Yesterday, Ellen Bravo, the coordinator of the Multi-State Working Families Consortium in Milwaukee, asserted in the JS that the Milwaukee sick leave mandate “makes economic sense” and that we should “ensure that paid sick days work for all us.”  She suggests that opponents of this government mandate contradict themselves by arguing that guaranteed paid sick days will hurt local businesses.  Humorously, she also dismisses their empirical evidence as merely “abracadabra arithmetic and hocus-pocus economics” — a lesser blogger might point how aptly that description would fit Congress and the Obama administration’s attempts to spend us into oblivion; I shall rise above that temptation however. 

In dismissing the costs that taxpayers, businesses, and customers will incur as a result of this directive, Ms. Bravo states the following: 

Many employers easily could come into compliance simply by allowing time they already offer to conform to the terms of the ordinance – that means not requiring a week’s notice that someone’s kid will wake up screaming with an earache. Most businesses already track when employees are not at work. No one can use the paid sick time until he or she has been on the job for 90 days. Many workers will save sick days for when they need them. Any new costs will be offset by savings on health care, productivity and job loss.

So, not only will the costs be minimal because employers are already positioned to easily and cheaply offer and monitor sick time (which obviously begs the question why the government must mandate it then), any additional costs will be serendipitously offset by savings elsewhere; though the reader is left to wonder just how and why those savings will materialize.  

In What is Seen and What is Not Seen, Frederic Bastiat ventured,

There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.

Yet this difference is tremendous; for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the later consequences are disastrous, and vice versa. Whence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good that will be followed by a great evil to come, while the good economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil.

Surely, the goal of this measure may be lauded by many of us.  But goals and motives cannot and must not be enough to simply ignore the results of our efforts.  Clearly, there would be employees that would benefit from this measure (“the seen”).  These folks are readily visible and thus very compelling.  However, there are also those that will be hurt by this measure (“the unseen”).  By their very nature, they are not easily discernable because the costs they incur are widely dispersed.  Is anyone comfortable telling someone that faces the dilemmas posed by Ms. Bravo, that the benefits they will receive are more than outweighed by the costs that many nameless and faceless individuals will absorb? 

And yet, if we are to heed Bastiat’s warning, we should not accept the “small present good” without recognizing the “great evil to come.”  What will that evil look like?  Well, rather than resorting to the fuzzy numbers of mathematicians and economists that Ms. Bravo finds lacking, I’ll cast my gaze across the Atlantic and offer a future glimpse of what Milwaukee might look like.   

Recently, the Eurpean Court of Justice ruled that employees on long-term sick leave are entitled to take all holiday they have accrued when they return to work.  As noted in this BBC article, 

“If employees never return to work – which is usually the case on long-term sickness cases – they accrue that holiday which is then paid out as a lump sum on termination of employment,” said Fraser Younson, head of the employment group at lawyers Berwin Leighton Paisner.

…

“Such liabilities may encourage employers to think twice before providing long-term sick arrangements for their staff in the future,” Mr Younson said.

 Earlier this year, the WSJ reported on the effects of sick-leave-on-demand in Belgium. 

Ultimately, does it mean that this is where we’re headed?  I’d like to think not.  I still believe that this city, state, and country are places of opportunity rather than entitlement.  That we are free to choose, as Milton and Rose Friedman contended, to engage in voluntary exchanges in which both parties benefit.   

That is the only way to ensure that the government, economy, and sick days work for all of us.