So this all started with people getting on yard dog for his plan to provide paid maternity leave (really odd stance for yard dog to take btw). I could be wrong but to me this spiraled from that to essentially all maternity leave is wrong. sys it seems at the point I quoted above you went from hypothetically addressing yard dogs plan to arguing against maternity leave, period.
Now going back through these last two pages it seems to me there are still a couple of posters who thinks we have mandated paid maternity leave, if you aren't one of those people, I apologize. However to contend that workers not on maternity leave pay some price for someone on maternity leave is ridiculous at best.
great, now we are all on the same page. btw, california, where i live and work, does have a law providing some % of paid parental leave, paid out of some sort of tax (i think a payroll tax of some sort, not positive). but that's neither here nor there.
let's deal with your last contention. i have a hard time following your logic. apparently you believe that parental leave comes entirely out of an employers' profits/revenue as a zero sum game? that there is no compensatory effect on employee wages and benefits overall? that is a very strange position to take, and as far as i am aware it is one that is entirely unsupported by either economic theory or empirical evidence.
There are three states that offer paid maternity leave (it's actually family health leave) California, Washington, and New Jersey. In California it is actually an insurance plan that the employee has to buy into, it isn't the government giving people money to have babies.
What evidence is there that unpaid or frankly paid for that matter maternity have any effect on the wages of others? Considering that this is a matter of a decision of a private employer I'm not sure how you can speak definitively on the matter either. It feels like you are applying your standard to some woman making $11/hour making rivets, these people aren't getting paid maternity leave. I'm willing to bet that companies offering paid maternity hire specialized, highly skilled employees at high salaries and they offer the paid maternity leave as a means to keep the skilled workers around, and to keep morale and productivity high in a way that has no noticeable effect to the bottom line of the company and not at the expense of the small percentage of their adult workforce that make the choice not to reproduce, adopt, or have an ill parent they need to care for.