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you may not have children, but I bet you have parents.  And your parents, like millions of others in the baby boom generation, are aging.  In this economic crisis, even the parents who have saved for retirement are seeing that fall away -- and if they don't have enough to pay for home health care, what are you going to do?  Chances are, you'll need to go help your folks out when they are sick, or be at their bedside as they near the end of their lives.  You'll have to do this because it's the right thing to do, and because it will help save money on health care costs.  When that time comes, Paid Family Leave will help you weather the storm. 

Just think about it.  This is real and it impacts everyone.  We have to stop living in this fantasy world where everything goes according to plan. If we've learned anything from this economic crisis, it's that we have to have system-wide plans in place to protect everyone from disaster.

posted 4 years, 1 month ago
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last time I checked, taking care of a dying parent wasn't a choice.  It's just the right thing to do.

Think of it this way:  we all pay for the fire department because we know that if there's a fire anywhere in the neighborhood, our houses could be at risk too.  You can think about paid family leave in this way too.  We need healthy families and workers who can pay the bills (and their taxes), so we create this insurance program to help stop the economic "fire" that we know is caused by needing to quit work to care for a family member.

posted 4 years, 1 month ago
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I think Elizabeth Hovde's heart is in the right place when she talks about wanting to protect the most vunlerable in our society.  But she misses an essential point:  When people need time off work to care for their families, they ARE vulnerable, even in the middle class.

Today, having a baby is a leading cause of poverty spells in the U.S.  Paid Family leave has been shown to reduce the risk of entering poverty by 25%.  What we're talking about here is a systemic solution to something that impacts everyone, and an essential element of a social safety net that will save money by keeping people out of poverty.

posted 4 years, 1 month ago
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