Gyroscopic Investing

I will never again hire an employee.  There is no upside in it for a business owner.  The independent contractor rules are indeed tricky, but the downsides of an employee are huge.  I would take a partner before an employee - and I hate taking partners.

Yes, the problem is exactly that people who don't have kids can never take that much time off (12 weeks here, not 6).

I'd be in favor of a system where everyone (male, female, single, married etc) is entitled to a periodic 12 week sabbatical, for whatever you want to use it for.  You would be entitled to that sabbatical for each X years you work full time.  If someone wants to take it early, it would have to be worked out on a case by case basis (e.g. borrowing against future sabbaticals & vacation time), but the idea is that the person would NOT be automatically entitled to a paid early sabbatical.

This would help with the situation where someone gets hired and then shows up 6 months pregnant.  That's happened twice here in the past few years.  One physician in my group is a woman with 3 kids and fairly liberal political outlook, and she has become so exasperated with this situation that she has outright suggested limiting future hires to men.  And yes, in my specific situation there are only 7 physicians in the group, so even one person being away is a significant hardship for everyone else.  I understand the social situation, but the solution of having a small number of co-workers, or a small business running on a shoestring, be the ones to pay the cost doesn't seem fair to me. The fairest solution would be a taxpayer-funded pool of funds that would reimburse employers, perhaps in combination with the above sabbatical system.

One of the many perks while I worked at Palm in the early 2000s was a 4 week sabbatical every 4 years.  Unfortunately, our group got shut down just prior to us making it to 4 years, but they were nice enough to pay it out instead. 

I was looking forward to it.  Instead I was laid off...

How could somebody be hired without the employer knowing they're 6 months pregnant?  That seems unlikely.

I'm a bit surprised that you would advocate for a tax-funded sabbatical system, although I wouldn't necessarily reject it.  But having a child isn't the same thing as taking a vacation - the reason that tax funded parental leave makes a lot of sense is that early bonding with children is really important, and if it doesn't happen, then kids suffer and we probably have to deal with issues down the road because of that as well.

I don't think anyone is arguing that bonding with children isn't tremendously important.  It's just that companies don't like being forced to pay full salary for that bonding time, and coworkers don't appreciate the inequitable time off policy. 

The larger issue here is the expectation that women not have pregnancy considered in the hiring process under any circumstances, but they still demand special treatment after they're hired.  It's a one-way street.

I understand that.

But, it's no vacation - caring for a young child is emotionally and physically draining.  It's not like they're on a beach sipping margaritas 

Is it illegal for an employer to not hire somebody because they're pregnant, and will have to take time off soon after they're hired?

Well, I looked it up, and it is illegal.  That does seem strange to me - why should an employer have to hire somebody they know will be taking a bunch of time off very shortly?

But parts of the law involve treating pregnant women the same as "temporarily disabled" employees, which sort of makes sense.

I remember as a kid asking my father why he left so early for work - it was about a 30 minute drive and he always left at least an hour early.  His answer has always stuck with me:  They are paying me to work for them, not change a flat tire if I have one. 

... M

My first boss out of school always gave me crap if I ever showed up one minute after the 8AM start time.  He'd use the example of what would happen if you had a flat tire on the way to work....

I hated the guy at the time, but he was probably the best thing that could have happened to a green college graduate who thought he knew everything!

I was reminded of this thread when I read this article:

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/d ... son-222064

Supporters of Carson’s efforts, however, praised the innovations he pushed for in the military’s personnel policies, including better accommodating the participation of women.

"Carson understood that our military is stronger when it provides service women with equal opportunities to compete for all combat jobs, and provides career flexibility and personnel benefits — like freezing eggs, expanding maternity leave and increasing mandatory hours for childcare facilities — to encourage service women to pursue longer military careers," said Judy Patterson, CEO of the Service Women's Action Network.

Maternity leave? Freezing eggs? Childcare? Correct me if I'm wrong but the point of the military is to kill people, break their stuff, and project the power to do those things, no?

Stepping back, I think there's a good reason why we see initiatives like this popping up everywhere nowadays. The rest of our society has profoundly failed women and children. Raising children is enormously more stressful and difficult and expensive than it was in even the recent past, for a wide variety of reasons. So people seem to try to take institutions that seem prosperous and successful and say, "hey, maybe you could take some of that money and success and use it to make life a bit better for women to bring children into the world, to maybe offset how hellish it is to do this these days. How about it?"

But if you think about it, we're going about things backwards. Fertility rates in the developed world were much higher even a generation or two ago, before most of these benefits existed. The lack of 3 months paid maternity leave didn't seem to have a negative effect on the birthrate. Scandinavian countries that have some of the most generous benefits run ad campaigns urging their citizens to have sex and conceive children. Birthrates are near or below replacement rates in most western European countries. Clearly the existence of these policies has not solved the underlying problem, only perhaps eased the pain of its effects.

So let's really step back and ask the tough questions. Why is it so much harder for respectable, middle-class folks to raise children today than it was before, to hear baby boomers describe it? Maybe here are a few reasons:

• Modern parenting norms place emphasis on parental involvement, availability, and safety -> no more putting the kids out and telling them to come back at dinnertime etc, and no huge throng of kids always around for your kids to go outside and play with
• Weak in-person social and familial networks due to remote social media relationships and moving around for work all the time -> decline of extended families and hiring babysitters, nannies, and daycare instead of handing the kids off to grandma
• Poor quality public schools lead many well-to-do parents to enroll children in private schools, which is enormously expensive and increases the necessary career success to afford the financial burden
• Culture of higher education -> more women delay childbirth 4 or more years and many end up indebted and in no financial condition to have children
• Perceived or real necessity for two incomes to have a comfortable life due to wage stagnation and the above financial challenges -> many to most women work instead of raising children at home, increasing domestic costs due to necessity to outsource tasks (food, childcare, cleaning, etc) to paid third parties

Once you think about these things, I think it makes sense that band-aids like paid maternity leave, subsidized childcare, and things like that aren't really going to change the calculus. After your leave is up, you've still got a 3 month-old who still wants to breastfeed for another year. You've still got little to no familial support during a really trying time. You're still working, and you have no time to clean the house or prepare healthy meals for your family. You're still outsourcing raising your kids to third parties much of the time, subsidized or no. You're probably still paying down student loans on your worthless degree that opened few if any doors for you. And you're considered a bad mother if despite all of these pressures, you don't carve out a huge amount of quality time with each individual child and don't have them potty trained by three and reading by four and psychologically healthy with no obvious emotional problems.

Little wonder, huh?

PS,

You eloquently put into a lot of words where I would simply say that society has made it unattractive for women to "just" be mothers and homemakers.  The word homemaker even feels bad to write, but I step back and think about it and it is the most important function in all of society and we degrade it.

Good luck rolling back the clock though. 

PS -- Obviously this all revolves around being able to live on one income, which I know is exceedingly difficult for many.

All excellent points!  Thanks PS...I'd sort of forgot the big picture, which is that full time office jobs and parenting do not mix for a whole host of reasons.

I will say that both of my sisters and my sister-in-law found ways to raise families without invoking paid maternity leave.  One became a full-time homemaker, one worked part time and made sure her shifts were scheduled for times when her husband would be home (and also picked a career based on shift work), and the third one was initially full time at home, and is now starting her own part time business.  In two families the husband made a very good - but not outrageous - wage, but in my brother's case his earnings (architect) are not far above the U.S. median.

My friends mostly have similar stories.  One is a mom of 3 and partner in a Chicago law firm, and her husband is the stay at home dad.  Another started a software business from home that's quite successful - 29 authored books on Amazon at last count.  Also a mom of 3, and her husband earns a hill of beans as a physics professor (astronomy, no less).

So maybe what's required here is a bit of imagination combined with a reality check.

I was feeling especially thoughtful about this today because my wife woke up with a horrendous stomach bug this morning and has been in bed all day. I took a sick day to take care of her and the kids and every time I do this it's brought home just how practically impossible it would be for me to keep my job and raise them on my own without her. I'd need like 36 hours in a day, and probably I'd end up outsourcing it all to expensive daycare and having zero hobbies or time for home improvement on my not-yet-finished house (gotta outsource that too).

Basically what's important to understand I think is that raising children is a full-time job. That full-time job can be accomplished by you, or by your spouse, or split between the two of you, or split between the two of you and extended family members or paid outsiders or TV, but it's still a full-time job for someone.

Yes, there are a lot of clever ways to deal with this. My own mother did the "flexible schedule" thing as a college professor; you're not teaching 9 to 5, and either she or my father was in the house at any period during the day. But in the end, the easiest and most implementable approach is just the traditional one of having one employed spouse and one homemaker spouse. Saves money, improves parental contact and the healthfulness of meals, etc. It doesn't work for everyone of course, but it's worked for thousands of years.

Some of the unhappiest women I've ever met have been first-wave feminists who tried to "have it all" with children and a high-powered full-time job. Some of the happiest ones were full-time mothers who never had careers or full-time career-minded women who never had children. Following what you naturally gravitate to is probably gonna lead to the most happiness. You have to be honest with yourself, and I think it's a rare person who gravitates equally as much to parenting as well as their career. And those people often have to make unhappy compromises to jam everything together.

Pointedstick wrote: Maternity leave? Freezing eggs? Childcare? Correct me if I'm wrong but the point of the military is to kill people, break their stuff, and project the power to do those things, no?

Shhhh!  Don't tell them that.  It's like an open secret to acknowledge you're just an expendable tool of the politicians.  No one goes into the military for a career without first dealing with this cognitive dissonance in some way (including completely ignoring or dealing with it at all).

Let's face it...  the military is the Job Guarantee policy for the colored and/or the middle/lower class.  What else are all those 75% of college attendees that drop-out going to do?

TennPaGa wrote: I would say that the need for 2 incomes is not perceived, but real.

It all depends on the incomes and the spending level, if course. The average full-time income in 2014 (dunno if it's median or mean) was $57,534. Probably a bit higher for males and a bit lower for females. Some rather blue-collar accessible industries have significantly higher incomes than average (non-petroleum mining: $84k, utilities $101k, rail transportation $97k). $57k/yr doesn't seem like an income level that's impossible to raise a family on alone. It's more than double my family of four's yearly spending. Even if I had a mortgage or rent like I imagine most families do (70%, at least), it still wouldn't break $35k/yr, and we don't live a particularly monk-like existence. There are four of us. We have a car, and not a hyper-miling Geo Metro or something, either. We sometimes use disposable diapers. We buy baby clothes at Walmart instead of goodwill or snagging free deals on Craigslist. We go out to eat at least once a week on average. We occasionally go on vacation via air travel. We save up and buy nice furniture one piece at a time, sometimes with Craigslist deals, but sometimes at retail. We spend entirely too much on home improvement. It doesn't feel like we're living some kind of life of deprivation. All we do is try to wring some financial efficiency out of our spending.

The extent to which people feel they need more than $50k a year reflects how bloated the American lifestyle is, IMHO. There's usually a lot of fat that can be trimmed without much if any hardship, leading to huge benefits like letting mom stay home if she wants, ditching a second car, canceling the all-day daycare, having enough money to move to a neighborhood with a better public school district and cancelling the private school tuition, and so on. We're hooked on the idea that solving our money problems simply requires more money, when in fact many of our money problems are usually based on previous unexamined decisions and lifestyle choices that are very easily changeable and not amenable to disappearing with more money, since they were caused by a spending-related mindset in the first place.

Pointedstick wrote:

TennPaGa wrote: I would say that the need for 2 incomes is not perceived, but real.

It all depends on the incomes and the spending level, if course. The average full-time income in 2014 (dunno if it's median or mean) was $57,534. Probably a bit higher for males and a bit lower for females. Some rather blue-collar accessible industries have significantly higher incomes than average (non-petroleum mining: $84k, utilities $101k, rail transportation $97k). $57k/yr doesn't seem like an income level that's impossible to raise a family on alone. It's more than double my family of four's yearly spending. Even if I had a mortgage or rent like I imagine most families do (70%, at least), it still wouldn't break $35k/yr, and we don't live a particularly monk-like existence. There are four of us. We have a car, and not a hyper-miling Geo Metro or something, either. We sometimes use disposable diapers. We buy baby clothes at Walmart instead of goodwill or snagging free deals on Craigslist. We go out to eat at least once a week on average. We occasionally go on vacation via air travel. We save up and buy nice furniture one piece at a time, sometimes with Craigslist deals, but sometimes at retail. We spend entirely too much on home improvement. It doesn't feel like we're living some kind of life of deprivation. All we do is try to wring some financial efficiency out of our spending.

The extent to which people feel they need more than $50k a year reflects how bloated the American lifestyle is, IMHO. There's usually a lot of fat that can be trimmed without much if any hardship, leading to huge benefits like letting mom stay home if she wants, ditching a second car, canceling the all-day daycare, having enough money to move to a neighborhood with a better public school district and cancelling the private school tuition, and so on. We're hooked on the idea that solving our money problems simply requires more money, when in fact many of our money problems are usually based on previous unexamined decisions and lifestyle choices that are very easily changeable and not amenable to disappearing with more money, since they were caused by a spending-related mindset in the first place.

Well said.  See the last sentence in my #21 reply earlier in the thread. 

... M

TennPaGa wrote: I would say that the need for 2 incomes is not perceived, but real.

I don't know.  I wonder how much of this can be controlled by simple measures that many people don't even consider.  How many people are trying to keep up appearances and spending themselves to death in doing so?  I know I am not, but I know a few dual income families where if one income was lost they would be in serious trouble within a month.

--Do you need that $150/mo cable/satellite TV?
--Do you need $200+ a month cell service for your family?
--Do you need $35,000+ cars to drive around?
--Do you need that 2500+ square foot home?
--How much can be saved on childcare with one parent at home?

Add all these up.  I have no idea on daycare costs, but I quickly saw a range of 500-1500/mo.  That's one child.  Say $2000/mo for two kids?  Is that reasonable?

Keep one parent at home, switch to low cost cell service, use your antenna for TV, drive cheaper cars and live in a smaller home and I figure you can lop over $3000/mo in costs, or a $36,000 a year salary.

Cars especially for me are a marker.  I watch people when driving around.  There are tons of young people driving cars that are 30k+.  Now either they have kick ass high paying jobs or more likely are spending a decent chunk of their salary to pay their car loan.  I've never bought a car over $25k, and I never will unless I win the Lotto. 

I most likely am oversimplifying here and it is difficult for many to go to one income. 

Cortopassi wrote:

TennPaGa wrote: I would say that the need for 2 incomes is not perceived, but real.

I don't know.  I wonder how much of this can be controlled by simple measures that many people don't even consider.  How many people are trying to keep up appearances and spending themselves to death in doing so?  I know I am not, but I know a few dual income families where if one income was lost they would be in serious trouble within a month.

--Do you need that $150/mo cable/satellite TV?
--Do you need $200+ a month cell service for your family?
--Do you need $35,000+ cars to drive around?
--Do you need that 2500+ square foot home?
--How much can be saved on childcare with one parent at home?

Thee are great examples of the fat I mentioned. Similar, almost-as-good services can often be obtained for almost no reduction in quality. For example our cell phone bills are about $20 a month using AirVoice, a pay-as-you-go MNVO. We have no cable TV, just a $10/mo Netflix subscription for occasional TV show watching. We have one car that cost $16,000 (too much, in fact; I let myself get ripped off as an inexperienced car-buyer). Our house is only 1,300 square feet and it's perfectly sufficient for a family of four. My wife stays home and so our childcare bill is a very cheap $65/mo few-hours-a-day-two-days a week kind of deal that's mostly for social development. None of these things feel like sacrifices in the least bit compared to their gold-plated-10x-as expensive versions.

Cars and houses in particular really kill people. 2,500 square feet is nuts unless you're like a Mormon family with six kids. What a nightmare to clean. And houses of that size usually have very inefficient floorpans; lots of space that's unused and unusable. And cars--my city is full of poor people driving around in $50,000 trucks that never see a day of work in their service lives. Some of them are jacked up and sporting monster truck tires, too. It's all status-seeking, as though anyone still cares what your ride or your house says about your level of wealth in an era of cheap credit. People keep stretching themselves to pay for these things despite the fact that everyone emotionally understands that they're now disconnected from your actual status because you don't need to be rich to make the payments.

Pointedstick wrote:

drumminj wrote: Many folks here seem focused on the cost to the company (rightly so), but as someone choosing to be childless, I struggle with paid leave policies as I don't get extra paid "vacation".  It's a benefit that only mothers and fathers get, and the rest of us actually have to work 48 weeks a year (depending on the company's policy).

I get it -- kids are important.  But what if I want to take 6 weeks off to help go rebuild after a natural disaster, or go donate my time to an animal rescue?  That has to come out of my personal vacation time, of course.  But choose to further overpopulate the planet?  Here, have six weeks paid leave!!!

To be fair, the people overpopulating the planet probably aren't the ones working for tech companies and getting paid leave for their one or two children. It's the people who make Idiocracy seem like a documentary.

Idiocracy is a documentary.

Mountaineer wrote:

MangoMan wrote:

MachineGhost wrote: I know that sentiment very well but you are an anti-feminist now.  We have to pay for everyone's poor choices, especially their inane breeding.  Suck it up.

I am not anti-feminist, I am pro-small business. This is the kind of crap, just like minimum wage, that makes me want to not hire people.

I recently lost an employee to motherhood. I was willing to hold her job for 6 weeks [unpaid] because she was a good quality, long tenured employee. But can you imagine the havoc this would have created for me?  I only have 2 employees, so one out means working with a 50% reduction in staff. In the end, she decided that she wasn't coming back anyway.

I'm with you on this one re. paid maternity leave and minimum wage and the consequences thereof.  I'll offer my view (probably rather unpopular).  I think one of the most valuable vocations a person can have is that of mother.  So valuable in fact, that I think our families and society would be far better than it is if the mothers spent all their time raising children and caring for family instead of working and thus having to hire nannys or daycare services.  Fathers also have a very important vocation - providing (e.g. money, shelter, security, food) for their wives and children.  Things begin to go downhill when roles are blurred.  And very downhill when the desire to keep up with the Joneses across the street becomes more important than raising the next generation.  I also understand that our current "system" does not foster that view and two income families are sometimes a necessity instead of a luxury.  We have traded strong families for two car garages, McMansions, fancy vacations, throw away spouses when they get boring, and eating out daily.

... M

Yes, but all that old-fashioned patriarchal oppression is overrated. Sure, it brought us everything we see today in the way of material goods and standard of living, but it required men and women to act according to complementary roles and follow rules. Where's the benefit to gigantic government in that?

jafs wrote: I understand that.

But, it's no vacation - caring for a young child is emotionally and physically draining.  It's not like they're on a beach sipping margaritas 

Is it illegal for an employer to not hire somebody because they're pregnant, and will have to take time off soon after they're hired?

Well, I looked it up, and it is illegal.  That does seem strange to me - why should an employer have to hire somebody they know will be taking a bunch of time off very shortly?

Because feminism.

Pointedstick wrote: Stepping back, I think there's a good reason why we see initiatives like this popping up everywhere nowadays. The rest of our society has profoundly failed women and children.

So this is another example of "weak men screwing feminism up"? See dalrock's articles on this topic here: https://dalrock.wordpress.com/category/ ... minism-up/

tl;dr: Women (feminists) have rearranged society to their liking at the tremendous expense of men, but rather than stepping back, they are doubling down. No attempt to do anything about this issue (or any related issue) will actually solve anything, just as happens when a failed government project is supposed to be fixed by another government project.

Pointedstick wrote: Some of the unhappiest women I've ever met have been first-wave feminists who tried to "have it all" with children and a high-powered full-time job. Some of the happiest ones were full-time mothers who never had careers or full-time career-minded women who never had children. Following what you naturally gravitate to is probably gonna lead to the most happiness. You have to be honest with yourself, and I think it's a rare person who gravitates equally as much to parenting as well as their career. And those people often have to make unhappy compromises to jam everything together.

Don't try to explain this to feminists. That will make you a patriarchal oppressor!

That's because facts are misogynistic...

Libertarian666 wrote: Women (feminists) have rearranged society to their liking at the tremendous expense of men,

OT: At least women are half the population (not that I don't agree with you). Aren't many progressive policies rearranging society to the liking of small groups at the expense of larger groups? 

Benko wrote:

Libertarian666 wrote: Women (feminists) have rearranged society to their liking at the tremendous expense of men,

OT: At least women are half the population (not that I don't agree with you). Aren't many progressive policies rearranging society to the liking of small groups at the expense of larger groups?

Yes, but the people who are actually privileged by feminism are a very small part of society: unattractive women and highly attractive men.

Everyone else gets hosed.

TennPaGa wrote: While this is all true, the fact remains that this is *not* how most people view their circumstances.  Now, I know the libertarian view of this is "fuck 'em".  But I tend to view this as a systems problem (similar to your current narrow streets kick ). People think they need to do and have all this stuff because that is what our culture teaches us is necessary -- it is a feature of the current system.  That is, the culture teaches us that this treadmill strategy is the only way to have any security.

Not to mention the ironic fact that people like you (and me) are able to save as much as we currently do because of the awful choices by the rest of society: they buy the crap you and I are paid big bucks to produce.

I don't have a solution, but coming back to an earlier theme... It all seems very fragile.

I think breaking out seems easy for us here because we're all highly intelligent independent thinkers. But you're right, we need to remember how bound by convention and conformity most people really are.

However, we're all (mostly?) also systems thinkers, and a pitfall we can fall into is thinking we need to change the whole system itself before anything happens. Outside of engineering, that's actually backwards: you change enough people's minds and then they change the system.

Ultimately, you're right that it's about cultural messages, but that's really something hopeful because we can make an individual difference. I was hosting a dinner party a few months ago and one of the young women in attendance got to talking about money and how hard it was to make ends meet etc. She is an English professor and her husband is a civil engineer. I began talking about frugality, Mr. Money Mustache, and the like, and pointed out a few examples of how easy it was for our family to substantially reduce our spending in a variety of meaningful ways. We got into debt snowball tactics, high savings rate, and other related subjects. I'll never forget how her eyes got like dinner plates after a couple of examples. She respected me, and to hear this message was like a revelatory experience for her. She even sent me a paper thank you card (through the mail and everything)!

We need to be the change we want to see in the world. The message of financial freedom through simple, painless changes is an exceptionally attractive one to most people, and you will become practically magnetic. We don't need to change the world; we just need to change one person at a time. And then they'll do likewise and sooner or later truck sales are in the toilet and Ford can't figure out what happened. Find people who are receptive to your message and spread it--gently, honestly, and with genuineness and integrity.