A friend linked to a U.S. Department of Labor Facebook page. Top left is a video decrying the fact that the U.S. does not have a mandated-by-law 14-week maternity leave system like Germany’s. Presumably if we did have a law to force employers to offer paid maternity leave the U.S. Department of Labor would need a larger budget for hiring employees to enforce the regulations. There are already laws preventing employers from discriminating against pregnant women in hiring so presumably this wouldn’t be a simple regulation to draft, review, enact, monitor, and enforce. Otherwise a qualified pregnant woman could show up for her first day of work two days prior to a scheduled C-section, then collect 14 weeks of pay for being at home, then return to work for two days and quit.
Could this be the formula for infinite government spending? We pay taxes so that government workers can lobby us on Facebook for more government programs that require additional taxes?
[Separately, I’m not sure about the merits of adopting one element of German law in isolation. Germany has a completely different legal system, for example, in which lawyers’ fees are limited by a formula according to the amount in dispute. You couldn’t have a lawsuit in Germany that consumed $2 million in legal fees regarding the number of weeks of maternity leave to which a woman was entitled. Marriage has a lower cash value in Germany relative to work, especially since a 2009 change in the alimony law. A marriage in the U.S. that would yield “permanent” or “lifetime” alimony would potentially yield no alimony at all in Germany (that two divorced people will have an unequal spending power is not considered inequitable in Germany and adult dependency is disfavored). Compared to the college+work alternative, children have a lower cash value in Germany as well. A one-night encounter with a high-income German that results in pregnancy yields a tax-free cashflow of about $6,000 per year when the same child might yield $100,000/year or more for a Wisconsin, Massachusetts, or California parent. The victorious parent’s revenue stream is cut off at age 18 (though a child may be able to collect until the first college degree is completed) compared to age 23 in Massachusetts, for example. Thus the economic incentives faced by Germans making life decisions are different.]
Off topic, but do you have any thoughts about the Germanwings crash? The law of unintended consequences says that by reinforcing the cockpit door, you have created a different problem. Or for want of a $3 urinal bottle, the ship was lost? Maybe it’s not a good idea to leave 1 person alone in the secured cockpit, ever?
Izzie: I was asked about this privately by my friends shortly after it happened and I said “Not enough information to know for sure, but probably one pilot went to the bathroom and the other pilot decided to crash the airplane. Depressurization doesn’t work as an explanation because of the quick-don oxygen masks that are at each pilot’s fingertips and the fact planes that the autopilot would have kept a depressurized plane in cruise flight until the fuel ran out.”
The U.S. practice of putting a flight attendant in the cockpit during bathroom breaks isn’t sufficient, I don’t think. A flight attendant doesn’t know how to undo autopilot programming, fly the airplane, etc. You can crash a jet pretty quickly if that is your goal.
The event is horrifying to me and my pilot friends because it is more or less Rule #1 of aviation that we have to consider our passengers’ safety.
Philip,
Further digression into the Germanwings tragedy… Could you comment on the type “background” check the airlines perform when they bring pilots on board (since you have experience in that area)? I know the FAA medical process but do airlines go beyond that or do they simply rely on you having an ATP and a first class medical?
Markus: I think that a carrier such as Lufthansa, which pays for training ab initio (they have their own training center in Arizona) probably does a lot more than a typical U.S. carrier, but I did a quick Google search and found that Delta Airlines subjects applicants to the MMPI and an interview with a psychologist. I think most psychological tests are designed for people with serious psychological problems, e.g., inpatients in mental hospitals. It is questionable as to how they can be used to screen people who are functional enough to get dressed in a suit and tie and show up for a job interview. My airline interview at Comair (Delta subsidiary flying regional jets) included some tests for “cognitive skills” (ability to multi-task and avoid distractions and/or concentrating too much on one thing) and, I think, a decision-making test that was kind of psychological.
Once you’re in the system you’re a union member and there is no way to screen out people who are mentally disturbed but not displaying any signs. There is no annual psychological re-qualification. Pilots at the major airlines (i.e., the ones who earn more than $20,000 per year!) are often targeted by child support and alimony profiteers. They are presumably going to be depressed when they lose their house, child, and income, but there is no practical way to remove them from the job and they will be sent to prison for non-payment of alimony and child support if they ground themselves (not too many people want to go to prison so I think it is safe to assume that you could have a very depressed pilot up front). See also “Divorce and suicide risk” (Kposowa 2003; Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 57:12): “Divorced men were over eight times more likely to commit suicide than divorced women. … After taking into account other factors that have been reported to contribute to suicide … [divorced men] were nearly 9.7 times more likely to kill themselves than comparable divorced women.”
The latest news is that Andreas had recently broken up with his live-in girlfriend (or more likely, she had broken up with him), so you are not far off. Even if a breakup is not financially devastating, it can be emotionally devastating anyway (but the combination is certainly a double whammy).