Marty Griffin Show Hour 03 062626

Okay, folks, Brandon McGinley from the Post Gazette, filling in for Marty today. I accidentally, I accidentally segued during the last segment to a conversation about the still ongoing situation with Sarah Enamarados, Allegheny County Executive Sarah Enamarado's parental leave proposal. which has fallen a bit out of the news, but I will say I have been surprised. I have been surprised at its staying power and the sense of the conversation in the city. It comes up very frequently. And I have been even more surprised that when it comes up in media conversations, it's almost always brought up in a negative light. Now, my take on this, which I wrote up for the Post Gazette, I thought I was taking kind of the moderate middle road position, which is leave is good. Parental leave is good. There should be more of it. More institutions should offer it. It expresses the social value of parenting, of having kids, of bearing and raising the next generation. Now, the evidence of how much leave encourages people to have more kids is scant. There are a lot of European countries with lower birth rates than the United States who have much more generous leave policies. So I don't think that there's a strong connection there, but it does express the value of parenting. It does say that there are some things more important. than going to work every single day, that there are some things that society values, that there are forms of work and forms of responsibility that society values more than just regular old salaried or wage labor. So I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing the society should express. I don't think that attempting this little gambit is insane.

In fact, I think that in the long run, policies like this, although with significant, significant changes that I will discuss in a second, will become more and more prominent. And it's not a mistake that the state, in a bipartisan committee vote in the House, is putting forward a statewide leave plan. But there are important distinctions between what the state's considering and what Enemarado proposed in Pennsylvania County. And here's where I... depart from the county executive. I think raising this conversation is good, but I think being strident about the details is not. 18 weeks is a long time. It may be the gold standard because it just about gets you to wear daycares open, but it's a huge commitment to force on especially smaller businesses, which brings me to my second point. In the original proposal, there's no minimum business size. Of all of the things in this proposal that need to be changed, that's at the very top of the list. It's just not sustainable. And it's not sustainable, especially for small businesses. And I appreciate, I had a very interesting conversation that I wrote up for the Post Gazette with a guy who runs a startup. And their entire business is that they provide insurance to businesses so that they, for leave. So that a business pays X amount in a premium per month based on the number of staff they have, based on their state and life, basically on the likelihood that they're going to have kids. And then when someone does take leave, the insurance company pays the business. the full cost, the insurance company covers the full cost of the employee's salary. So that smooths the cost over time and it's particularly good for small businesses. However, what nobody can insure against because it's impossible is the loss time itself, the loss of a human being. And a lot of these small organizations, say you're a small therapy organization or a small accountancy. a small consultancy. There's no like, you know, I don't think there's a temp agency for CPAs. There's not a temp agency for therapists. And because you have clients who count on an individual's care, then, well, even a replacement wouldn't cut it. Those are the kind of things. that a carve out for tiny businesses, small and tiny businesses would make a lot of sense for and make this a lot more palatable for Allegheny County. And then the other concern is actually the one that is, the first two concerns are solvable. You can reduce or even pro rate the amount of required leave. So maybe the tiniest businesses, no requirement, next level. Eight weeks, next level, 12 weeks, something like that. There are ways that you can address both of those concerns in the policy itself and make it more palatable for Allegheny County. The one thing that's not fixable is literally impossible to fix is that it is a county policy. There's a reason that these do not typically exist.

do not exist at all in non-required leave states at the county level or at the local level. Now, like San Francisco has one, but they're in a leave state. It's just an amplification of California's law. But in a state with no leave, cities and counties don't impose them because businesses can skip right across the border. It's a lot more difficult to leave Pennsylvania than it is to leave Allegheny County. Now, People said the businesses would leave Pittsburgh when the sick leave proposal went through. And it didn't really happen. So I think you can overstate how much this proposal would chase businesses out of Allegheny County. But the fact of the matter is, is that the county's borders are porous. A lot of people live close to them. A lot of people have businesses close to them. And if you make it, even if this proposal turns out to not be that expensive. Maybe it's not as onerous as people expect it will be. Maybe it gets watered down. It is still another kind of straw on the camel's back of a county in a city that has a substantial amount of regulation that you do not experience in other counties. So it could be if you add it all together, it just becomes another layer of administrative hassle. Another thing, because besides the question of. paying for the leave itself and losing the employee, there's administering the leave. That is itself a legal and administrative burden, especially for smaller organizations. And I do think that folks at the county executive side of things have not quite fully internalized that part of the problem. But that being said, I'm not hostile to the concept. It's the execution. It's the details. Oh, and then the other thing, of course, maybe even the most important thing of all. And I'm going to have to get to a break in a second. We're going to take a call, at least one call after the break. But is the funding. The fact that this is an unfunded mandate is another massive problem. And it's another reason that these things are typically not done at the county or city level because this county and the city don't have the money to fund what would be a massively expensive funded proposal. That being said, if the county executive could work into her budget, even a little bit of help that would go a long way. But I would note. I would note that the state proposal that's working its way through Harrisburg is funded. It is funded by a new payroll tax. Now, you might say no new taxes, but the idea is that the leave for folks who need it is funded by employees and employers jointly in the way that any social program is funded. And at the end of the day, if it's going to be successful and not be a drag on businesses, it's going to need some kind of funding. So I'm glad. I am actually, I really genuinely glad that Interimurado has initiated this conversation in Allegheny County. I think the proposal as written needs substantial changes before it's ready for prime time. But the fact that we're having this conversation, I think, has moved the needle and hopefully in a good way.

We'll talk more about that after the break. So if the state does eventually follow through on its own family leave plan, this is Brandon McGinley from the Post Gazette, filling in for Marty today, if the state does follow through and the bipartisan vote in the House committee suggests that there is momentum, you have to get the Republican Senate on board, Republican Senate leaders in particular on board. But I could imagine getting across the line. That would probably render the county conversation moot. Unless it comes, unless it follows through in a really, really thin way. And then the county wants to, again, kind of like in San Francisco, pass an amplification of it, something that would make Allegheny counties late leave requirements even stronger. Maybe. If it were me, if I were the county executive, I'd stand down for now and let the state situation play out. Keep talking about it. I don't want to completely let it leave the conversation. But, you know, if I were the county executive, I would also acknowledge that this is a conversation and not a proposal that the administration is looking to shove down the throats of Allegheny County because I do think that that could backfire. both politically and in terms and in terms of the business climate of the county. And politically in particular, because I do think I'm about as confident as I can be that a lot of average residents of Allegheny County who maybe didn't vote for Annamarado in the primary, maybe they voted for her in the general with some trepidation about how left-wing this government was going to be. They felt pretty good about this government.

And this is the first time really since week one. I've seen some people spooked. And I think for her sake, it would be good to have a conversation with all of us about this. All right. Dave and Rankin, welcome to the show. Hey, Brandon. Happy Friday. How are you? Oh, I'm doing all right. Yeah, almost to the end of this week. So feeling okay. We're getting there. Yeah, just about. Well, this is probably a 30 or 40-year-old opinion, but if you can't afford to have a child, don't have a child. Yeah. It used to be if you were going to have a kid. If you were working, you left work and you took care of the kid and that was your priority. Yeah. Now everybody's got their hand out. Yeah. Well, I would say, I'd say several things. You acknowledge this is kind of maybe a 30 or 40 year old opinion. I would observe that the structures, the economic structures that were in place that would allow for that to be something that just about... everybody who wanted to form a family could, could achieve are just not there anymore. And so, you know, 30 or 40 years ago, you know, if we're talking, uh, 80s, you know, I mean, 80s. I mean, you're having pretty significant women's participation in the workforce by this point, but a lot less than now. And there was definitely more of an expectation that a salary, one salary, would be enough to raise a family on at significant levels of the economy. So not, you know, there's, there's. You know, you've got your McDonald's situations that are not going to be there. But that was much more common. It was much more of an expectation that even the biggest, most powerful companies would be paying salaries at that level. And that's just all gone now. Just all gone now. And you know who wrote about this? This is one of these things that I love. You know, who wrote about this, like 20 years ago, was Elizabeth Warren. Elizabeth Warren wrote the book, The Two Income Trap. About how this was bad and about how the expectation that every family would have two incomes was actually a trap. And now it's considered to be normal. But so that's, that's, you know, I understand where you're coming from, Dave. I just think that the economy has changed. And the way, and this is one of the reasons there's a lot of, I'm talking too much. Let me, I'll finish my thought later. What do you think about that, Dave? Well, I just think, you know, it's a catch-22. It's a double-edged sword because, yeah, I mean, a lot more women are out there in the work world or in the workforce. There's no doubt about it. But how many women are out there and maybe they're not working the type of job that allows them to actually afford to have a child, even with their significant others?

income. Yeah. So they're looking for that, you know, that handoff. Yeah. You know, I mean, I don't, I guess I don't think of it as a handout and, and I would, and here's where I would push back maybe even a little bit more strongly is that if we're making having having, having, for making bearing the next generation contingent on how the economy is working and the economy. You know, the economy just is not working well for regular people right now. We've got affordability stuff and all of this. That is how you end up in a world that says, are kids worth it? Are kids worth it at all? Because more and more expensive every year, et cetera, et cetera. And I want to insist that having a family, having kids is just a natural part of being a human being. And in as much as it is absolutely essential to the continuation of society, then society has a stake in making it affordable if the economy isn't making it affordable. Right. I can't disagree with that. Maybe we should take a little off the top of Josh Shapiro's salary, maybe a little bit off. Well, hey, you know, you say Josh Shapiro, but, you know, not to bring a full circle a little bit, but I mentioned UPMC. We're talking about UPMC earlier, and, you know, there are some pretty hefty salaries at the top of these organizations. I don't want to pick on UPMC, but across the board, the amount of... of corporate money that's going into the salaries at the very top of these organizations. That's one of the things that's changed in the last 40 years, Dave. It wasn't like that 40 years ago, and it certainly wasn't like that 70 years ago when you have the baby boom. It just wasn't like that. And so, and I don't really have a solution for it because every, every solution that you can have to like CEO pay and executive pay is all. There's loopholes. And there are reasons that the world has become the way it's become. But this is one of the problems is that we are not like our economic contract, our social contract that we have with the marketplace, with the corporations, just isn't what it was. And money that would have been in the pockets of folks to raise a family just isn't there. And then there's the gas tax and there's our $15 billion surplus. I mean, there's a lot of ways, ways and means and sources that something like this could be funded from, like you said, on a state level, not necessarily a local or county level. I think at the end of the day, that's where this conversation is going to end. Or that's going to be the kind of. The resolution of all of this is I think there will be a state policy. The fact that you got Republicans on board is notable. I would expect I have not spoken to her about this. In fact, this may be something to get her on the show to talk about. But I would bet that Kim Ward would be open to this, the Senate president, Republican from Westmoreland County. This seems like it could be right up her alley. They're, you know, obviously in the thick of budget stuff right now. So. Probably not the time to have that conversation, but soon I'd be really interested in getting her thoughts on it because that would be if she's into it, then I think it'll happen. I agree. Thanks, Brandon. Have a great weekend. Appreciate it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I get the concern about more entitlements and so on.

But I think we sometimes underestimate the extent to which society and the economy has changed. And the society used to be organized. The economy used to be organized at least somewhat with an eye toward family formation, with the sense that this is just part of being a human, part of being a society, and that corporations would basically fund it with salaries. And that communities would fund it by... by being places where moms could stay home with their kids for a little while or for a long time or forever and have a community to be a part of who supports them. So much of that is gone. I often use the word remedial. We say that a lot of the stuff that we do downtown for the kids is remedial on the lack of community and family support. Family leave, parental leave is remedial for the lack of an economic and social structure. that supports family life. But I don't think that means we shouldn't do it. I think it's exactly why we should do it, even though it's not perfect. Okay, let's get to some news. We back with maybe a little more on that. And we're going to also, oh, yeah, County Council, Rich Hitch Gerald, coming up soon.

It's Brandon McGinley filling in for Marty today. He'll be back soon. Thank goodness. So glad he's doing better after his brush with pneumonia. I mean, it sounded ugly. But on the mend and just about ready to get back behind this microphone. Before the break, before the break we were, you know, I was kind of talking about how. Things like parental leave. I'll see people say, well, Dave, Dave, in a very good call earlier, you know, said, you know, a generation or two ago, this wasn't a thing. People weren't talking about parental leave. And yet they were having a lot more kids than they were today. What's up with that? What's up with that? Why do we need to pay moms and dads? And some people in particular will home in on the dads. Why do we need to pay dads to be away for 18 weeks? or even eight weeks for that matter um it used to be mom would have the baby dad wouldn't even be there dad would be like out at the bar uh smoking nervously and then he'd get called in meet the baby and then he'd be like back at work the next day and i don't know mom and like mom's mom's mom's sisters and mom's female friends all help her recuperate and you know As for system, I mean, you know, I, as regular listeners will know, this is something I have in common with, with Rich Fitzgerald, who will be up here later, I have an unusual number of children. We have seven kids. So, you know, I think of myself as a bit of an expert in this area, but also maybe my experience is a little bit different from most. I personally like being there the whole time and, you know, helping out and trying to, you know, be moral support. But the world where my kind of family is normal and the world where the social and economic structures of American life supported, not just big families, but supported families at all, that world's just not there anymore. People now think. that that was all kind of individualistic thing. People talk about it as terms of an individualistic thing. Oh, well, you know, you know, don't have a baby if you can't afford a baby. Well, having a baby is part of being human. So saying that we're going to leave it to whether FedEx is willing to pay you enough to be a delivery man to whether you can have a baby or not, that doesn't seem quite right to me. That seems actually kind of anti-human. Both anti-human in the sense of not providing the structures needed to bear and raise the next generation of civilization and anti-human, and that it's making the ability of men and women, adult men and women, to fulfill what is, I still think for most people, one of the most compelling desires of living as a person, making that contingent on whether or not your company's willing to pay you enough, that seems to be to be not quite right. And I think that is part of how you get to the point where this country has significantly below replacement fertility rate. It's a lot more than that. It's not just corporate pay. It's not just economic structure. It's also social structures. It's also cultural expectations. It's also the sense among some that, you know, some people will say, oh, you know, is climate change and, you know, it's going to be too hot. Therefore, I don't want to have kids. And I'm a little dubious about that.

to experience the joys and the challenges and the triumphs and the disasters of parenting to a greater degree than we actually see. And there's where I think, again, that's where these economic and social structures come in. If we had a society that supported more kids, we'd have more kids. If we had an economy that supported more kids, we'd have more kids. It's not the only thing, but it's part of it. And things like Ennamarado's leave proposal, this is why I can't get excited about it in a negative way. I think that it's not very cleverly designed. I think it's a bit of a blunt object when something a little bit more tactical is needed. I think that politically... It could have been presented better, and I think that there's real political risk for her right now with this. I think there's all kinds. I've all kinds. So many ways I could nitpick this thing. More than nitpick it. I mean, things like the lack of a carve-out for tiny businesses, that's just, that's just dumb. Like, okay, like, I'm not out here saying this is brilliant. But, but I'm not also going to be out here saying this is idiotic, top to bottom, because. We, like, these are the kind of ideas. These are the kind of proposals that illuminate just the extent to which our society is not as family friendly, family friendly as it needs to be. And government policy can only be remedial in this regard. It can only help around the margins. Like I said, Viktor Orban spent like 10% of his country's GDP on paying for kids and he got just like 10 kids. It was not, it was not a great return on investment.

But I despair for the future of not just this city, but of this country, of this civilization, if the trends keep going the way they're going in terms of the value people put on kids, in terms of the number of kids we have, period. And so when someone steps forward and says, I want to try to make it a little easier for people to have kids, my first response is never going to be. oh wow go away that's stupid my response is going to be okay let's try to figure out how to make that work and i think if we got if we get that openness which i think is it's definitely there in some quarters if we get that openness on the county executive side And I would hope there'd be openness on the business community side to at least some compromise solution. Then we can achieve something that is good for everybody. We can achieve a policy, which I think at the end of the day will probably end up being preempted by the state. But if it's not, there is a world in which there is, which Allegheny County has a standout leave proposal that is a standout leave program that is. That distinguishes it from its neighbors without having a significantly negative impact on the economy, but does significantly help parents. I think that works. I think it's possible. Kind of reminds me of the whole beginning of this show. Reminds me of my conversation with Mayor Cory O'Connor. There are willing partners out there. Find them. Talk to them. Strike a deal.

That's the way this works. That's what politics is. People think politics is screaming on social media. People think politics is, you know, giving press conferences. That's a very small part of what politics is. Politics primarily is the art of understanding the incentives and the motivations of the stakeholders in the community, talking with them, organizing them, and achieving solutions. I think we could do that in the family leave proposal. just as the mayor has done in other areas. Okay, let's get to, we got to go to a break. Before we go to the break, just real quick, do you know someone in your community who has done something extraordinary in the past year, nominate them now at kDKRadio.com to be honored at this year's Lary's hometown heroes event. And as I always like to say, these are the people who also contribute to a family-friendly society. The people who make our community strong, it's not just families. It's not just families. It's neighborhoods. It's communities. It takes a village thing. It's overstated, but it's true. Okay. Back after this.

During the break, producer Trevin and I were talking about the phrase, it takes a village, which at the end of the last segment I said, and by the way, this is Brandon McGinley, fill in for Marty today. Before the last break, I said, you know, it takes a village is true, but I said it's, I think I said overstated. And overstated is not the right word. It's actually, it's just true. But it is, I think, overused. It's become a cliche. And, um, I actually think one of the reasons for this, you may remember that as part of her push to international politics after the end of the Clinton administration, Hillary Clinton released a book called It Takes a Village. And so this set like everybody who doesn't like Hillary Clinton, which is a lot of people, and especially people on the right, this set them against the very concept. And partially that was because people felt that when Hillary Clinton said it takes a village, she meant it takes the government. And as a major national politician who was known for quote unquote big government proposals, that makes sense. I thought the book was more subtle than that. But it kind of took this concept and turned it into something that people associated with the left. And then Rick Santorum, former Pennsylvania senator, later wrote a book called It Takes a Family. And it was like, ooh, I'm responding to Hillary Clinton's book. And this set up this dynamic where folks on the right think that it's the family. And folks on the left think it's the village or the community is what I'd rather say. And that you have to pick one. It's like this is the stupidest thing. Everybody with an ounce of sense knows that it's both. Everybody with an ounce of sense knows that while the family is the preeminent raiser of children, where the culture of the child and the child's kind of character is formed the most, it is in the wider community where that family is supported that fills in the gaps. Here's an example. Here's an example. I'm not very handy, okay? I'm just not, especially things that have to do with electricity and water. I've done some basic plumbing. I do not deal with electricity. Paying for people to do electricity is very expensive. I have friends in my neighborhood who are good with electricity, and they just charge me a six-pack. So things, and I would add that over time, If my kids, if my son's in particular, but if my daughter's interested in electricity, that's fine too. If my kids show an inkling or desire to be handier than I am, I don't have the skills to pass down to them, but I have friends who do. So I could bring in my friend, Bob, to come in and say, hey, Ambrose, my son, would you like to learn about circuits? Like, great, brilliant. Okay. I mean, I can do circuits like. on a board, but I don't want nothing to do with circuits in my house. The point I'm making is that no family is completely self-sufficient. I know we have this Laura Ingalls Wilder view of things in America. But here's the thing. We aren't living on the frontier. We just aren't. And that's really not ideal. And, you know, and Paul Ingalls or whatever his name was, you know, he was a bit, a bit of a tough character.

And that's not the life that's a life that very, very, very, very, very, very few people are called to. And even fewer can execute successfully. The kind of life that the vast majority of people are called to is living in community. And I don't mean like living in a convent. Some people are called to that. But I mean living in a place around other people with whom you have relationships who fill in the gaps in your own. in your own personality, in your own character, in your own expertise, in your own skill sets. My family would not be possible if we were off on the frontier. The fact that we're blessed with seven kids and that, you know, as far as I can tell, I think they're doing pretty well. That is due to a substantial degree to the fact that I live 10 minutes from where I grew up and where my parents help out. I have other family who helps out. We have friends who help out. And a lot of those friends have a lot of kids too. And that kind of flywheel, that kind of supporting structure, everybody's lifting each other up. That's what makes it possible. To the extent that those structures no longer exist, to the extent that people live near one another but don't have community, they pass each other by, don't have conversations looking at their phones. That is probably the biggest reason. for the decline in the number of kids because we live close to each other, but we don't actually know each other. We don't actually support each other. We don't actually trust each other. That's where it is. Yes, it's family. Yes, family should form better. Family shouldn't fragment as much. Yes, all of that. But without the community that supports the family, it's hard to make a go of it. So that's my spiel on that. We've got to get to some news. After this, we're going to get back to some county politics.