> Safety net programs are little help. Only one form of public assistance can be spent on diapers, and in Florida the average benefit hasn’t increased in more than two decades.
Why do we hate the poor so much?
Why are diapers so expensive?
321–330 of 563 posts
Re: Why are diapers so expensive?
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just had a kid 2 months ago, and 12 changes a day doesn't seem all that unreasonable for a newborn. At our one-month checkup he was averaging 9 pees & 5 poops per day - several of the poops were doubled-up where he also peed, so a dozen per day is about right. It's dropped a bit since, but instances where a single changing results in multiple diapers used (eg. he shits the table right as I'm getting the new diaper…
> or he pees all over the table including the diaper that's waiting to be put on) Now, that's just you being n00b :-). Source: father of 3.5 years old and 4 month old kids. And yes, I also think 12 is too many. 8-9 diapers a day was max for a newborn, now 4 months later it's around 6-7.
I had the the same issue with my now 5 month old, I'd guess most first time parents do.
Re: Why are diapers so expensive?
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or religious. Most idiotic decisions were made by religious reasons.
At which point did we, as a society, settle the philosophical conundrum that is taking an unborn life? Cells, fetus or baby? What is it? Since when? Why? How should it be done? I'm not religious at all but it seems to me that, at least tangentially, most religious believes are rooted in philosophical unknowns and feeling of uncertainty. Religious people then resort to their faith of choice as a way to find answers. T…
The philosophical conundrum was settled when we as a society created the single definition for what life is. At that date we also defined good, evil, humane and inhuman.
That is to say, there is no single moment when those got a definitive definition. There is human rights and yet we have not a single definition of what human mean. I still recall reading discussions if a dead person has human rights or not, which implies some amount of uncertainty that goes beyond even life itself.
Calling people idiotic is never the right move and it does rub people in the wrong way, but I disagree to the claim that you need to have all the answers. I do not have a encompassing scientific and philosophical answer when human life start, what makes it human, and when it ends, but I still perceive human rights to be essential and those who object to human rights to be fundamentally wrong. If the discussion is to be moved forward I feel like demanding answers to those question will just lead into an impassable domain.
Re: Why are diapers so expensive?
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
I realized in my thirties that if I had just dropped $1000 on a pallet of razor blades when I turned 18 I'd have saved a couple times that. Way better returns than the actual "investment" that money ended up in.
I bought a $30 corded hair trimmer and switched to a buzz cut (I was starting to bake anyway) and a full beard. I use maybe one double edged razor blade or disposable razor per month for the edges of my beard, that's all. I haven't calculated the savings over the last 6-7 years, but it has to be a lot , compared to shaving daily and going to the hairdresser.
I can't grow a beard. Five days in and I give up. I do buzz my own hair though. It's super easy if you just use the same guard all over.
Re: Why are diapers so expensive?
#325This article is so frustrating. The helplessness and dependence are just sad. Cloth diapers cost less than $1.50 each in a 10-pack. If you are poor enough, you can wash them in a bucket with bar soap. That's what virtually everyone did before washers were invented. I'm saddened that this girl didn't figure this out. I know first-hand, when you're poor and desperate, you figure shit out. Unless, of course, you have a…
Jesus, your comment and the other replies just straight up reek of privilege/ignorance. What you're suggesting is obviously the pragmatic choice - obviously, if she's poor as shit and can't afford regular diapers, using reusable cloth ones is a great solution. But that's not the fucking point of the article - its $CURRENT_YEAR in the richest country in the world, this absolutely shouldn't be a thing that happens in t…
I never wore disposable diapers; my mom raised me in cloth diapers. They were two young parents, trying to get my dad's little one-room bicycle shop off the ground in a time of 25+% interest rates. I'm sure that scrubbing my shit out of cloth diapers wasn't fun but my mom did it.
Please, spare me the privilege argument. I've been so poor as a kid that I walked to my grandmother's house to ask for food. I've been so poor that I shared all-you-can-drink small size sodas at Taco Bell to make it to pay day. When you're poor and motivated, you do what you have to do.
Re: Why are diapers so expensive?
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
I switched to a safety razor 10 years ago, and ordered 250 science (not shaving) grade blades. I still have about 150 blades left. The pack cost me EU.
Got a link, brand, or model number for these "science" grade blades? I've been an on-and-off DE shaver for some years, and I've never heard of this option. I settled on Feather blades myself.
Also interested in link here. Also purchased large size feather blades a couple years ago still on the same box but running low.
Re: Why are diapers so expensive?
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because those same middlemen are the ones who would benefit the most from UBI. Of course subsidizing goods and services means we will have to stop pretending that all choices are equally good and start acting like adults again, where just because you really, really want to do drugs and have 8 kids doesn't mean you will get to do that regardless of how much money you have.
How exactly does subsidizing goods mean someone won't do drugs or have 8 kids? Do you think the folks addicted to drugs want to be? Most folks don't do drugs excessively. But if it is OK for a middle class person to drink once a month, I'm OK with poor folks drinking once every few months. Or other drugs infrequently (i'm pro-legalization of many things). If you don't want folks to do drugs all that often, the only t…
>Most folks don't do drugs excessively. But if it is OK for a middle class person to drink once a month, I'm OK with poor folks drinking once every few months. Or other drugs infrequently (i'm pro-legalization of many things). If you don't want folks to do drugs all that often, the only tool available with subsidies is to subsidize rehab and/or medical care and the family care that might come with inpatient rehab programs.
You don't subsidize alcohol, you tax it. Then you borrow a leaf from the Australian playbook and add a puke green coloring to it and force it to be sold in brown cartons with pictures of dissected livers.
>8 kids? How the heck do you expect to combat that with subsidies except though making sure birth control is nearly free (including the doctor's visit for women to get it, and actually offering low-cost sterilization). This completely glosses over the need for fact-based sex education (rather than the abstinence-only sort popular in some areas), for instance, and does nothing to deter folks that want 8 children.
You force sterilize people after the second child. And pay people to get sterilized with one or no children.
Unpleasant but when we are hitting the limits of what the planet can sustain and the best hope is 'we will go to Mars', doing unpleasant things so we survive is the better alternative to the cannibal holocaust we are setting ourselves up with.
Re: Why are diapers so expensive?
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you missed the part of the article where they talked about never having enough cash to buy in bulk, instead buying at 2 or 3x the unit cost in 5s and 10s from the corner shop.
When bulk is $40, you're just making some really, really poor life decisions if you both have a kid, and can't find a way to save that much money in a 30 day window.
You are making other assumptions here too, like having a Costco or Sam's Club nearby to buy the giant packs of diapers. Low income people often don't have those nearby.
Re: Why are diapers so expensive?
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 12 changes a day is not an outlier for a newborn, it’s normal. My son is 18 months and we change him probably 6 times a day at least. You can start potty training a kid at around one year's age though, which will decrease the need for diapers. That age depends on a kid of course, in my family it has started around when the kids learn to walk so age of 1-1.5.
With my first child I decided pretty quickly I'd had enough of changing pooey nappies once we began with solid food; so we started at c.6 months with potty training. All the guides said don't even try until they're 2½ IIRC. At that age they can't usually sit up, you hold them on first thing in the morning, and any time you're changing them. Worked quite well. I added in audio cues after reading some Elimination Commu…
> Cloth nappies seem to accelerate potty training too (we've done cloth and compostable, solely the latter with current child), I think they can feel they wet themselves more easily, better feedback. If the nappy is so "good" they don't feel wet then there's no intrinsic incentive and no feedback.
Modern diapers are so good that they're counter productive to potty training. The innards whick all the moisture so the child's bottom remains completely dry until it gets extremely saturated.
Re: Why are diapers so expensive?
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh man, diapers pale in comparison to formula costs. My daughter gets changed ~8 times per day, but she eats up to 36oz of formula. That's about $1.76 in diapers and up to $6.79 worth of formula. Add in DI water (since we make it from powder) and the obscene cost of bottles, and it gets even worse.
What's wrong with tap water? Formula still costs a lot, obviously, but you generally don't need special water for mixing formula unless your kid has an immune disorder or you live somewhere with unsafe tap water.
Depending on where you live, maybe nothing, maybe a lot. For example many areas still have high PPB of lead in their tap water (even if below the EPA guidelines of 15 PPB, or the EU's 10 PPB since 2013, it can still be considered unsafe, just not economical to fix).
Plus even ignoring heavy metal content, in some areas there might be micro-organisms in tap water (since it is sourced from a natural well or similar), so you'd need to be boiling tap water or risk making a newborn sick (even if your body could easily cope with similar water).
> Talk to your baby’s pediatrician and ask what kind of water you should use when mixing infant formula. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends boiling water to remove impurities and kill germs. While most municipal and public drinking water supplies are required to follow strict regulatory guidelines to be safe, pediatricians generally still suggest using boiled water to mix infant formula, at least for the first three or four months. Since there is no evidence that bottled water is safer than municipal water sources, the AAP says that while parents can use bottled water to mix formula, it needs to be boiled first. You can also use distilled water that has already been purified or ready-to-use formulas, which do not need to be mixed with water.