Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The happiest kids in the world have social safety nets

mother.ly

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 183 posts

Re: The happiest kids in the world have social safety nets

#121

Post by gnicholas »

MBlume wrote: post #21
JohnFen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US they'd risk either being killed by a driver, or stopped by an overzealous neighbor or police officer. It may depends on where in the US you're talking about, but in my area none of this is actually true. Although lots of people believe it is.

Sounds nice. I've personally spoken on the phone with a police officer who told me he'd involve CPS if he saw my daughter walking (two blocks!) to school again.

Yeah, in CA you aren't allowed to leave a kid under 6 in a car if "there are conditions that can pose a risk to the child’s health and safety, even if accompanied by another child who is not yet 13. What does it mean for conditions to "pose a risk"? Obviously high heat, but it's not clear what else could qualify.

I don't ever leave my kids (one that is under 6 and one that is well over 6, but not yet 13) alone in a car, since I don't want police or nosy passersby injecting themselves in a perfectly benign situation.

Re: The happiest kids in the world have social safety nets

#122

Post by tmnvix »

kasey_junk wrote: post #79
JohnFen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US they'd risk either being killed by a driver, or stopped by an overzealous neighbor or police officer. It may depends on where in the US you're talking about, but in my area none of this is actually true. Although lots of people believe it is.

I find these stories of kids not walking (or biking) outside wild! Hundreds of kids in my neighborhood walk, bike, or public transit to school everyday with no issues. I do worry about car on pedestrian crashes but the city has crossing guards and traffic calming for just this. Where are these places that you can’t be outside as a child?

I'm not from the US, but just zoomed into a random spot in what I assume is a typical shopping district in suburban Atlanta[1]. Can't imagine many young kids safely walking or biking around there. Compare a local shopping district near me[2]. Plenty of young kids walking and biking to school here alone and in groups.

[1] https://www.google.co.nz/maps/@33.8644514,-84.5949946,3a,75y...

[2] https://www.google.co.nz/maps/@-41.2953813,174.7673872,3a,75...

edit: Might add that close to those shops in [2] there is a large botanic garden with play area and stream, one small and one very large reserve with native bush and an abundance of mountain bike tracks, a playing field, the central city area with cafes, many theatres, galleries, a library, and all sorts of other things that a child can make use of without supervision. All of this is within 5 minutes walk of those shops. Within 10 minutes walk there is the waterfront and a very safe swimming beach.

Re: The happiest kids in the world have social safety nets

#123

Post by Talanes »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #101
JohnFen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US they'd risk either being killed by a driver, or stopped by an overzealous neighbor or police officer. It may depends on where in the US you're talking about, but in my area none of this is actually true. Although lots of people believe it is.

I wonder if there's an urban/suburban/rural or political divide when it comes to this. I live in a suburb in California and have never ran into this problem. But we're also unincorporated and don't have cops with nothing better to do than harass some kid walking to school alone. We're also surrounded by people whose kids are now in their 20s-30s. They don't see our kids running around as a nuisance - they're relative…

I grew up in rural California in the one town in the county that was incorporated; the kind of place where every cop in town shows up if anything happens at all. I biked and rollerbladed to school alongside literal highways and never was approached about it once.

Re: The happiest kids in the world have social safety nets

#124

Post by abyesilyurt »

bojan wrote: post #74
throwaway49849 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For context, 75,518 EUR is $81,014. So if you're a software engineer making $200k, you're paying 37% on the first $81,014, or $30,000, and then 50% on the remaining $118,986, or $60,000. For a grand total of $90k on your $200k salary. Oof. In a modern society, with modern technology, why does the government demand ownership of 30-50% of the value that people generate? That's an enormous amount of free labor.

It's not a good example as almost no-one has a salary that high. For software engineers you're looking at say 90-100K as an average maximum, with vast majority earning less than that. Edit to cover your edit: it's certainly not free labour, I happily pay my taxes because I believe I'm getting quiet something in return.

This is wrong. I am relatively at the beginning of my career and already reached the said max. Median is probably much less, but the max is also much higher.

Re: The happiest kids in the world have social safety nets

#125

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

gnicholas wrote: post #121
MBlume wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds nice. I've personally spoken on the phone with a police officer who told me he'd involve CPS if he saw my daughter walking (two blocks!) to school again.

Yeah, in CA you aren't allowed to leave a kid under 6 in a car if " there are conditions that can pose a risk to the child’s health and safety , even if accompanied by another child who is not yet 13. What does it mean for conditions to "pose a risk"? Obviously high heat, but it's not clear what else could qualify. I don't ever leave my kids (one that is under 6 and one that is well over 6, but not yet 13) alone in a…

I don't think any of the parent posters were talking about leaving kids in a car. That is certainly a dangerous thing to do.

Re: The happiest kids in the world have social safety nets

#126

Post by asoneth »

JohnFen wrote: post #15
MBlume wrote: post #4

I'm strongly in favor of expanding the US social safety net, but I don't want to neglect other obvious factors here. Dutch children are able to walk or bike outside unsupervised. In the US they'd risk either being killed by a driver, or stopped by an overzealous neighbor or police officer. I think this kind of freedom of movement has a big effect on happiness, it certainly did for me. ETA relevant links: https://yout…

> In the US they'd risk either being killed by a driver, or stopped by an overzealous neighbor or police officer. It may depends on where in the US you're talking about, but in my area none of this is actually true. Although lots of people believe it is.

> in my area none of this is actually true

That's wonderful you live in place where children are can roam freely without being injured or killed by drivers. But this is a real threat in most of the US. Being killed in a motor vehicle crash is the second highest cause of death among children and adolescents. (It was the highest until 2020 when firearm-related injuries overtook them.[1])

For every 100,000 people the Netherlands has 3.8 annual traffic deaths, the US has 12.9, and Libera (the worst I could find[2]) has 35.9. That means when it comes to traffic deaths the US is 3.4x more deadly than the Netherlands and Liberia is 2.8x more deadly than the US.

I bike with my kids and let them walk to school and we talk about how to manage these risks. But being near roads in the US is less safe than most other developed countries by a statistically significant margin.

[1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2201761

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

Re: The happiest kids in the world have social safety nets

#127

Post by fynamo »

This author is delusional.

The statement "it is an economic luxury to raise happy, confident kids..." is utterly false. American parents (regardless of their economic status) have the ability to choose - where they live, what school their kids attend, what friends they hang out with, etc. That kids would be growing up unhappy or lacking confidence is a failure of parenting ... NOT society or lack of "social safety nets".

"it takes an infrastructure" - Socialist propaganda. The real truth is it takes _a community_ of people (parents) who care enough to make their community work. It used to be these communities centered around churches. Now families are transient, moving from place to place as their parents chase jobs. They're no longer grounded, which is a big reason so many people are asking for the government to intervene and create some sort of "infrastructure." It's BS. People need to wake up.

"only six weeks of paid parental leave" ... Wow. I have 4 kids and all the companies I worked for would have been hit HARD if I took that much time off. I would have been taking money out of my coworkers pockets to support that much time off. The most I ever got might have been 2 weeks. Projects would have failed, we didn't have backups or people who could just "pick up where I left off." So many businesses, especially smaller ones, can't afford that. Making those demands raises the cost of owning / running a business, OR, puts barriers in place when these business look to hire. Questions like, "is this person pregnant, or is there a chance of them or their significant other having a pregnancy" will become a huge blocker.

Utter socialist trash article.

My message to the author: Stop asking me to pay, with my taxes, for you to have a perfect life for your littler kids, when I am already spending so much on my own. I can't afford to pay for yours too. And not only will you be taking my money, you'll also be restricting my choices, as any time the government gets involved it will also remove or make more expensive competing options.

Get off your ass and go build the "infrastructure" you want to see. Ghandi was right. BE the change you wish to see in the world.

Re: The happiest kids in the world have social safety nets

#128

Post by throwaway49849 »

dhc02 wrote: post #118
throwaway49849 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The burden of proof is on the people claiming that level of taxation is required in the first place. If taxes need to be that high, its on high tax proponents to justify it, not on everyone else to justify why we shouldn't raise them higher. If you stop to think about it, there are only 3 possibilities: 1) Taxes are perfectly calibrated to exactly what they need to be. 2) Taxes are less than they need to be. 3) Taxes…

I think this a great frame to examine taxes though: Are taxes perfect, too high, or too low? Now that we have the question, how to we decide the answer? I think there are several possibilities, but one that comes to mind is happiness. A subjective and flawed metric to be sure, but a metric all the same. Thankfully, we do not have to resign ourselves to thought experiments with no opportunity for real data collection,…

>your criticism of the article is an argument in favor of the article.

I never criticized the article, which is about social safety net and child happiness. I'm criticizing the claimed taxation level required to have nice things.

Wasteful/not wasteful is mostly orthogonal to high/low. If high taxes, in a wasteful system, results in happy people, then that means you can get the same result for less. Meaning people get the same benefits, while keeping more income. Or more benefits, for the same taxes.

People seem to think that high taxes correlated to happiness is evidence of a non-wasteful government, but it's not. Happiness is not the only metric that matters. If it was, then being happy with corruption would be a virtue.

Re: The happiest kids in the world have social safety nets

#129

Post by throwaway49849 »

bojan wrote: post #116
throwaway49849 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The burden of proof is on the people claiming that level of taxation is required in the first place. If taxes need to be that high, its on high tax proponents to justify it, not on everyone else to justify why we shouldn't raise them higher. If you stop to think about it, there are only 3 possibilities: 1) Taxes are perfectly calibrated to exactly what they need to be. 2) Taxes are less than they need to be. 3) Taxes…

> The burden of proof is on the people claiming that level of taxation is required in the first place The proof is there and it's called the annual budget of the country. As far as I know it's public information, not that anyone ever bothers to look at it (and rightfully so - we are paying via taxes people to look at it, and another group of people to control it).

The existence of a budget is NOT proof that the expenditures in the budget are priced accurately. If it was proof, then there would never be instances of companies defrauding the taxpayer through government contracts.

Re: The happiest kids in the world have social safety nets

#130

Post by gnicholas »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #71

Universal non-chronic prenatal, neonatal and pediatric healthcare seems like a moral and financial no-brainer for our country.

I think CA pretty much provides this, if your employer's health care doesn't (via MediCal and such). I wonder what other states do as well.
Post reply on HN