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posted by martyb on Thursday August 06 2015, @04:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the in-dependent-views dept.

On Tuesday, August 4th, Neflix announced on their blog that they would begin offering new parents a progressive parental leave policy:

...Today we're introducing an unlimited leave policy for new moms and dads that allows them to take off as much time as they want during the first year after a child's birth or adoption.

The Boston Globe picked up the story earlier today and compared Netflix's new policy to Google's, which offers 18 weeks of paid maternity leave and 12 weeks of "baby bonding" time. The Boston Globe also notes:

The US and Papua New Guinea are the only countries among 185 nations and territories that hadn't imposed government-mandated laws requiring employers to pay mothers while on leave with their babies, according to a study released last year by the United Nations' International Labor Organization.

This new policy "covers all of the roughly 2,000 people working at [Netflix's] Internet video and DVD-by-mail services, according to the Los Gatos, California, company."

However, not all media voices are pleased with this change. Suzanne Venker, author of the recent book The Two-Income Trap: Why Parents Are Choosing To Stay Home, writes for Time :

Offering new parents full pay for up to one year is akin to putting a band-aid on a gaping wound. The needs of children are huge, and they do not end at one year. On the contrary, they just begin. Taking a year off of work to meet those needs merely scratches the surface.

What does Soylent think? Should companies offer new parents lengthy paid leave after they bring a new bundle of joy into the world, or do generous policies do more harm than good?


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by jdccdevel on Thursday August 06 2015, @07:47PM

    by jdccdevel (1329) on Thursday August 06 2015, @07:47PM (#219237) Journal

    From what I've seen around here, renting vs owning often works out to be almost the same, month to month, maybe a little more to own. That's really short sighted though, you need to think long-term. (if you can afford to....)

    The difference is equity. When you own, the portion of your mortgage payment that goes towards the principle is really going back into your pocket. You can think of it like "Rent with a built in savings plan". The interest on the mortgage is your true "rent", and the rest is just going into a "house savings".

    It can be a bit of a gamble. If the housing market crashes and you have to sell, you will probably take a hit. That said, if you are smart and didn't over-extend yourself, you will still have something even then. On the other hand, if you do it right, you can make a decent profit when you have to sell. (That's how people make a living flipping houses, after all.) And as long as you can make your payments, you don't HAVE to sell.

    It's a 20+ year investment. Once you've stuck with it long enough, you've paid for your mortgage, and you don't have to pay anymore! Also, when you're old an can't work anymore, you can use your house equity to support a decent lifestyle until you die.

    Using any windfalls to pay off your mortgage quicker is also one of the safest long term investments you can make, since the mortgage rate is always tied to inflation. Through the magic of compound interest, anything you can apply against the mortgage principle will pay itself back many, many times over.

    Most people already know all this though, and would love to buy something. The problem is they're living paycheque to paycheque, and can't save up enough for a down payment.

    That's the big problem, for far to many. Lots of people can't even save enough to bootstrap their lives out of perpetual poverty, no matter how hard they work.

    These are the "Working Poor", and their ranks are growing.

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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Francis on Thursday August 06 2015, @10:34PM

    by Francis (5544) on Thursday August 06 2015, @10:34PM (#219298)

    You're right on about the location. In some places it's cheaper to buy a house, so if you can get the loan and down payment there's little reason to rent. However, in other places the rent is less than the mortgage would be, so you can rent the apartment, stash the difference between the rent and the mortgage into some sort of interest paying securities and make a massive downpayment or even just buy it outright. If you're willing to wait long enough, sometimes there's an economic downturn and you can pick up some property for less.

    I'm not personally interested in owning a house, I'd probably go the condo route. A decent condo sometimes comes with perks like better parking, a pool or club room.

  • (Score: 2) by mojo chan on Friday August 07 2015, @07:30AM

    by mojo chan (266) on Friday August 07 2015, @07:30AM (#219462)

    Renting is almost always more expensive. You have to pay the mortgage plus professional maintenance that you could do more cheaply yourself plus profit for the landlord. You can't even switch utility supplier to get a better deal. It will always be more than you would pay to own the same property yourself, otherwise the landlord would be losing money.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    • (Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Friday August 07 2015, @08:57AM

      by TheGratefulNet (659) on Friday August 07 2015, @08:57AM (#219480)

      you must not have had the kinds of landlords I have had.

      they put NO money into maintenance. what 'maint' they did, they did themselves, they fucked it up and ruined things. one time, the landlady tried to bilk me for over $400 on 2 items that had no damage at all. but oh - during the winter, the heater failed, it costed $400 to fix, and when I moved out 6mos later, yeah, I got a mystery $400 bill for things that were entirely fabricated (false, fraud).

      if you live in a large complex, it might be maintained professionally. if you live in a house that a private owner is renting out, oh man, you are mostly on your own and those landlords tend to be unwilling ones (ie, they 'had' to move to put their little snowflakes into a 'better school' and they found they could not sell their first house, so they rent it out. but they have no rental property experience and they often don't even know basic US laws and customs.)

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 07 2015, @01:08PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday August 07 2015, @01:08PM (#219548) Journal

    What savings do you have when student loans you incurred to get that job siphon all of it away? What margin do you have when you're living in a market that pays salaries high enough to clear anything over your student loan payments, but then siphons it away again in higher cost of living?

    I'm frankly surprised to see so many giving TheGratefulNet so much flak for what he's said. The only thing I can figure is it's coming from millenials who still believe the marketing hype. It's tragic that given how much inflation occurred in the cost of higher education over the last 20 years, they're even more screwed than the generations that immediately preceded them.

    What TheGratefulNet is saying resonates because he's talking about something systemic. It's not his individual fault that his circumstances are what they are. He, like millions of others, have played by the rules and has even gone above and beyond by tackling a technical career that most couldn't manage or even want to try at. Yet, here he is.

    Other posters have doubted there is an Illuminati somewhere planning the destruction of the American middle class (and the middle classes of other countries as well), but there is. I have seen it. I have been in the salons and the private clubs of the ultra-wealthy on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I have sat in meetings at the top echelons of government and the UN (with American presidents, no less). I have heard their conversations and felt their attitude drip from everything they say and do. It's not as formal and defined as a meeting of Dr. Evil with his minions; it's more accurate to describe it as an Illuminati culture. You can watch the deals being cut with a wink-wink, nudge-nudge that echoes with the sound of 100,000 innocent civilians having their lives and fortunes vaporized. In everything they do there's an undercurrent of rapacious greed, lust for power, and evil. And it would shock and disillusion the thousands of starry eyed kiddies out there to know that all sides, right-wing, left-wing, whatever, all take exactly the same actions while speaking honeyed words of "doing the right thing."

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.