Show Notes
Paid family and medical leave is a confusing mess: only 27% of private-sector workers get paid leave from their employer. Some others are covered by state programs, but those vary. The rest of us scramble to patch together short-term disability with other paid time off, if we have it. Meanwhile, the United States instead has a federal Family Medical Leave Act that protects unpaid time off. Truth is, sooner or later, nearly everyone needs time away from work to care for a sick spouse, a new baby, a dying parent, or to recover from one’s own illness or injury. And they shouldn’t have to go broke to do it. An idea this popular — supported by about 80% of Americans in polls — shouldn’t be this hard. If paid family and medical leave were added to Social Security, that would give every worker benefits that follow them across jobs and states. The infrastructure already exists. But there’s a lot of heel-dragging in Congress because expanding Social Security can’t be done before dealing with its long-term funding. Read more:
Paid Leave Works: Evidence from State Programs [National Partnership for Women & Families 2023] — A good primer on paid family and medical leave.
Economic Effects of Offering a Federal Paid Family and Medical Leave Program [Congressional Budget Office 2021] — CBO analysis of a version of paid leave that was proposed in the Build Back Better Act, but that died in the Senate.
A National Paid Leave Program Would Help Workers, Families [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 2021] — Outline of what would be in a comprehensive program.
New parents aren’t the only people who need paid family leave [Urban Institute 2018] — Pretty self-explanatory.
Paid Leave for Illness, Medical Needs, and Disabilities: Issues and Answers [Brookings and the American Enterprise Institute 2020] — Chapter on how this could be implemented from a joint Brookings-AEI project.
Paid Leave Working Group Request for Information Response [Urban Institute 2024] — Response to Congressional working group’s request for input on paid family leave.
More from Optimist Economy
The Consumer Sentiment Index has tracked how Americans experience the U.S. economy through bouts of runaway inflation, a mortgage crisis, stock market bubbles, and six recessions. And yet the scores right now are lower than at any of those moments. After nearly 50 years of tracking by the University of Michigan, Consumer Sentiment has broken through the basement. Beneath the five index questions are some clues as to why: Since 2008, the number of people who say the government is doing a poor job has grown from about a third to about three-quarters. This dissatisfaction has been a slow burn — and it’s also evidence that Americans are ready for bold, non-incremental economic change.
(Originally aired June 10, 2025) The national debt is $36 trillion. That could be a panic-inducing big number. So maybe it will help to understand how we ran up that debt. We've blown 37% of it on tax cuts, with precious little to show for that. But 28% went to stabilize the economy during two major crises (in ‘08-’09 and during the COVID pandemic), which is when you do want the federal government to pull out its credit card. Good news is we don’t have to get the debt to zero. We just need to get it moving in that direction. And for listeners waiting for MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) to make a cameo, that moment has arrived. Support Optimist Economy by becoming a paid Substack subscriber here, or by making a contribution at https://buymeacoffee.com/optimisteconomy Complete show notes with links to articles and data at optimisteconomy.com. You can also find Optimist Economy on:
Optimist Economy is on break this month, but we know that optimist listeners are interested in tales of economic history, issues of inequality and movements for change. So we thought some of you might enjoy "Occupy!" a six-part narrative series about Occupy Wall Street, the 2011 protest village that lasted nearly two months and turned a spotlight on systemic economic inequality in the U.S. --- EPISODE 1: An Invitation In 2011, a handful of skeptical New Yorkers answer a call to Occupy Wall Street. What they find feels less like a protest and more like a glimpse of a different world—one where people openly share stories of debt, hardship, and frustration. They start to build an anti-capitalist village in a tiny Manhattan park — under the watchful eyes of police. This is the first episode of Future Hindsight’s brand new 6-part series, OCCUPY! An Unfinished Uprising. Subscribe to Future Hindsight wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss a single episode! Want to dive deeper? Listen to these episodes of Future Hindsight:
Nearly 90% of private-sector workers get paid vacation days from their job, but a Pew survey found 46% leave at least some of it on the table. Government survey data also show that the share of workers who are on vacation in any given week has fall by about half between 1980 and 2022. Blame thin staffing, guilt culture, and “PTO bundles” that push people to ration days between vacation days and sick leave. The fix exists elsewhere: the European Union, for instance, guarantees 20 paid days a year. If a Costco cashier is able to vacation in Europe twice, so should you.
About 18% of U.S. GDP every year gets spent on health care. Half of that, 9%, is coming from the government, which is about the whole cost of other countries’ public health programs. In other words, for what the U.S. spends on Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare, VA benefits, and the tax write-off for employer-sponsored plans, we could have free basic health insurance for everyone. This is why the co-authors of the 2023 book “We’ve Got You Covered” describe the current health insurance system as a total tear-down. We could have universal insurance coverage for all with no tax hike if we started building from the ground up.