Sanders Endorses Small Tax Hike On All To Fund Family Leave

[JDPriestly]

61. But what Bernie is suggesting is just a wiser way to pay for things we pay for anyway.

If a poor mother has a baby, she will probably get government assistance. If a middle class woman has a baby, she either forgoes her income during the first weeks, or hires a babysitter. A babysitter is supposed to be paid at least $7.25 per hour, in many cities now, much more.

If we give each mother a few months of family leave with a new baby during which time she receives money if she pays at home, we have healthier, happier babies and the cost evens out over time. We could possibly even it out by giving stay-at-home mothers a small tax deduction instead of the pay.

But we should all pay the cost of mothers, our mothers, our wives, ourselves staying home with our babies during the first say three months over the course of our lives. It won't cost much. People don't have babies all that often.

The statistics.

2014 US population: 318,857,056
minus 37.6% of people under 18 and over 65
Equals about 190,000,000 working people to share the cost of either a set-rate amount or a percentage or the total pay for about 3,932,181 (maximum) moms of new babies.

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html

Employers would pay half the payroll tax amount and the working people would pay the other half.

Number of births: 3,932,181
Birth rate: 12.4 per 1,000 population

Remember, Bernie wants to raise the cap on the income amounts from which Social Security, i.e., payroll taxes are deducted.

That would make it a lot fairer.

If other countries can do this, we can too.

It's such an important program. But maybe we really don't care about our mothers and babies as much as they do in India or Russia or Germany. What do you think?