Please have the decency to be explicit about what you are saying. No government, federal or otherwise, has any means to pay for anything. All money comes from taxes. All taxes come from individuals. What you are really saying is "I think all of the taxpaying individuals in the United States should pay for women's maternity leave."
Once you recognize that, I can do no better than quote P.J. O'Rourke:
"...remember that all tax revenue is the result of holding a gun to somebody's head.
Not paying taxes is against the law.
If you don't pay taxes, you'll be fined.
If you don't pay the fine, you'll be jailed.
If you try to escape from jail, you'll be shot.
Thus I -- in my role as citizen and voter -- am going to shoot you -- in your role as taxpayer and ripe suck -- if you don't pay your fair share of the national tab.
Therefore, every time the government spends money on anything, you have to ask yourself, "Would I kill my kindly, gray-haired mother for this?"
So, would you kill your mother to pay for someone else's maternity leave?
That contorted chain of logic is quite striking. And even then you miss the other questions you need to ask yourself.
"Would my kindly, gray-haired mother refuse to pay taxes for this?"
"If she didn't, would my kindly, gray-haired mother really manage to escape from prison?"
"Even if she did escape, am I certain that she would be shot instead of apprehended and re-arrested like the majority of other escapees?"
And this is, of course, all conditional on the idea that the government would simply throw you in jail right off instead of garnishing wages or seizing assets to cover the tab (you know, the things that would actually happen).
And the best part about all of this is that, all you've really come down to is the idea that maybe the parent commenter didn't realize that governments can't pay for things without taxes, as if that very basic feature of how governments work had momentarily escaped dmm just as he was typing to an HN <textarea>.
Every decent behavior anybody has in public can be explained by 'holding a gun to their head' by the same chain of logic. You spit on the sidewalk, you get fined. And so on.
This holds the average citizen in contempt, and I reject the whole sophomoric chain of 'causation'. People behave because they're civilized and orderly and want their community to thrive.
So lets get the conversation back to, how do we want to maintain a standard of living that benefits us all. Through taxes and rules and institutions, like we have always done.
As a member of a "society", be it a country or a family or anything between, you have to abide by the customary procedure by which decisions affecting everyone are made. (Maybe they are majority vote, maybe they are by autocratic rule, maybe they are endless discussions in an effort to reach consensus, or whatever.) In some cases, you may disagree with the outcome of such decisions, and it is then up to you to decide whether the advantages of remaining associated with the group outweigh the disadvantages. If the answer is that they do not, you are (in most cases in the civilized world) free to leave. Such is the case here, because you are in fact free to not pay taxes to the American government: There is a procedure by which you can resign your American citizenship, and no gun will be held to your head. (You will however be forced to pay $2500 or something for the privilege.)
If you remain, you do so because you think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, even after having lost the argument about whether maternity leave should be paid for by taxes. No one is holding a gun to your head, even in the most extreme situation imaginable.
But fortunately I wouldn't have to, because she pays her taxes. And is proud to, last I checked.
As you can tell, I reject your whole line of thinking.
It makes a bunch of assumptions to carry the situation to extremes, and then innocently asks, "you wouldn't want that extreme outcome, would you?". The same argument can be made against any form of regulation whatsoever.
Please have the decency to be explicit about what you are saying. No government, federal or otherwise, has any means to pay for anything. All money comes from taxes. All taxes come from individuals. What you are really saying is "I think all of the taxpaying individuals in the United States should pay for women's maternity leave."
Once you recognize that, I can do no better than quote P.J. O'Rourke: "...remember that all tax revenue is the result of holding a gun to somebody's head.
Not paying taxes is against the law. If you don't pay taxes, you'll be fined. If you don't pay the fine, you'll be jailed. If you try to escape from jail, you'll be shot.
Thus I -- in my role as citizen and voter -- am going to shoot you -- in your role as taxpayer and ripe suck -- if you don't pay your fair share of the national tab.
Therefore, every time the government spends money on anything, you have to ask yourself, "Would I kill my kindly, gray-haired mother for this?"
So, would you kill your mother to pay for someone else's maternity leave?