Veronique de Rugy and I have been arguing about whether people should be allowed to take some of their Social Security benefits early to finance paid leave when they have children. My previous post recapped the conversation up until then; here’s her latest reply.

She continues to insist that it’s terrible that this proposal involves a short-term increase in spending that is supposed to be made up later (since people who use the benefits for leave would not get them in retirement), but that it’s okay that her own preferred Social Security plan would involve a much larger short-term increase in spending that is supposed to be made up later. Letting people use some of the payroll taxes that now fund Social Security to invest is “progress in terms of economic freedom,” but letting people use some of those payroll taxes to spend time with newborns is, for some reason, not. At this point in the debate, it is clear that I am not going to be able to make her see what’s wrong with these arguments.