Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes

#141

Post by yummyfajitas » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 2:08 PM UTC

nollidge wrote: post #136

yummyfajitas wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... but young parents are usually given quite a few months of vacation time and salary from the state, a sort of children allowance until a child is 18 years old (100EUR or so)... In the US we earn 30% more money than Finland (adjusted for cost of living, which is quite high in Finland), so we can just pay for these things with savings if we want to. Most of us choose not to, suggesting these benefits are worth less…

> so we can just pay for these things with savings if we want to. Uh, who's "we"? You mean the 60% of Americans with more than $500 in savings? Are those the people who can "just" pay for it out of savings?

Not to mention all the Americans who choose to consume at American levels (considerably higher than European levels), rather than saving.

As for people at the bottom, they typically do choose free time over money. About 90% of those classified by the government as poor choose not to work full time, for example.

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2010.pdf

Re: Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes

#142

Post by flagnog » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 2:10 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #124

jan_g wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is worth noting that all this is not free, but paid for by the tax payer. Many European countries have similar arrangements. Personally, I think all this is money well spent by the governments as it gives nice financial boost to young parents and a sense that someone/something cares about them and their baby.

Why exactly is this worth noting? Nobody jumps to point out that there's still somebody paying for the "free" tiers of Dropbox or GitHub or whatever. Yet the moment somebody mentions a "free" social program, people suddenly have to hammer on the point that somebody pays for it. We're not a bunch of imbeciles who think that social programs just rain from the sky....

Regardless whether or not people are imbeciles, they still have a habit of abstracting away common knowledge, and then forgetting that the common knowledge exists. I see this all the time in the computer industry. It's good to remind everyone now and again that free is not necessarily free.

Re: Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes

#143

Post by flagnog » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 2:12 PM UTC

rlpb wrote: post #88

jan_g wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more than a baby box. I do not know how familiar you are with some European countries' social system, but young parents are usually given quite a few months of vacation time and salary from the state, a sort of children allowance until a child is 18 years old (100EUR or so), tax deductions for every child until a child is 18 years old, kindergarten 'bonuses', free health care for every child and similar. So this…

> And I am not arguing against it, just that in the end someone has to pay for it. What if it turned out that the baby pays for it because the improved average upbringing allows the baby to earn more and consequently pay more tax in absolute terms, though not in percentage terms? Would it be a cost to the taxpayer then?

but you're assuming that this improves the upbringing.

Re: Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes

#144

Post by rayiner » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 2:16 PM UTC

gbog wrote: post #130

rayiner wrote: post #125

> It's a tradition that dates back to the 1930s and it's designed to give all children in Finland, no matter what background they're from, an equal start in life. What a wonderful idea. My daughter was born in Chicago last year, and the hospital (Northwestern Memorial) gave us a little starter kit with bottles, pacifiers, some swaddling blankets, etc. I remember thinking as I walked out the door of the hospital that…

Not sure that the pacifiers are a good idea, do they have them in the Finland box?

What do you have against pacifiers?

Re: Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes

#145

Post by dalke » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 2:16 PM UTC

pointyhats wrote: post #57

dalke wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your original statement was "the maternity grant (until yanked by the government) was used to buy designer gear for the mother, ..." That it's happened at least once, I have no doubt. But I think you mean to use the phrase "was used to buy" to mean that it happens often enough to base a policy decision upon. The useful questions are "how often does it happen?" and more importantly "did yanking the policy lead to over…

I agree entirely. I did not state it was citable or sound, but an observation. The observation/hypothesis is valuable as it's the starting point for a discussion. Presenting the extreme is disingenuous. The answer to the correctness of my argument is neither yes or no - it is simply mu .

Others in this topic's comment page made observations to the contrary. Thus a discussion can go no further without more information. That's why you were asked for "citation referencing these problems."

You responded with an extreme, which was disingenuous, I agree.

In any case, any Hofstader fan knows what you mean now. Thank you for confirming that you agree that there is no meaningful basis for your opinion that the UK government should change its aid policies, and that your personal observations of the matter are not relevant.

Re: Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes

#146

Post by mikeash » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 2:23 PM UTC

flagnog wrote: post #142

mikeash wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why exactly is this worth noting? Nobody jumps to point out that there's still somebody paying for the "free" tiers of Dropbox or GitHub or whatever. Yet the moment somebody mentions a "free" social program, people suddenly have to hammer on the point that somebody pays for it. We're not a bunch of imbeciles who think that social programs just rain from the sky....

Regardless whether or not people are imbeciles, they still have a habit of abstracting away common knowledge, and then forgetting that the common knowledge exists. I see this all the time in the computer industry. It's good to remind everyone now and again that free is not necessarily free.

Why do people only ever bring this up with social programs, and not any of the many other "free" things that are discussed around here?

Re: Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes

#147

Post by 300bps » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 2:26 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #124

jan_g wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is worth noting that all this is not free, but paid for by the tax payer. Many European countries have similar arrangements. Personally, I think all this is money well spent by the governments as it gives nice financial boost to young parents and a sense that someone/something cares about them and their baby.

Why exactly is this worth noting? Nobody jumps to point out that there's still somebody paying for the "free" tiers of Dropbox or GitHub or whatever. Yet the moment somebody mentions a "free" social program, people suddenly have to hammer on the point that somebody pays for it. We're not a bunch of imbeciles who think that social programs just rain from the sky....

There are plenty of people that think the government has unlimited money and should spend it on the people. These people don't know that it is literal wealth transfer from one person to another with the government acting as middle man. Sure, you may realize that this is the case but many people don't.

It's the same mentality that leads people to believe that insurance companies should pay for everything until they realize that it is other insurance company customers (including thenselves) that actually foot the bill for it.

Re: Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes

#148

Post by pondababa » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 2:29 PM UTC

calinet6 wrote: post #135

Gotta love that Infant Mortality graph... if that's not direct proof of a systematic effect and success then I don't know what is.

How about something that accounts for all the other medical advances over the past century or so? I'd say they likely had some input on that graph.

Re: Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes

#149

Post by refurb » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 2:38 PM UTC

calinet6 wrote: post #135

Gotta love that Infant Mortality graph... if that's not direct proof of a systematic effect and success then I don't know what is.

I'm pretty sure the discovery of penicillin had something to do with the drop in infant mortality as well.

Re: Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes

#150

Post by _mulder_ » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 2:38 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #89

jan_g wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more than a baby box. I do not know how familiar you are with some European countries' social system, but young parents are usually given quite a few months of vacation time and salary from the state, a sort of children allowance until a child is 18 years old (100EUR or so), tax deductions for every child until a child is 18 years old, kindergarten 'bonuses', free health care for every child and similar. So this…

... but young parents are usually given quite a few months of vacation time and salary from the state, a sort of children allowance until a child is 18 years old (100EUR or so)... In the US we earn 30% more money than Finland (adjusted for cost of living, which is quite high in Finland), so we can just pay for these things with savings if we want to. Most of us choose not to, suggesting these benefits are worth less…

Or another way to look at it, Infant Mortality rates in Finland are so much lower than in the US, suggesting they value a babies life higher than Americans value money.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_m...