If we centralize paid leave it might work like workmans comp. currently does. Like an insurance policy that covers the 3/4 pay of the 4 women who got pregnant in April. Or the disability insurance policy that covers lost pay when you break both arms and can’t work – but it covers when your kid is in the hospital too.

It could be available to all self-employed and small businesses. This way it protects both the employee from lost pay and the employer from paying double.

It should protect small businesses and the self-employed too. There is no reason it should be this risky to be self employed or entreprenureal.

If you really want to encourage small business growth and the entreprenureal spirit then you take huge risk of being uninsured out of the equation.

For instance, why aren’t you working on your business fulltime? Why can’t that be your next move? Because of the benefits. You would have MORE freedom to have your own business, not less, if we have univeral health care and paid family leave.

Every other country on the planet already does this for women and families.

It’s hard to make the argument that it can’t work when it’s already working for ALL other industrialized nations. Seriously ALL. They are capitalists too.

I fully support and back the idea of “leaving a place at the table when your employee comes back” but I can’t back “extended leave with pay” 100%. At least not for every company.

You state that our country’s job is to protect the interest of the people, and starting your own company is one of those interest of many.

Free market, by the people and for the people, has been one of the main factors that has jump started this country quickly from the beginning. It fuels innovation, and allows 2 guys working in a garage in the 70′s the ability to evolve into Apple. It helps a couple of other kids in a bad neighborhood in their garage to have the ambition and means to work on that idea of their’s called Google.

It also helped a freelance designer pull his family out of poverty by starting his own small company with little intervention, taxes and stipulations by the government.

Yet the beautiful thing with the US, that with a little bit of sweat and hard work, “the people” can become “the employer”, which doesn’t constitute being “the man”, but instead an entrepreneurial who happens to be good ol’ Joe Six Pack.

As a small (micro) business owner myself, there are already burdens. More stipulations on paid time off would hinder me from growing my business, thus not creating any new jobs. Now if I got a bit bigger, lets say 30+ employees, then I could defintely see doing a percentage of their salary based on experience, tenure and work performance. 200-500 employees, and the percentage would be higher, and so on and so forth.

Another example. Let’s say Charlie has a small business with 15 employees. That is 15 employees he is able to pay comfortably based on his workload and revenue into the company. Charlie himself isn’t rich either, just comfortable. Because of the nature of his business, it attracts more women, so 9 of his employees are female. Due to forces unexplained by science, 4 women become pregnant in the same span of time (I’ve seen it happen, usually around April for some reason). Ok, several months later they take time off.

Charlie is now 4 team players down. Of course, he’ll need to hire someone temporarily to fill their shoes, so that means he’ll basically be doubling what he would normally have to pay out to continue paying people who are not generating income PLUS their temporary replacement.

Now lay out some dominoes, knock the first one over, and you experience a trickle down effect that will first hurt the expendable employees and then go elsewhere to effect other areas which will hurt growth and other employees.

If this was Google, Apple, Target, etc, no biggie, however not everyone has the sort of deep pockets to afford this luxury to your employee.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Google didn’t already offer this, but I bet you Ted’s Hardware in Mayberry, North Carolina can’t. Google is known for its progressive, employee friendly work environment. However, they had to build before they could afford those luxuries to their workers.

Being an employer doesn’t mean you’re rich.