A National Parental Leave Policy

AEI has a piece on this; unfortunately, their piece proceeds from some false premises.

Developing a National Paid Parental Leave Policy

It’s interesting that folks of a bent proceed from such claims. They always decline to establish, for instance, that we need a national policy for parental leave. It’s such a widespread failure that I have to conclude it’s deliberately Alinsky-esque in its attempt to control the discussion.

The United States is one of two countries without a national policy providing new mothers with rights to paid leave following the birth of a child.

And then this non sequitur keeps getting dragged out as if it matters that we don’t look like the rest of the world. Never mind that, more substantively, we aren’t like the rest of the world, so there’s no reason we should look like the rest. There aren’t very many federated republics extant.

At present, we simply do not know what the ideal leave program for the US would look like.

Yes we do. It’s what each of the 50 States in our republic think one would look like–it’s what the citizens of each of those States think is best for themselves. Full stop.

The Noise of Freedom

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi is worried.  The European is afraid of any relaxation of banking regulations in the US; it might cause some instability.  Never mind that instability is a Critical Item for innovation and growth, whether economic, political, technological, or anywhere else.  As he testified before the European Parliament Committee on Economic Affairs,

The last thing we need at this point in time is the relaxation of regulation….

The fact that we are not seeing the development of significant financial stability risk is the reward of the action that legislators and regulators and supervisors have been undertaking since the crisis erupted[.]

No, the suppressed economic growth we’ve experienced is the punishment from the action that legislators and regulators and supervisors have been undertaking.  The noise of freedom and innovation and growth is so terrifying that the punishment is better than the progress.

Or the bureaucrat simply is dismayed at the potential loss of power because the contagion from the US might spread to Europe.