131–140 of 275 posts
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I live in Sweden, so I assumed Finland had it similar. Here, parents are not always offered to know the sex. This is sometimes because of hospital policy, or because the ultrasound did not make it clear enough. Thanks for giving a definitive answer.
Why would there be a hospital policy against gender disclosure?
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... 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…
More likely, you prefer not to pay because it costs way more than it should. I am not familiar with analysis of e.g. Day care costs, but Americans pay significantly more for healthcare than Europeans, and get significantly worse results; also, they pay significantly more for education and get significantly less. The party line is that it is a preference - but anecdotally, I've only heard that preference from people w…
Americans earn 30% more than Finlanders adjusting for PPP. I.e., taking into account higher cost of health care, lower cost of most other things, we still have 30% more on average.
Americans do pay more for education than Europeans, but our results are quite good compared to most of Europe. The only reason it appears our educational system is poor is because certain subgroups of the student body drag our averages down.
http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-abou...
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…
> Most of us choose not to, suggesting these benefits are worth less to us than money. Or you could be suffering from a Tragedy of the Commons. Your American viewpoint may be preventing you all from pooling your money together and saving overall. Instead you all have to act as individuals, and in this case it is in your individual best interests to not spend the money, since you only get the saving if you all act tog…
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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....
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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…
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?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live in Sweden, so I assumed Finland had it similar. Here, parents are not always offered to know the sex. This is sometimes because of hospital policy, or because the ultrasound did not make it clear enough. Thanks for giving a definitive answer.
Why would there be a hospital policy against gender disclosure?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Most of us choose not to, suggesting these benefits are worth less to us than money. Or you could be suffering from a Tragedy of the Commons. Your American viewpoint may be preventing you all from pooling your money together and saving overall. Instead you all have to act as individuals, and in this case it is in your individual best interests to not spend the money, since you only get the saving if you all act tog…
I don't understand. The tragedy of the commons is about resource depletion in the absence of price signals. If I choose to work rather than take paternity leave, what resource am I depleting? Or more generally, what harmful externality am I creating?
This is a narrow view. Think about it more generally, and you'll see that the same concept applies here.
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....
Irregardless of your extremely poor attitude, I shall point out the obvious: 'ProcessBlue' himself has stated in capital letters that it is free. I was just correcting that.