How Government Creates Unemployable Women

​By Chris Rossini

Whenever government intrudes into private contracts, it distorts the marketplace. For example, government can create as much unemployment as it wants merely by raising its arbitrary minimum wage. If they raise it to $15/hr, all individuals who are low-skilled and don't have the productivity to earn $15/hr are forcefully unemployed. They are outlawed from the workplace.

Government seeks to help the poor, but only succeeds in hurting them even more. The same can be said for when government seeks to provide "paid maternity leave". Once again, in its attempt to supposedly help women, it can only end up hurting them.

For example, Donald Trump proposes six-weeks paid leave for women who have a baby. Instantly, such an idea makes women much less attractive to hire from an employers perspective. If you have a choice between a man who won't leave you for two months (with pay) versus a woman who might, which is more attractive? The answer is obvious.

Six-weeks of paid leave will harm women that are at child-bearing age compared to those who aren't. Women who tell their employers they can't, won't, or are too old to have children will have an edge, courtesy of a goofy government law.

What's so magical about six weeks anyway? Did Trump throw a dart at a dartboard to come up with it? Why the one-size-fits-all solution? America is a nation of 300+ unique individuals. One-size-fits-all can be applied to machines and robots, not humans.

Six weeks is as arbitrary as a $15/hr. minimum wage. The higher that you raise it, the more people that you hurt. Can you imagine government someday forcing 9, 12, or 15 weeks of paid maternity leave? They can make women permanently unemployable with their "help" should they be so generous.

Each employer and employee has a unique set of circumstances. They should each be free to make their own contracts on their own terms. Employers should freely compete with one another in providing agreeable terms for female employees. Likewise, potential female employees should only agree to contracts that fit their particular circumstance.

When government bullies its way into the contract, it can only end up hurting the people it promises to help. It also creates more dependence and more wacky demands from people that look to government for "help". Did you know that there are childless women who want maternity leave too? That's right. Supposedly they're being discriminated against! Why can't they get a paid vacation (courtesy of government) for not having a baby.

Government intervention into contracts is a rabbit hole that leads to some pretty scary places. Women need to be liberated from government.

The only productive thing that government can do to make everyone's life easier is to reduce taxes across the board. Cut, slash, and abolish taxes everywhere! Doing so will make it much easier for families to plan for having a baby. Men and women could start saving once again. Having a child won't bring instant financial panic.

What if we didn't live under the biggest government in the history of the world? What if the cost of maintaining such a monster didn't force the existence of two incomes? Having a baby would be no big deal at all.

Government, of course, hates such an idea.

Where would the dependency come from?