Friday, October 25, 2013

Debate Over Legally Mandated Paid Sick Days Highlights Nature's Mandate

Jersey City, New Jersey Mayor Steve Fulop is calling for a law mandating paid sick days. The NJ Star-Ledger editorialized in support of Fulop. In opening, The Ledger asked rhetorically: "When a stomach bug flattens your family, should it cost a day’s pay? Does flu season put you in fear of losing your job?"

I left these comments:

Welfare statists always pose questions of this kind, without context, as if the answers are self-evident. They are not. The discussion should begin with: What material guarantees does nature provide? The answer is, none. That leaves every human being with a single basic choice; provide for oneself, or force—i.e., enslave—others to provide for you. Those who seek to escape nature's requirement to take care of themselves must choose slavery. 

Politicians who propose mandatory sick pay laws and the like—and citizens who support them—are not promoting "economic justice." Justice means getting what you deserve, and what you deserve is what you earn through your own work and voluntary contract with others.These politicians and citizens are imposing slavery, and there's nothing just, economically or otherwise, about slavery.


The fact is, only employers have the right to answer questions like the first one, and only in regard to the jobs they created. If an employer wants to answer "no" to the first question, he will offer paid sick days as part of his employees' compensation. If not, the employee must set aside a contingency fund to cover his own lost pay (as I did all of my working life), or seek another job with benefits more to your liking. 


As to fear of losing a job, there is no escaping nature. An employee has no more right to expect an employer to guarantee him a job than the employer has to a guaranteed lifetime hold on his employees and customers.


The choice is self-sufficiency or slavery. As we allow the government to move more and more toward shielding individuals from the realities and responsibilities of life and of his nature, we are moving incrementally toward a totalitarian slave state. 


Related Reading:

Mandated Paid Parental Leave, Too?

Mandated Paid Sick Days, too?











1 comment:

Mike Kevitt said...

The totalitarian slave state is a total 'shield' from reality and responsibility, and it's also total exposure to the criminal regime which is, then, the only reality of consequence.