kid might.
> Assuming: 150k/yr salary * 0.5 (paid leave) * .33 (4 months) =$24750 for just raising a kid, damn.
Chances are if you are making 150k/yr, you're comfortably set in the upper middle class (cost of living complaining notwithstanding). At that point you probably don't have to worry about money, assuming you don't have any expensive hobbies. Taking time out to spend time with your children could be well worth it for a lot of people, since they don't feel they actually need those extra $24750 for anything.
> To be the devil's advocate, why not let people who do not have children take a 4 month paid ($24750) vacation every 5 years? I would like to take a round-the-world vacation for 4 months...
Because society wants to facilitate people having children (and a company might facilitate that if they are forced to by the government, or all of their competitors give the same benefits)? People can complain all day about overpopulation, but fertility rates in western countries are low, many places below 2.1 child per woman. Bringing in people from other countries brings with itself assimilation problems, and simply letting the population decline without interfering can lead to lopsided distribution of age brackets, for example to a disproportionate amount of pensioners that have to be supported by a shrinking workforce.
To be the devil's advocate, why not let people who do not have children take a 4 month paid ($24750) vacation every 5 years? I would like to take a round-the-world vacation for 4 months...