Biden Proposes Paying More People Not to Worki
I sit on a lot of boards of trade groups and business roundtables of various sorts. And the #1 exclusive topic -- seriously, we talk about nothing else right now -- is the inability to hire people because the government is still paying millions or people to not work. In restaurants, campgrounds, stores, manufacturers and scores of other industries, companies are ready right now to put more people to work but cannot because the government is paying people too much money to stay home and they can't get the workers they need. Bounties, higher salaries, and incentives are all futile when candidate after candidate says that they won't look for work until the government payments stop.
So of course, the Biden Administration is proposing to pay more people not to work:
According to a White House fact sheet, the AFP would create a national comprehensive paid family and medical leave program, funded through tax increases, and paying workers up to $4,000 a month. Under that cap, it would replace a minimum of two-thirds of average weekly wages, rising to 80 percent for the lowest-wage workers.
The proposal does not define "lowest-wage workers," however, and left out details about whether eligibility would differ from current FMLA. Those specifics will be addressed when Congress drafts an actual bill.
Biden proposed that the program be phased in over a 10-year period, guaranteeing 12 weeks of paid parental, family illness, personal illness or safety-related leave by year 10. Workers would receive three days of bereavement leave per year starting in year one.
This is one of those bait and switch programs that are sold on the most extreme forms of eligibility -- ie they talk about leave to help a dying child but in the FMLA there are so many random and poorly defined leave rules that pretty much everyone qualifies. We had a woman in California who worked for us that liked the job but hated the busy summer season and so scheduled elective surgery every year around Memorial Day to get out of working the summer -- and that was when it was unpaid! I can't even imagine the abuse of a leave program paying up to $48,000 a year for not working.
