Why are diapers so expensive?
tampabay.com
tampabay.com
First off, 12 changes a day is a huge outlier - even for a newborn. 8 would be a more reasonable number, and it drops down to the 4-6 range in the first year, and by now we’re at 3 if we don’t go swimming.
Second item that sounds waaay off is $1000/yr for diapers. Again, that has to be an outlier based on the worst possible set of assumptions. A box of 168 diapers lasts about a month and costs ~$40. That doesn’t add up...
And finally, many of the charities I work with will hand out diapers or cards for free diapers to anyone who asks. If you’re really in a bind, call a local church, women’s shelter, or commissary! We really do want to help, but we have to know you need it.
How far did society have to fail for us to have to encourage the use of loan sharks so our children can take a shit, seriously?
Edit: in an attempt to lighten the conversation which has suddenly became a class dividing conversation on economics and privilege.
My most highly rated comment on Hacker News is now about shit. Brilliant.
2nd edit: Two people didn't approve and have either removed an upvote, or I've been downvoted.
More drama than a soap box here today.
If I pay $5 every other day for 10 diapers, then I'm paying ~$75/month for 150 diapers. $0.50/diaper, $2.50/day.
If I take a pay day loan of $30 for a 200 pack of diapers, then I've just brought a 40 day supply of diapers. $0.15/diaper, $0.75/day.
After 16 days I've recouped my original investment of a $30 loan + $10 fee. By the time day 40 rolls around and I run out of diapers, I've saved $60. I can now afford to buy bulk diapers in perpetuity. For every subsequent month, I'll be spending $52.5 less on diapers.
I can only speak from the fees here in Australia but here, for a small loan. You're looking at a minimum fee of 200-300% and that's assuming you pay on time.
This is why legal loan sharks exist, and if this method actually did work as you intended it, why do legal loan sharks still exist? Couldn't you apply your macroeconomics to everything?
Food? Nappies? Water? Bulk buy all of your items on legal loan sharks just once and you're ahead.
1) Get a small loan
2) Buy all the small disposable/consumables you require in bulk and reap the savings
3) Pay off the loan with 200-300% in fees on top, assuming you pay it off in time
4) ...
5) Profit!
As somebody who grew up in abject poverty, and who lived in poverty for the first portion of their adult life, better planning will absolutely make situations like this instantaneouly better. When I was poor as hell I put a huge amount of effort into buying in bulk and doing various other things to avoid all of the blindingly obvious poverty traps that exist. It took some hardship to get everything established properly, but my whole life was hardship, so big deal...
Most people in the west could get away with living a sustainable (although shitty) lifestyle in poverty. It’s only proper planning and effort that will pull them out of it.
I'm from a poor working background too. You can look through my comment history, topics of poverty, drug abuse and macroeconomics are some of the many topics that typically interest me enough to contribute to the conversation here on Hacker News.
Your logic is absolutely sound, but in the event or period where you've taken the loan and have to pay it off in 1-2 weeks. What happens when said parents child gets sick and requires more nappies that day?
Perhaps they need medication.
Maybe they lost some cash walking to the grocery store.
They lost a days work.
There's no room for error and when or if that occurs. The entire benefit goes backwards and you end up losing so much more than you hoped to gain.
There's a whole myriad of reasons that could contribute to this loan going backwards when you have 0 disposable income.
But if you're borrowing $30 for nappies, it would not take much to then push you outside of that fortnightly budget so you are not able to meet your legal loan sharks contractual payments and that, by definition, is a financial slippery slope.
The financial industry relies on people like this, I would assume for every credit card owner that has 55 interest days free or a 0% balance transfer. There's another 9 who don't pay off in time and will incur interest charges and fees and make the entire business venture profitable.
Legal Loan sharks are profit driven, they are not providers of care, and they are not their to help you get ahead so you do not need to use their services again. Their business model is the exact opposite. They assume you will need to go back, and go back repeatedly.
You'd do well to watch Episode 2 of Dirty Money on Netflix - Payday. The entire episode is essentially a business case for why Loan Sharks should be avoided at all costs.
But the thing is, your maths is _correct_. So instead why can't we loan this person who lives in poverty from non-profits and similar who want to _help_ if it's so logically sound that allowing those in poverty to buy in bulk, will allow them to get ahead?
It’s harder to break out of a poverty trap than it is to live with one, but it’s much easier to stay out of one than it is to live with it. My point is that with the correct effort, people can generally break free of most of the poverty traps they find themselves in.
To speak to your last point, there generally are non-profits around who help with these sort of things, and I used some of them myself in the past. The thing that non-profits can provide so simply is the motivation and discipline required to maintain a well planned budget. Each small thing that you improve, like buying diapers in bulk, is a step towards escaping poverty, and everybody has the capacity to do those things.
I find 'correct effort' to rather deceptive term, because part of the problem is defining what that would be (and your example failed as a 'correct' one).
Furthermore, I'd say a cursory glance at history shows that what you're saying is not true. Slaves did not just free themselves, the working class did not just obtain the many rights all enjoy by themselves, women did not just gain voting rights and all that jazz by themselves, and all this applies to gays and the mentally disabled too.
I'm not arguing against 'correct effort', clearly many poor, slaves, women and gays fought hard. The crucial bit here is that they did so collectively, that they needed a lot of help from those who were not in their situation, and that a big part of this involved effecting political change.
I've never heard a convincing argument that somehow we're now in a completely different situation, and that somehow now the steps one can take as an individual are 'correct action', even if of course they can't hurt.
It strikes me that this focus on the individual is somehow a problem on both ends of the political spectrum. The one side devolves into perhaps too much identity politics, and the other too much into the "we'd all be fine if we just worked harder on ourselves".
Both sides, meanwhile, seem to prefer to paint the other side as being will-fully <insert shitty ism>, when I think we're all really mostly equally shitty and good, probably partly right, and really we should just be mad at the immense inequality that has left us mis-directing our anger at each other.
Broadly speaking, anyways.
The correct effort is simply whatever a person can do to make incremental improvements to their lives. It’s going to be different for everybody. Psychologically, part of the reason that poverty traps are so easy to fall into is because people in poverty don’t have the luxury of indulging in much long term decision making. However some opportunity always exists, and finding an exploiting those opportunities is the only way out.
The reason there is any focus on the individual is because you can’t simply subsidize out of poverty. If you want people to get out of poverty and to stay out of poverty, then those people need to take responsibility for their own destiny. Arguably society could do a better job of giving people the tools to do that, but that doesn’t change the dynamics of the problem. The truth is that if I was in that persons shoes, I’d be living a better life than they are. Because I was, and I managed to, and those skills eventually got me completely out of poverty all together.
Reality is that minorities get charged more harshly for the same crime than Whites and once you have a criminal record, it's harder to get a job.
Studies have also shown that all other things being equal, when a person has a resume that signals "blackness", they get fewer calls back.
Not to mention that because of overzealous prosecutions, poorly funded public defenders offices, and the prominence of plea deals, poor people don't get the same breaks as someone who can afford their own lawyer.
Then let's not even mention the poor state of some school districts since schools are funded by property taxes leading to a cycle of poor schools.
As far as just because you were able to come out of poverty means anyone can is just like saying that because I won the lottery, why can't anyone? Statistically, income mobility is rare.
It doesn't take much time to put together a budget and if you lack the knowledge i am sure you can find free community classes to get basic budgeting skills. I signed up to volunteer at one but they had too many volunteers.
People need to get out this learned helplessness and make effort to improve their lives.
Surely you see the problem here?
Items like chest freezers that cost more electricity to run, but allow me to buy more food and freeze it. At the cost of larger electricity bills.
It's having enough money for fuel so I can drive 80km to Costco.
It's having /time/ so I can just do the baths of all the above because I'm not working 60 hour weeks to feed the family.
However, it really IS helpful to make a larger purchase. You can think of convenience-purchase-pricing of things you use regularly at home like loan-sharking at exorbitant rates. It hits those least capable of affording it.
The flip side is you get a huge benefit from scrounging for the money/time to get the bulk package. It's like an small investment that returns 200%.
My wife makes fun of me, but I often buy a large amount/quantity of a few items at the grocery store, i.e. ones that we already use regularly, that I know the usual price of, so I know when a "sale price" (or bulk price) is actually a good deal. This only really works well for things that are shelf-stable, of course.
Diapers are definitely one of the things you should try to buy in large packages when the prices are low. It genuinely is hard for a single mother to do this, but there's a significant payback in both money AND time.
Edit: Or for other people's ethical reasons, manifested as laws against abortion.
Yeah, they wail and wail about murdering children and then are all too pleased to scorn and segregate the mothers (but not so much the fathers) of these children so they have the worst possible chances.
First, this seems incredibly heartless -- poor people should just give their kids up to adoption -- and second, it only makes "logical" sense if you assume that adoption is a better outcome for the kids than growing up poor. But if, as stated, some kids are going to end up in "they system" for years or decades, instead of magically getting adopted into some rich family, then putting them up for adoption may well end up much worse.
Really? In 2018, given the myriad of ways you can cost-effectively prevent pregnancy, I hardly accept "because it happened" as an answer.
Yes, birth control sometimes fails. That statistic alone cannot explain the quantity of individuals having children, who simply shouldn't be. People can down vote me all they want, but what I am saying is true: Having children when you cannot afford to take care of them is reckless and incredibly selfish.
But yes, sometimes people have kids, realizing that they have no clue how they'll afford them. Call it desperation, if you will. Or rebellion against an unjust society.
Or maybe they don't really think it through. Much of the time, I suspect.
The costs of everything you need to raise a child come as a surprise to most middle-class people. How would they not to the poor. Common sense says that people raise kids in developing countries and they have nothing, so it can't take money, right? But in a western society with a western standard of living, that common sense is wrong.
There are many reasons that it fails, although missing a dose is the largest reason. Other reasons can be improper storage, using certain drugs (prescription or otherwise), or even consuming an unusual amount of some foods or supplements. Even if you do everything right there's a small chance that it will happen anyway.
Now, people like to claim that if you skip a dose or mess up taking it at the wrong time of the day it's your fault, but it can be complicated due to the different types of pills available, and if you get switched to a different brand, it can be easy to mess up. Typically pills come in a 28 pack. The first 21 or 24 of those will have the hormones used to prevent pregnancy, and then either 7 or 4 will be placebos. But some schemes only give you 21 pills and then you go a week without taking any before starting up the next set. There's also now larger packages and the hormone concentrations and days without taking them vary as well.
Condoms have certain advantages, but they break. And other forms of birth control tend to be more expensive and out of the reach of people living in poverty.
And although the various safety measures rock climbers use sometimes fail, there is a method of rock-climbing safety that's 100% effective: not going rock-climbing in the first place.
And I have a perfectly safe car: that is, I never leave my house.
I take it you can see how ridiculous these are. The point (well, one point) of cooking is to be able to eat food and not get food poisoning. The point of all the ropes and things is to be able to climb rocks and not fall to your death. The point of seatbelts and crumple zones and antilock braking is to be able to drive from place to place and not get killed in a car crash.
Not having sex -- which I assume is what you are referring to here -- isn't a form of birth control, because it doesn't accomplish the objective of having sex and not making babies.
It might still be a good idea, of course. Just as it might be a good idea never to go rock climbing (maybe it's just too dangerous to be really worth it for anyone who's thinking clearly) or never to drive a car (it's bad for the environment in lots of ways, after all). But that's a separate argument, and the case needs to be made honestly (cost/benefit on failure rates, appeals to alleged rules handed down by alleged gods, etc.) rather than by snarky one-liners like the one above.
You don't need to have sex. Abstinence is a form of birth control as much as being bald is a hairstyle.
I know that this may sound strange, and I don't share this trait myself, but for many people sex is a critical part of forming a romantic bond with their partner. Without sex, they feel unloved and invalidated in the relationship. That's just part of their emotional needs. So for some people sex is indeed a psychological need.
But a large fraction of people would find their lives made much, much worse if they were unable to eat solid food, to leave their house, or to drive a car.
Exactly the same goes for sex.
Brief reminder of the context for this discussion: the person the OP is about had a child despite not having much money, various people here said you shouldn't be having children if you're too short of money, others pointed out that not having children is sometimes difficult, and that is when user rubidium suggested that total abstinence from sex might be the answer.
So we're talking here about whether it's reasonable to say that poor people should just never have sex.
I guess opinions on that might vary. My opinion is: duh, no, what an absolutely terrible idea. You don't literally have to have sex any more than you literally have to have friends or holidays or music, but just like any of those it's a hell of a thing to say whole classes of people should just do without.
You can see the various options and pregnancy rates (both based on the typical use and the perfect use case) for the first year: http://www.arhp.org/Publications-and-Resources/Quick-Referen...
Personally, rates like these makes me glad to be a gay male.
Citation needed, and good luck finding one considering the long list of pills side effects.
Also all your previous objections to birth control are invalid in the case of IUD.
Your entire comment is incredibly entitled and condescending. Have a look through the other comments on this thread for some reasonable discourse on the subject, plenty of people have commented on how the issue is far more nuanced than you make it out to be.
This issue is incredibly nuanced, but people like you (and the authors of the article) never want to talk about one side of it: Personal responsibility.
The second we bring it up, we're denounced as callous, entitled, naïve, etc. etc.
It's surprising to me how often those pronouncing the complexity and nuance of an issue are almost always just fierce defenders of ONE side - the other side - of the issue.
Life just happens, as nice as it would be for all children to be born planned into stable circumstances, afaik the reality is often quite a bit more unpredictable than that.
Middle class: "That people who work all the time and never spend time with their kids are allowed to have children will always blow my mind. What is the point of having a child if you never see them."
Rich: "That people who will rob their kids of their self reliance, by buying them everything they want, are allowed to have children will always blow my mind. What is the point of having child if they just end up leeching on their parents."
I mean we can come with all sorts of irrational and judgmental comments.
Failed contraception is a thing.
Lack of access to contraception or abortion is a thing.
Seriously, why don't we leave the decision of who should be allowed to have kids out of the conversation and we as a society buck up and help take care of the ones who need help?
Diaper pricing is dependent on how many you buy at once, I buy giant boxes so my unit cost is low. If you don’t have $40 to buy the giant box, but only $10 to buy a small package. You are paying twice the unit cost.
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.
https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/toddler/...
The Chinese use elimination training, or "potty on demand." You place the kid over the potty, make a specific sound they associate with going potty (you created the association previously) and they go. You then repeat this enough times in a day to eliminate the need for diapers.
I don't think elimination training is potty training. In potty training you're teaching the kid to tell YOU when they need to go, in elimination you are telling THEM when to go. Plus in potty training they're doing "active holding" whereas in elimination you're aiming for things to never get to that stage by going "potty on demand" enough throughout a day.
I think elimination training is very interesting and some parents have had great success mixing elimination with diapers to reduce the amount of accidents/cost. But even if they're trained on the elimination technique, they'd still need to be potty trained later, it just might be easier (since, again, you're asking them to tell you, rather than you tell them).
It's certainly interesting to see the difference between countries in all baby things, e.g. UK, US, Italy, France and Japan.
- How long kids are in nappys.
- How much food you are recommended to eat when pregnant.
- What foods to avoid when pregnant.
- What foods to give to babies and when.
These all vary massively from country to country.
That being said, it's nearly impossible if you don't have a parent doing full time caregiving. No daycare will do it. My wife used to do it as a nanny, where she learned about it, but that's an outlier. Really not easy to navigate between you and your family or friends who have similar age kids!
Worked quite well. I added in audio cues after reading some Elimination Communication (EC) info.
3rd child, 2½ yo, will now poo & wee in potty a couple of times a day, and can tell us when he needs it. A good strong feedback loop, positive praise, no negativity about lack of "production".
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.
As we did our version of baby sign (with parallel vocalisation) from c.6 months our eldest was able to tell us he needed the potty before he could talk.
Breastfeeding seems to make a positive difference with nappies and potty training too, I think the child has a healthier bowel and so perhaps more control, less gas, etc.
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.
That is absurd. I wonder if the diaper companies wrote them?
We did something like 18 months which is far less impressive than yours but was not rocket science or anything. Maybe cheap diapers helped, as they don't feel as dry?
I suspect you may be right on both questions.
> we change him probably 6 times a day at least
Does not compute... 6 times a day is not 12 times a day.
Someone told me that mid-rich people often group together to have a grocery accountant who will do their bulk shopping for them and it ends up costing them less than a supermarket prices for superior products.
Our groceries are the freshest, localist, most responsibily sourced and affordable in NYC 20-50% off other stores.
FoodCoop.com
Drop by for a tour and say hey if you do.
That's 19 boxes of these, which probably fit in a shoe box.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Derby-100-Extra-Shaving-Blades/dp/B...
I still have about 150 blades left. The pack cost me <20USD including shipping from US->EU.
That razor recently broke, so it’s off to eBay again to find a replacement, since I have a box of blades. I refuse to pay for rip-off blades.
There's lots of discussion on shaving forums about exactly why they're called "labs", but as far as I know they're just regular double-edge blades.
I also prefer Feather. They cost about twice as much, but work much better on my tough stubble.
Examples:
https://www.fishersci.com/shop/products/razor-blade-uncoated...
https://www.emsdiasum.com/microscopy/products/preparation/bl...
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.
All beards look scraggly as they grow at first, you need to give it time to properly fill in before you give up. If you can, let it grow wild for a month, resist the urge to cut or trim. Then you can start adjusting it.
The most important tips I got were to set the bottom edge right above your Adam's apple, make it mostly a straight line and feather it out, so you don't have a hard edge. Feather in the sideburns as well. For the cheeks, I prefer to keep them natural or just lightly trimmed, but it depends on how hirsute you are.
I buzz my head without the guard, to the shortest possible setting. I did shave my head for a while, but I decided it isn't really worth it.
It also takes the right genetics. Some of us will not have a real "beard" regardless of how much time we give it.
Unit cost of a diaper is about $0.25-0.30 when bought in bulk (even with your example), so $1000/year = ~3200-4000 diapers = ~10 changes/day. Change your assumptions on diaper use and everything else lines up.
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.
>Can I use flouridated tap water to mix formula? "Yes, you can use fluoridated water for preparing infant formula. However, if your child is only consuming infant formula mixed with fluoridated water, there may be an increased chance for mild dental fluorosis. To lessen this chance, parents can use low-fluoride bottled water some of the time to mix infant formula; these bottled waters are labeled as de-ionized, purified, demineralized, or distilled, and without any fluoride added after purification treatment. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires the label to indicate when fluoride is added."
So even if ten thousand of me said this a hundred thousand times, people would still buy the "special" bottled water with a picture of a baby on the label. You have to either just let them do it, or start bottling water and printing reassuring labels. They might wise up by the second or third kid.
Or were you trying to say 'distilled water'?
Distilled water is deionized, but deionized has not necessarily been distilled.
In practice, however, both are overkill for baby formula.
Filtered water is fine unless you live in an area with lead problems.
And what obscene cost for bottles? We have exactly 4 bottles so far for our 4 month old and they were less than $5 each. And new nipples are about $2 each when we needed to change the flow.
Now that’s a good racket.
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.
FWIW, we're changing diapers roughly every 3-4 hours. I can pretty much put my clock on it (a blue strip shows if she's pee'd). Every 2 hours is overkill. The strip wouldn't be full blue yet.
There's also (washable) cloth diapers which are better for the environment and wallet though they're also an investment. We're planning on switching to them, but it is too early for now.
Newborns pee so little and diapers absorb so much that one diaper would be enough for the whole day. But with the strip, people switch them every few hours :)
We do this - we've got 20 or so cut-up facecloths we use for this purpose. They are usually the limiting factor on how quickly we do laundry. It's not uncommon to go through 3/day; it's like having a set of cloth diapers we use just for diaper changes. Plus, he's gotten pretty good at avoiding the cloth and pissing out the bottom, or choosing that moment right when I take the cloth off and put the diaper on to unload, or shitting all over his penis (!!) so that I have to clean that first and getting me in the face while I'm bent over him with a wet-wipe.
Someday he's going to win a lot of pissing contests.
Two kids from an identical environment and sharing the same ancestors are hardly a significant sample.
6-7 diaper daily changes. Normal. 8-10 diaper daily changes. Normal.
Buying in bulk (200 pack or so) easily gets you at 0.16/diaper or below. And even lower if you look out for deals.
And assuming you need them now and don't have money for bulk buy, a 27 pack at walmart for off-brand is $5.41 at the moment. ( ~0.20/unit )
Therefore, the cost of diapers is probably quite a bit less than $1000/year even in the worst case.
We've also invested in decent reusable cloth diapers. To buy "enough" of them so we aren't running out or doing laundry on a small set of them every few hours, we spent around $600 or $700 for a good bunch of them. These are reusable for years, and even across children. There's even a decent resale market for them if you can believe it. By far they are the cheapest means of diapering children, especially multiple children over time. However, the downside is quite an increased amount of laundry logistics. And, in some cases, it doesn't obviate the need for disposable diapers. For example, if you're going somewhere for the whole day, it might be easier to use disposables since you don't have to carry around soiled cloth diapers. Or if the kids visit other family... sometimes just simpler to rely on disposables.
[0]: http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/index.php/Sam_Vimes_Theory_...
Are these silken luxury diapers? I just bought diapers and they were $0.16/each for Costco brand and that's not on sale. A quick search on amazon shows 0.14 - 0.17 for any bulk buy of brand name diapers and that is not considering the cheaper rate you could get if you subscribe or the frequent coupons and deals that show up.
The only option I see for diapers in the 0.25-0.30 range are a small pack of 29 diapers shipped for $7.97
$1000/yr for diapers is definitely possible. You and I may have the luxury of purchasing diapers in bulk, but for many people (such as the young woman in the article), 32 diapers for 10 bucks is reality.
The price of diapers also have a very large range from a few cent to a several dollar per diaper. So it's worth checking several markets. Poor people usually don't have much free time though. Especially when you have 3-5 small kids to take care of. Taking the buss around the city with all your kids is very impractical. Add the sleep deprecation and you wont have much patience either, and make stupid decisions. It is really hard to imagine the life of a poor family mother/father when you have a nanny that takes care of dressing, feeding, diapers, cleaning, washing, etc. It's basically a full time job.
And the articles does say “as many as 12, though older kids need fewer.” So, that seems spot-on.
Even when they start using less the older kid pack costs the same for fewer diapers... plus night diapers etc.
Add wipes etc and you hit over $1000 easily.
The Costco diapers (and formula actually) are the same mfgr as the name brands, at a significant discount.
People buying small packs as needed will end up spending significantly more than those who can afford to stock up at places like Costco.
I also use Costco diapers, and I basically only buy them when they're on sale at $8 off per pack, which is a 20%-25% discount, depending on diaper size.
To do this you have to:
- be educated about looking at unit prices and be able to think through these issues
- afford a Costco membership in the first place. Yes — it "pays for itself", but you have to afford it in the first place and have the self-control to not spend more than you should.
- afford and plan accordingly to stock up by buying multiple boxes of diapers at a time when they're on sale. You have to buy enough that you don't need any for the 3-4 month gap between sales.
Besides Costco, I've found that the Target brand is priced rather reasonably, even at the smaller quantities.
The difference between buying newborn diapers at Costco sale prices vs a normal-sized Pampers box is $0.11/unit vs $0.28/unit. It's huge, and remains high as sizes go up ($0.21 vs $0.40 for size 5).
Right, and “afford” doesn't just mean the price of buying the diapers in one shot (which is simply the discipline of saving for intermittent purchased) but also affording adequate storage space for the stockpile (including after all applying a similar strategy to any other productd for which it provides a higher return.
The “cheaper if you buy bulk packs at Costco, and cheaper still if you buy multiple of those when they are on sale” thing is true, but is equivalent to “cheaper if you have a big chunk of storage space you can devote to it, and cheaper still if you have a giant chunk of storage space.”
That said, we have a 4-month old, and she still needs 12-15 changes a day (it's only gone down a little since birth) to be happy. She starts crying the moment she wets her diaper, and that and being hungry are just about the only reasons she cries, so it really is important to change her often, and those 168-diaper boxes last more like 2 weeks. For us buying bulk packages at about the same ~$0.25 each price you are, it does cost like of $80/month i.e. $1000/year. My friends tell me the rate of diaper use goes down at about the same rate that the size of the diapers go up (so a box of constant size lasts about a constant duration); I haven't researched the price for larger diapers, but wouldn't be surprised if companies price the larger diapers to keep a constant dollars/month rate.
This is also something that varies a lot more based on the kid than anything else. We have a friend whose kid was born the same week who never cries due to diapers and they have to set a schedule of checking to avoid her kid getting a rash, since the kid never asks for a change.
So I think certainly $80/month is the right number to think about from a policy perspective, since that's what they cost for a significant portion of families (even if you buy in bulk as we do). If some families (like our friends with the kid who doesn't complain about wet diapers) get away with less, that's great for them, but not much comfort to a poor family for whom this is a hardship.
There is an 'ick' factor but liners and a toilet sprayer take care of 99% of that.
In relation to the case in the article, I wonder if we couldn't subsidize certain items and allow parents to receive a one month supply at low to no cost? Why should we give disadvantaged people $180 a month just to let several middlemen take a cut via the corner drugstore?
It turns out that letting the market deliver necessities based off of demand is far more efficient than the alternative. That would be a government anticipates how much a community will use, what styles of diapers they'll want, etc.
And I mean a comparison between governments of equally developed nations. That means that you compare the USSR to Brazil and not the USA. Since the difference in HDI between the USSR and Brazil was smaller than that of the USSR to the USA.
Story upon story like https://heavy.com/news/2018/02/risks-costs-private-water-lea... doesn't make me conclude that letting the market deliver water is "far more efficient than" a public water system.
Your argument is making a straw man. You are the first commenter to bring up public utilities. Everybody needs water. Systems that are accountable to local government are the most effective way to get it. Usually that is with a publicly-owned water corporation.
A basket of goods is far different. Back to the subject actually at hand: some people will need cloth diapers. Others disposable. A government employee would need to administer the program in that town or district.
The inflexibility of the program would mean that some parents would not use all their diapers and would dispose of them. Other unfortunate parents would need way more. Also, what size diapers? Benchmark this against weight? A physical bottom measurement? Not all children use diapers at the same rate.
Hopefully this example gives you an idea of the complexities involved in centralized management. Empirically, baskets of goods are less efficient and more costly when centrally administered.
You said "letting the market deliver necessities". Water is a necessity.
I'm also for single-payer government run state-wide/national health systems. Somehow those work and are more cost-effective for overall public health, despite a variability of need which is far higher than that of diapers.
Now, I agree that akira2501's proposal isn't tenable, and in a parallel thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16763183 ) you see I list some of my objections.
What I disagree with is your broad and non-nuanced statement regarding the supposed efficiency of letting the market deliver necessities.
If you re-read my comment, you will see that I provide a counterexample to the "all markets for everything" narrative.
Your response indicates that you think I'm a member of the opposing intellectual "team" and you need to defend yours. Not only do I acknowledge that single-payer is effective in several countries, I believe that it is one of many possible solutions to the U.S. healthcare problem.
My comment was narrowly disputing the effectiveness of a centralized planning system for market commodities. Even the NHS has considerable decentralized aspects.
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.
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.
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 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.
What is the basis if your concern? Over and over again studies show that poor people are no worse at managing money than non-poor people. Probably better, since they have so little to waste.
In this weird present where Gawker now has decent journalism, I'll quote from http://gawker.com/poor-people-do-not-just-blow-any-money-the... :
> The popular image of the "Welfare Queen" is one that is seared in the mind of many Americans. No big surprise, since countless millions of political advertising dollars were used to put it there. Nevertheless, evidence shows that the welfare state in the US, to the extent that we have one, works—that giving poor people tax breaks, and social welfare, and, yes, cash aid helps to bring people out of poverty and allows them to lead more bearable lives. ...
> I will politely refrain from addressing the racist overtones of the "poor people are lazy and stupid" position because they should not need lengthy explanations to debunk.
> Poor people are not perfect. Nor are middle class people, or rich people. Wasting money is a possibility, among humans.
Irresponsible spending is precisely what will happen with UBI. When you cut a check not earmarked for a specific purpose (food, rent, clothing, etc.) you will inevitably end up with people mismanaging their money and coming back for more ("but I'm broke through absolutely no fault of my own, how will I afford to eat?"). This will lead to backstops beyond UBI for people facing emergencies, which will lead to a small but significant portion of people gaming the system by, well, having "emergencies" every month that leave them unable to afford necessities.
The fatal flaw of UBI is assuming that there will be no abuse.
Trading food stamps (or food purchased with them) for drugs. Etc. The drug addict is going to get drugs one way or another; we may as well reduce the friction (and use the savings to pay for rehab).
Regardless, most of the poor are just trying to get by and not prone to abusing whatever assistance is available.
By handing out food stamps that can be used for X you make X the default for that thing and require user to go out of their way to use the food stamp money for something else.
If people are using food stamps to buy food to sell to a bodega at 50% value and then using that to buy beer you've effectively doubles the price of beer (or diapers) for people buying it with food stamps.
It's mind-boggling that a bunch of tech people who are well versed in the various tricks employed to get users to do things don't understand this.
It's not like anyone who's on welfare/ebt/food stamps doesn't know exactly how to convert those dollars to cash if they want to. It's just not an efficient use of those dollars compared to buying what you're expected.
Replacing all those with UBI just removed the extra steps and cost penalty for using welfare/ebt/food stamps on things you're not supposed to.
In your example, the bodega is getting a 50% cut of the aid that it shouldn't. Instead, we can give the recipient 50% of the current amount in cash, and let them buy the drugs directly. The extra 50% can be used in several ways... pumped into rehab or education, reducing tax burden on others, whatever we decide.
In both cases, the drug addict uses all their aid for the same amount of drugs. In my scenario, society spends less for that outcome.
You seem to be under the assumption that welfare is supposed to be income. It's not. It's aid, financial assistance for near-necessities. If you want drug money without hurting your eligibility it's not that hard to work under the table.
Regardless, I'm much more concerned about the average recipient, who may need more gas than bread some weeks, or some other completely reasonable situation. As noted in a sibling, it's been proven that the poor aren't any worse at budgeting/spending than the not-poor.
Honestly, there is an epidemic of self defeatist in our day and age.
Mold thrives in moist, dark places, not most sunny ones.
Also the society functioned differently; one middle-class salary could sustain a middle-class family, for one.
We no longer live in that reality, nor would anyone want to.
It's like saying that homeless people are OK because there were no buildings in prehistoric times.
Edit - and having lived in both, you're much better off drying things in a hot humid place than in colder ones.
But damn, finding used diapers in the toilet is annoying. Plus wet diapers hanging all over to dry. If it's your kid, though, it's not a big deal.
The upfront cost was $150 so that might be an issue for some.
We have also noticed, like you mentioned, that cloth diapers are easier on the babies' skin and makes potty training significantly easier.
For anyone who is reading this and may be interested in cloth diapering: Get some quality covers and then buy a ton of flour sack towels. They make the best inserts. Super absorbent, cheap, and unfolds to a single layer, which means they get cleaner and dry faster.
Maybe not for twins, but "one kid at-a-time" is more than doable and the second kid is where the real money savings come in.
And of course cloth diapers are probably a good idea for twins too, but I just couldn't handle it. There comes a point where you'll give almost anything to get five minutes of free time every now and then.
How do you rinse it? What drain?
> Get some quality covers and then buy a ton of flour sack towels. They make the best inserts. Super absorbent, cheap, and unfolds to a single layer, which means they get cleaner and dry faster.
Don't understand this whole paragraph.
Taking care of a baby requires specific education. You should not expect to know everything about the topic if you have not researched it.
It is rude to express your confusion this way. As written it implies that the author did not express things well, when it appears instead to be that you are ignorant of the topic and don't feel like doing the research. I'm often that way, but since no one else cares, I don't comment about it.
How is it that you did not think to do, say, a DDG search for "diaper insert", or even better, "diaper insert flour sack"? The first hit for the latter is http://mamanloupsden.com/2014/10/29/whats-deal-flour-sack-to... , which seems quite relevant.
Reminds me of many tech articles here where obscure acronyms are never explained.
Also putting feces down the sink doesn’t sound like a great idea, though maybe it’s fine. No explanation given either way.
https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Baby-Cloth-Diaper-Spraye...
Obviously when the baby is old enough to have well-formed poops, you dump that in the toilet. Otherwise we just rinse them in the sink, put them in a 5 gallon pail, and then wash them in the washing machine every day or two. (More often because of twins)
For example: https://www.amazon.com/Thirsties-Wrap-Cloth-Diaper-Cover/dp/...
Flour sack towels are thin kitchen towels, I assume named how they are because they are the same material that people used to buy bulk flour in.
The picture is bad, but these are what we bought: https://www.theisens.com/products/flour-sack-kitchen-towel/8...
Basically its a towel a little less than 3 feet on each side. I fold it in half the long way, in half the other way, and then in thirds the original direction. You put that inside of the diaper cover, and then put it on the baby just like a disposable diaper.
When the baby pees, you replace only the cloth part. When they poop and it gets on the cover, you get a new cover as well.
Worth pointing out that just because you use disposables doesn't mean you can't rinse it out / dump into a toilet. We used cloth for 8 months and then transitioned to a daycare that wouldn't let us use them. I still dump all solids into the toilet because I don't want my baby's room to smell like poop 24/7.
Also, if you read the box, most diapers will instruct you that you are supposed to do this, as human waste doesn't belong in landfills.
Our twins are currently just breastfed, which means their poop is basically yogurt. So nothing to dump in the toilet yet. I remember we would dump the harder poops out before we threw the diapers away if we were out of town and using disposables.
However, you presoak them, and scrape a majority of the feces off into the toilet at change time.
I read an article a while ago that tested and found substantial fecal residue in typical washing machines, without cloth diapers going through them. Can't find it now among all the cloth diaper related search hits.
It's also suggested you clean the washer every once in a while too.
Fecal bacteria is found everywhere it seems, so that's why frequent hand washing (especially before food prep) is important.
(As expected really, half of the rashes are on his arms/torso and completely away from the diaper-end!)
It can be washed 2-3 times if nothing serious happened.
How do you get the cloth diapers clean? Like, really clean so they don't still smell after they've been cleaned?
My wife and I were planning on cloth diapering. We bought some high-end cloth diaper and liners and started on our merry way. We found that no matter what we did, our little guy smelled like piss all the time. My wife was washing diapers 2 or 3 times in between wearings, "stripping" them to remove remaining smells, etc., etc.
Our water bill went up by literally $50 a month, we were buying all kinds of detergents to try and get the smells to go away, and we had already invested a ton of money actually buying diapers in the first place. Not to mention that my wife was spending all her time washing, re-washing, and folding diapers _and_ our kid still smelled like piss.
In our case, disposables were a god-send. The little dude is happy, he doesn't smell, my wife doesn't spend half her day cleaning diapers, and (especially since we buy diapers in bulk on good sales), we've found disposable diapers to actually be far _cheaper_ than what we were paying for water, detergent, startup costs, etc. on cloth.
I would never go back, just because of the time savings alone.
As for the other stuff, we used a double-rinse with powdered detergent and things seemed to work pretty well.
The time factor was _super_ annoying. Maintenance for cloth diapers is a full-time job sometimes, but it felt good not to add a billion pounds of waste to the landfill.
Full disclosure: Now that we travel a lot more, we're pretty much only in disposables.
-One wash cycle in warm water using no soap.
-One wash cycle in hot water using soap.
-Dry
Every couple weeks we would put white vinegar in the no-soap cycle. This helps cut the smell down.
Every couple months we would put a small amount of bleach in the no-soap cycle. Any more frequent than this and we found the diapers then irritated our son's skin.
If I had to do it all over again, not sure how I would choose. As you call out, there are additional costs to the cloth diaper approach (water, detergent, etc) that add up, plus it takes quite a bit of time.
One advantage that we found is that our son, and other folks we know who used cloth diapers, all had kids who ended up potty training sooner (anywhere from a couple months to 6+ months earlier) than kids wearing disposables.
What we ended up doing was 1 "power wash" cycle, followed by a regular wash cycle each time, and just regular ol Tide detergent. Sorry for the tide ad.
Short answer: it's hard to say specifically, because it depends on a ton of factors.
And yes I am a parent, and was somewhat lazy as my kids were not out of diapers until right at the age of 3 but all of our friends still didn't even try until their kids were 4. Heck I can remember being 4 years old and running around my grandparents farm and popping a squat right out in the open field and burying it just like the barn cats around there. I almost find it child abuse to allow your kid to be so unconscious about their bodies that they have no problem crapping on themselves when in other cultures 4 year olds are cutting up fruit with machetes (personally seen in a small village, Africa).
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_training#History_in_the... [1] http://dshs.texas.gov/wichd/
Why? How does this impact you in the slightest?
Being a parent is hard enough of a job already without randos on the internet being judgemental.
I'll agree that the later and later potty training is utterly disgusting though.
>I always take it personally when people complain about diaper costs.
Like another poster said, you are aware, that the post is written by mother of a newborn struggling to make ends meet. Do you really take it personally, that a poor mother in the developed world is complaining about diaper prices instead of using reusable diapers? In a country where paternity leave is not the norm? And your argument boils down to the assumed availability of aid agencies?
As I am still not sure if there is a cultural misunderstanding here, Are you aware, that in some regions, arguments like this are considered deeply antisocial and seen as a lack of basic human decency?
Normally I wouldnt think to much about a post like this, seeing as you are posting it here, you have to assume, that you are making a worthwhile argument which might convince someone after he engages with the facts you put forward.
I am just lost on this.
Nothing about how cost effective they can be, and then we go right back to learning about how huggies are better than generics.
But some diapers can handle multiple pee's before they need changing. It's not just about the poops.
My Mom always mentions it as well. She used a stack of cloth diapers, then hand washed them, dried them and even ironed them. It was a pretty labor and time intensive process. She says we are lucky to be able to get a box of diapers from Amazon, use them, throw them in a diaper pail and close the lid and not have to worry about it.
Now you just chuck them in the washing machine and then line dry them or put them on a low heat in the dryer. The sheer amount of nappies that were in our outdoor bin kinda made us realise that we needed to change to cloth.
Its not uncommon now for 3 year-olds to still be in diapers. That's two full years longer in diapers, simply because parents either can't be bothered to potty train their children, or have been told its not possible to do it earlier.
5 nappies a day x 365 days = 1825 nappies / 30 per pack = 61 packs x euro 2.99 [1] = euro 182.39 per annum
Which sounds about right to me. Where are they getting a $1000 from?
[1] https://www.aldi.ie/extra-large-nappies-size-6/p/05962400586...
When in such poverty (and potentially from a less educated background) I know finding solutions is difficult. But this is where community should help. Having a baby is super expensive and super stressful, but there are some things which can help e.g. consider cloth diapers, encourage breastfeeding to avoid formula costs.
I don't know how much support someone like this gets. But I guess not enough.
Disposable diapers are indeed expensive, but I've heard that the environmental effects of cloth diapers are comparable. Fortunately, it's a problem that is long, long behind me.
One thing I do remember is that nothing makes a baby more willing to take a big dump or even a pee than putting on a fresh, clean diaper.
Anyone interested in brainstorming some solutions to this?
What do the component parts cost of the best diaper?
Are there ways to bring those costs down by an order of magnitude?
How about an X Prize for Diaper Design?
What questions should be asked around this problem?
I'd be up for hosting a video virtual brainstorm of this topic if anyone is interested, let me know.
Anecdotal of course, but they all were toilet trained before other kids. Whether that is because it is more noticeable the nappy is wet and uncomfortable or other factors (wife was home all the time, kids in a nursery from a young age all day seemed to lag further behind). But I think the cloth nappies definitely played a part.
Comments can be killed by mods, but I think the vast majority are killed by user flags not moderator action.
The karma threshold to flag a comment is small, about 50. TO flag a comment you click the timestamp of the comment, which will take you to a page where the flag option appears.
The karma threshold to downvote a comment is higher. I think it's about 500 or 750 or so.
That said, the thread holding this narrative together is the terrible welfare system in the United States.
I see absolutely zero reason why the 0-3 y/o in poverty shouldn't qualify for free diapers from the local welfare offices, no questions asked.
n.b., cloth diapers are a fair bit of work, and a substantial investment early on.
I'll give you one reason: a large chunk of the voting population/tax base doesn't want to pay for it.
> no questions asked.
I understand your sentiment, but as soon as that sort of policy is implemented, unscrupulous individuals will abuse the system.
Welfare fraud isn't that prevalent, and adequate checks on gratuitous abuse are not exactly difficult to implement.
For the people who would rather see newborns have health issues than pay taxes, I frankly find their morals odious and their foresight lacking.
> For the people who would rather see newborns have health issues than pay taxes, I frankly find their morals odious and their foresight lacking.
The article referenced a black, un-wed, young mother stuggling to pay for diapers. That portrayal of poor minorities is what the anti-welfare state sees when fighting for less taxes. The money isn't going to people who are struggling like they might be; the money is going to minorities who aren't willing to work hard.
Said more plainly, the health and wellbeing of black and brown babies are worth less to (some|many) Americans than white ones.
it really doesn't.
no questions need to be asked if you aren't tripping the fraud wires of, e.g., grabbing 30 diapers a day for 1 kid.
> Said more plainly, the health and wellbeing of black and brown babies are worth less to (some|many) Americans than white ones.
I agree that that describes the reality that exists. I find that morally problematic, however: whatever else we can pick at, I feel that babies are all equal and they matter.
The problems comes down to the concept in abstract. Special interest groups capitalizing on the frustration of paying tax, by preying on human's most base nature of mistrusting people that are perceived to be different.
"You're paying high taxes, and lazy people (minorities) are getting a free ride." sounds much better than "You're paying high taxes, and government contractors are taking a lot of that money."
Especially since poor/minorities are far less of a powerful lobby than those who represent government contractors.
From Pampers making big sizes for the child to be dependant until the age of 5, to skin irritation because of diapers. My guess. You just can't expect the same quality of care when people get poorer and poorer in general.
> In the United States, the average diaper sells for about 25 cents
That's so much more expensive than here. Looking at the pictures you can get the same brands and nappies for half the price here.
In the decent sized packs from amazon pampers are only a touch more expensive but yeah the Lidl ones are just as good as far as I can see. We mostly used pampers because they are cheap with a subscription but have used Lidl ones fairly often. Shame we're not very close to a Lidl store (well we are, but traffic).
Seems to be a typical price. At another chain, I get the same prices for another brand. Looking for the biggest A brand, I find 72 diapers for €15, which is a bit more expensive, but still less than 25 cents (though eurocents are worth a bit more than dollar cents, of course).
Pampers Premium Size 5 (35) - €8.99 - €25.5 each
Bigger packs are cheaper per nappy. If you can wait for offers you usually can get the Pampers much cheaper e.g. right now 2 x 72 pack for €23, 16c per nappy.
We started off with Pampers and moved to ALDI, never looked back.
But all in all at 4 nappies a day you'd just break €110 a year with ALDI.
Here is another example from a UK suermarket https://groceries.morrisons.com/webshop/product/Nutmeg-Nappi... which is 0.075 GBP (0.10 USD)/diaper.
The UK doesn't charge sales tax on nappies/diapers - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-notice-714-ze... which may explain a small part of the difference.
By the time we had our second child, we didn't care. We buy diapers without thinking about it now. The stress of worrying about this is a bigger cost for us now than the money we pay.
Friends used cloth diapers for environmental reasons. Hell of a lot of work, and I have no idea what they cost. Old-fashioned cloth diapers are cheap, but messy.
https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?artic...
But on weekends and evenings, cloth diapers were basically free. And word of warning, they are disgusting to shake into the toilet before throwing into the washing machine with a cap of bleach, but you get over that.
50 cents is about 0.70 GBP
UK minimum wage is 7.83 GBP per hour pre-tax.
So one nappy at that rate is 5.5 minutes of work. That's considerably longer than the time it takes to remove and clean.
Im actually amazed that there are people today who think this is a good idea and want to go back to it. Seriously what?
If you are well off, you may be able to pay a diaper service with commercial equipment to do the washing for you. We had a relative cover this for our third child, and I can attest that it works out quite nicely.
It's impressive. Not sure how much R&D plays into the costs, but probably more than it may seem.
Really? I'm currently paying 8 cents a diaper from Aldi.
Talk about being full of shit!
That doesn't seem right. Are these people buying the smallest quantities possible? You can buy ~300 diapers for $30 on amazon. That's only $360 /year.
Of course, that may be a bigger sum in 3rd world countries. But they don't have Amazon there at all and probably don't use diapers either.
Also, some people are just terrible at managing money.
Do you think poor people are stupid and can't plan even a week ahead? They're getting paid weekly or monthly in most cases after all.
In my experience, poor people are much better at managing money than better off folks. I could see plenty of people who couldn't bother to order bulk of diapers and then store them somewhere. But poor people usually go the extra mile even for couple bucks.
I may have worded it poorly or misread the context of the comment I was replying to, but the point I was trying to get across is that when you don't have much money, you have to be much more conscious about how you spend it. And if you aren't, then you go broke and don't eat for a while. It's an easy thing for well-off people to lose sight of.
Your point would be correct for bigger hundreds-or-thousands-of-dollars purchases though. But $30... Come on?
Some one who manages to get 40 hours a week of work at minimum wage of $7.25 minus 7.65% for FICA taxes is getting $1,116 a month. Take out rent, transportation and food and there is not going to be much left over for buying things that you don't need right away.
You seem to be completely out of touch with the way people in poverty live if you think people aren't living paycheck to paycheck and have money left over after paying essential expenses.
In my country lots of people make ~ $500. Or even less. With prices similar (or even in many cases higher) to flyover USA. Living paycheck to paycheck is the norm here. What people do, after getting paycheck(s) they put together a budget for the next month. And $30 once a month for essentials is definitely a better deal than paying $15 weekly for the same thing. As you said, they don't have much money left. Thus they take every possible bulk or coupon deal to save money.
Yes, poor people are having a harder time than your average HN folk. But vast majority of them are not dumb and can do math pretty well. I hate how US media is portraying poor people as unintelligible who can't think ahead. Yes they can. Unless US poor are somehow different?
What they need is more job security, better paying entry level jobs and more education opportunities (wether vocational or after-hours college). And better pay for infamous but educated jobs like librarian or teacher. Which are borderline minimal wage and borderline poor over there.
360 nappies will generally last for 2 months. If you can't afford a mere $30 for that, then it's a case of your priorities being wrong (e.g. buying alcohol, tobacco, Netflix etc before thinking about your kids' needs) - in which case you should probably give serious consideration over whether you should bring kids into the world.
She had a difficult pregnancy and thought this would be her only chance to have a child. She left her job to avoid being exposed to harsh chemicals that could jeopardize her pregnancy. On welfare, she was allotted only $180/mo for necessities beside food. When her partner got a job, she was disqualified for the assistance—he had to work 18 hours a month just to make up the aid they no longer received. She struggled to find a job herself but ultimately got one.
The article notes that the average diaper is $0.25, so your 360 would cost $90 on average, 1/4 of her monthly assistance on one item alone—assuming she only needs 6 diapers per day, which sounds like a low estimate. She did proactively seek out coupons and discounts, and decreased the frequency of changes—which had minor medical consequences.
The article is about the plight of a mother who faced adversity in providing for her son, but persevered the best she could. I defy you to justify your claim that her priorities were wrong, or that she was unfit to be a parent.
Perhaps the only disqualifying attribute for parenthood is the utter lack of empathy for another human being.
Parenting is to provide for the child, not just emotionally, which I'm sure this mother does a tremendous job of, given how much she has sacrificed for the child's well being, but also to provide physically as well.
It seems like the couple were on the border of poverty before the child was conceived, so it wasn't a wise financial decision to do so.
Yes it's a rough situation, but as many commenters have pointed out you can do cloth diapers, more tedious to clean, but saves you supposed $1,000. As others have also pointed out you can goto Church or various other organizations that provide support. And more importantly you could have budgeted and realized, though you want to have a child, this is probably a bad decision.
Kids get more expensive as they grow up, not less, so if there are already issues around diapers, the situation will only get worse as time goes on.
Just saying, this isn't an unwanted pregnancy, this was a predetermined choice, so certainly some accounting and pre-planning could have been involved to show, this is definitely a bad decision before hand and will create a tremendous amount of strain on the parents as well as eventually on the child.
Yes, I read it, but I was talking generally, and not passing judgement on this specific case... but since you mention it, this mother chose to have her child - it's her responsibility to ensure that she has the financial means to provide for it.
> The article notes that the average diaper is $0.25, so your 360 would cost $90 on average
So... don't buy the average-priced nappies - buy cheaper ones, such as those that one of the parent posters mentioned (the 360 for $30). Or (especially if she isn't working) , cloth nappies are a cheap option too.
> assuming she only needs 6 diapers per day, which sounds like a low estimate
I've got kids. 6 nappies a day is actually a high estimate. They need 6-8 for the first few weeks, sure, but then it goes down. My 1 year old needs 2-4 nappies a day.
> When her partner got a job, she was disqualified for the assistance—he had to work 18 hours a month just to make up the aid they no longer received. She struggled to find a job herself but ultimately got one.
> The article is about the plight of a mother who faced adversity in providing for her son, but persevered the best she could. I defy you to justify your claim that her priorities were wrong, or that she was unfit to be a parent.
As I explained, I was talking generally, not about this specific case. I do feel for this woman - it sounds like a really shitty situation (no pun intended!). Also, the benefits system (just as in the UK) can sometimes hurt, such as when her partner got a job. Also shitty.
> Perhaps the only disqualifying attribute for parenthood is the utter lack of empathy for another human being.
I don't lack empathy; I just don't like parents that don't prioritise their kids, and those that make the conscious decision to bring children into the world without thinking of whether they can actually provide for them, emotionally and financially - oh, and apologists for them.
Even if they're working illegally and getting paid daily, they probably get monthly welfare.
Let's say small packs cost $85/mo (as per $1k/year). Big monthly pack is $30. So weekly supplies in small packs are barely cheaper than buying in bulk for a month.
Do you really think poor people are that stupid? That's flat out insulting.
In my experience, poor people are fuckin great at managing money they got. Of course, some of them are barely functioning in a society due to illnesses or addictions. But there're plenty of well-off people who don't know jack shit about budgeting and live paycheck-to-paycheck.
I see the issue more about it being a moralistic simulator. (or if you prefer a simulator with a political agenda behind)
The kid needs $15 to go with a school excursion, I don't have them, the kid remains in school and the stupid simulator doesn't miss the occasion to remark this.
And surely my kid won't get them $100 sneakers!
And my family pet is not going to suffer, because I have NO family pets, I can't afford them.
By behaving as a total bastard, including having my pet suffering, having the kid become hungry because he is too proud to get the free lunch and deciding to ignore everything else including the medical check for chest pain, I can get to the end of the month.
But a number of questions and answers are clearly targeted to inducing the player into anti-consummerism (which maybe is a good thing) while on the other hand hard pressing on completely senseless society stigmas.
This: "You chose to live farther away from your job, so your rent is lower. But your gas costs are higher. In fact, for every dollar a working family saves on housing, they spend an additional 77 cents on transportation."
could have been written as:
"Congratulations, you know how to move a slider left and right, and choose the combination that costs less, between $855 living nearer and $760 living further you chose to save $95 per month or around 8% of your net income"
Nothing is more expensive than being poor.
Can that be true? Really Billions?
Or just a story to justify a pricing strategy to maximize profits with those who can pay it leaving others aside?
I want to help them, but the answer isn't more subsidies. I want to see her get that better job, even if it means losing the assistance. I want to see Dad stay in the home because that's so critical for developing emotional control in young adults. I want their son to grow up scrappy and industrious, with a good sense of how to get by even things are tough because tough times happen for everyone.
I don't blame this woman. I'm not pissed at her. I'm pissed, however, at the politicians who have created this dependency web to trap people like this woman and ensure that there will always be a need for do-gooder politicians.
- If you'd really prefer modern style cloth diapers (prefold, pocket etc) instead of the cheap old-school flat diapers, often you can buy second-hand ones that are hardly used (or not used at all!).
- If you have any more children, your cost for buying diapers is now $0 because you already have them.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/free-shipping-100-cotton-wat...
Pricey new, we bought 30 of them used for $50 bucks on craigslist and soak/cleaned/sun dried them for a few cycles.
I loved the all-in-ones.
The top result I got was a Walmart ad. The "Gerber It's a Snap All-in-One" is $9.98 for 3, so about $3.33 each.
I've seen them in physical stores as well.
These are prefolds, with outers: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002LR8VC4
Prefolds are similar to the old flat nappies but they're thicker so you don't have to fold them so much. They work well but they're not as simple as the other options:
These are pocket: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00SWIA5LQ
They have a pocket in them where the absorbent insert goes. Easier to use but usually not quite as absorbent as prefold.
Then there are other variations, e.g. Ones where the absorbent inner clips onto the outer ("snap-in"), or even simpler ones that are one outer and inner combined ("all-in-one").
Looks like Wikipedia actually has a decent section on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaper#Debate
Am I the only one who thinks I could manage to clean some cloth diapers in a bucket or tub fairly easily?
If you'll be putting them right back on the same kid, then no. Remember, you don't boil the kid's ass to be hygienic. You'll be putting that diaper on an unboiled ass. The diaper doesn't need to be boiled.
Although this is kind of you and your position is likely rooted in empathy and compassion, I think this is also wrong.
At which point do we make the cut and let a person take responsibility for their lives? It's a chicken and egg problem, sure. But, who cares? I'm not saying that life isn't hard or that there aren't people who, by pure misfortune, had to endure situations which leave long-lasting scars. What I'm saying, however, is that each human being is the master of his or her destiny.
>I don't blame this woman.
Don't you, by not blaming her, contribute to reinforcing her perceived helplessness?
Where do we make a cut? At which point can we "blame" a human being for her perceived helplessness? I don't want to blame any body, of course, I just want everyone to be aware that they, alone, can do better.
Would my life be better if I was born in huge loving, rich family and I wouldn't have to worry about "surviving"? Well, perhaps. Do I care about the circumstances that were less than optimal in my life and for which some degree of fortitude and healing was needed? Hell no! It is what it is.
>I don't blame this woman.
If I ever put myself in a position of helplessness, please go ahead and blame me. Perhaps then I'd be able to realize that there are other ways.
>I'm pissed, however, at the politicians who have created this dependency web to trap people like this woman and ensure that there will always be a need for do-gooder politicians.
Nevertheless, I agree with this as much as I disagree with your other statement. Politicians who profit from certain tendencies in the most vulnerable members of our society not in order to help but to enslave are the dirty, dirty people.
You have likely never been put into a situation like this, because if you had you would know that this is not true in reality. It's significantly more complicated than you make it out to be.
But also, it is not all hygienic enough to wash them in bucket with soap. Back when my mother had kids, they had to went through boiling water and were ironed. You basically spent whole day dealing with diapers. Literally whole day, it is ridiculous amount of work.
Also, cloth diapers cause more rashes and that costs money too.
Our son was just like GP's one, screaming all the damn time and hardly sleeping for the first 6 months. Undiagnosed digestion problem, which 10 years after was finally pinned on a milk protein intolerance (not lactose).
What I definitely don't like is sanctimonious knee jerking about how parents should do everything the hardest possible way, or else omg end of world happen and everybody will become super lazy. And if they don't do everything the most effective way from day one or dare to talk about their opinions, then the civilization will fall.
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 the first place.
I'm not even a communist or anything, but its absolutely insane to me that Americans don't realize how "third world" their country is in some ways. Do you think that back in the 50s and 60s when your parents or grandparents were buying the first mass produced disposable diapers, they would have expected 60 years later people would be forced to go back to washable cloth diapers because they couldn't afford regular diapers? What a stupidly low standard to have for the wealthiest country in the world.
Capitalism is an awesome thing, but it seems conservative pundits and the rich have convinced a lot of people that you can't have both a strong, capitalist free market economy along with a government that actually gives a shit about its citizens and not just the top 10,000 guys with the biggest wallets or whatever.
Not everything is better because it happened in the past. God forbid you have to be a little bit more mindful of wanton consumption than people were in $CURRENT_YEAR - 50.
Calling a country third world because you can't throw away tons of disposable diapers... now that's a low standard, or just ridiculously privileged.
So yeah, it's incredibly relevant.
I don't disagree with a discussion on how we externalize costs in cell phones, take out food containers, packaging for toilet paper, or whatever else. But however reasonable that discussion is, it was besides the point of this discussion.
Cloth being better is something else entirely, nor was I suggesting that disposable diapers be discounted with taxpayer money. The point was "Why does the poor in the richest country in the world have to worry about something as inane as affording diapers in 2018?"
I agree that people should use cloth - but the response to "Hey, this poor person can't even really afford to buy diapers!" shouldn't be "wow that damn government making her dependent on welfare bux, shes so dumb she doesn't even know about cloth too!". It just reeks of being completely out of touch with the poor experience in America. Maternity leave isn't really a thing for someone like her - should she maybe be working an extra job or two to afford better diapers? Even if she doesn't, how do you know she has the time to deal with changing and washing cloth diapers? Being a stay at home mom doesn't exactly work as well as it did in the 50s or 60s, and she doesn't have a husband working for a tech company or whatever who can support a family on a single salary.
And maybe it could be price adjusted for income, so everyone should do the same effort for the environment.
That would generally reward people so much for the good things you mentioned that they still could afgord the one bad thing...
People who are born into wealth have it way easier, but they can still lose it all and go broke. Then they'll adapt and try to overcome it, and the ones that can adapt survive. Just like nature's always been.
You say the OP's comment reeks of privilege/ignorance, but you go ahead and expect government privilege in $CURRENY_YEAR.
The OP was commenting that certain people leech and do not want to find a job and help themselves, but rather want more help from the government.
I grew up with cloth diapers not because my family was poor, but just simply because it was a better choice for us at the time. My Family grew up in the 50-60s with cloth diapers, because other types of diapers weren't available. I don't see that cloth diapers are a poor-people's choice. Why is that so "third world"? Is it bellow some "level" you think should exist - that my friend is the privilege/ignorance you were smelling in other comments.
I do not see how you got that from OP. Your sentence is very loaded. You are reading this with your own filters, it seems.
What I got from OP is the government is not helping people become self reliant. Instead it is helping them financially, but also hurting them long term by impeding their ability to learn ways to lift up.
unless, of course, you have a system that encourages dependence on public assistance and actually ends up hurting a woman's self-sufficiency and puts her little boy at a high risk of being helpless and dependent, too.
By having the government helping them more, they fail to become self-reliant, thus get used to leeching and are expecting from the government to help them. You have people purposely living on food stamps and government help, even though they're capable of finding work. If you're not aware of this you might want to check your filters as well.
It is disgusting that we create these perverse incentives and demonize people for dancing to our tune.
>...certain people leech, do not want to find a job...
This is privilege and propaganda at work right here. Being so far removed from what its like to be poor that you unironically believe some bullshit like "poor people just want government bux for free".
>I grew up with cloth... Not because my family was poor, but because other types weren't available... I don't see that cloth diapers are a poor-peoples choice.. Is it below some "level” you think should exist?
Absolutely - I expect that the poor in the richest country in the world aren't forced to regress to the standards of 50-60 years ago for their children. There's nothing wrong with cloth diapers or the fact that you were brought up with them. The issue is that people like you don't think its a problem that somebody in the USA in 2018 has to get cloth diapers not because they want to, or their baby's skin handles it better or whatever, but because they literally cannot afford not to.
What the fuck is with this race to the bottom? Yes, I absolutely expect there to be certain standards of living in different countries that are upheld by society and government. How am I the crazy one here? I don't want to live in a fucking country where I'm making 6 figures, comfortable in my air conditioned home while down the street somebody has to shit on the street because public toilets were abolished because muh taxation is theft or something.
There's nothing shameful about being poor or different countries having different standards of living - there is something shameful about a society which looks at somebody struggling and instead of lending a hand tells them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
OT: To my eyes - there is a big difference in a sign "WILL WORK FOR FOOD/MONEY/ETC" and "PLEASE GIVE ME 100$ I NEED IT". Should the USA be like Mother Theresa, lend their helping hand to everyone in need?
I can tell you for a fact that there are tons of people who live on social aid, that are eligible to work, maybe even have degrees and just simply don't want to work. The whole point is, the more you help the more will the people get used to it and will start leeching - it's in the human nature.
I think enjoying bodily pleasures is great - but having a baby is something you need to ensure you can handle. If you can't raise a child right, don't raise it. I have seen people have 5 children - only so that the mother can live off of welfare.
You can give your wealth away - that's what I'm doing, but I'm not expecting my government to provide diapers, I buy them for the people in need. I expect my government to provide health care and jobs, the people will take care of the rest.
I don't mind USA helping people in a real need, but people who are just reckless should not be helped, because they knew what a child brings.
This is privilege and propaganda at work right here. Being so far removed from what its like to be poor that you unironically believe some bullshit like "poor people just want government bux for free".
Privilege is that I'm saying that people get used to government help and dont want to work? That's not privilege, that's called common sense. No point in discussing this further.
You don't even understand what privilege means, my dude. I expect my government to serve myself and the people, and not a handful of old dudes at the top of the food chain. If you think a government serving its people is a privilege, I think you have a very poor idea of what democracy is (or should be).
Oh - but government creating jobs and providing health care is serving old dudes? If what you're saying continues, you will end up with a world full of people that have no ability to resonate, work or be challenged.
There might be a difference between those two signs, but I'm not sure it's as profound as you make it. People change and learn as they grow. Someone holding a "Need $$ for beer" sign today may be holding a "Will work for food" sign tommorow, and who knows, perhaps "Now hiring" the next. Should we make sure the man starves to death in the first or second phase before he has a chance to mature and contribute to society? What percentage of humans are irredeemably intolerable? Can we not afford to help them out anyway just to make sure we don't miss the others?
I agree that people ought not have babies they cannot afford, but given that the entry bar is low and, ya'know, it does happen, is it fair for society to leave the child adrift in the wind to... punish its parents? Does society work better when it's comprised of adults who were such children?
Just to clear it up - my issue is with people feeling entitled to get help, while they can work.
Yes, no tiny creature should be punished, but there has to be a thought put into it at first I believe.
You mean the adults who were left to starve? No, it works better when children are loved and brought up in a normal environment. I see your point :)
For me it was straightforward enough to just quickly swallow it again as it emerged. No need for any additional ceremony.
The word privilege is a common term in thr English language and I'm sure the person you're responding to knows what it means.
Of course "X" still happens. "X" is lower on our priorities list than other more pressing issues. Are diapers really the cross we're going to die on now?
We spend ~$3tn helping people every year (federal, state, and local). I think its safe to assume the "richest country on Earth" is trying.
The common concept of first world is so misconstrued by people who live in it that those from second and third world countries would ridicule you for your comment.
Perspective, don't forget it.
That's how bizarre this things looks.
I live in Argentina, not first world by any means, and we have a lots welfare programs.
The cost of disposable nappies is not the issue here. Neither is happiness or contentness. It's being the richest country in the world while 13.5% of its population is living below the poverty line, while people are literally dying on the streets due to being neglected by both the government, their neighbours, and a lack of acceptable health care. With the poor staying poor due to no social mobility, access to education, or normal jobs that don't involve having to scrounge the bottom of the barrel looking for e.g. passengers to drive around.
I don’t want to get into the political or moral issues, but I just want to point out that this is almost a non sequitur. The USA’s dominance is relative to other countries, but the poverty line is intra-USA. The single poorest person in the USA could be richer than everyone outside it and there could still very well be a poverty line - and people below it - in the USA.
"a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but also on access to services"
I don't know, if the statistic for the USA is as high as the 13.5% cited by GP, but based on what I read about, and some small amount of personal experience, it is unusually high for such a wealthy, proud nation.
Disposable nappies are horrible for the environment.
> Do you think that back in the 50s and 60s
> when your parents or grandparents were
> buying the first mass produced disposable
> diapers, they would have expected 60 years
> later people would be forced to go back to
> washable cloth diapers because they couldn't
> afford regular diapers?
Here's a document that quotes prices from the 50s in the US[1]:
[...]Prices typically ran above—sometimes well
above—ten cents per diaper, while cloth
diapers sold for 1-2 cents each and diaper
services typically charged 3-5 cents per
diaper.
So I think you can tell your grandparents in the 50s that accounting for the price of soap etc. their grandchildren are going to live in a country where disposable diapers are as cheap as cloth diapers. That doesn't sound so bad.
1. https://www.edana.org/docs/default-source/default-document-l...
I'm going to regret sticking my head over the parapet on this one but ...
You're making the argument that it's great that diapers are a quarter of the price that they were, and isn't that great. But we're speaking in the context of how the poor can't even afford them at that price.
I've no stake in this argument. The dynamic of poverty and privilege is a topic that demands robust discussion. But I couldn't let such an obvious contradiction slip by ...
I'm specifically responding to a part of the GPs comment that seems to be claiming that things have been getting worse since the 50s.
Which is not to say that anyone being unable to afford diapers can't be considered unacceptable, or that you could argue that social policies should be changed to amend that problem.
But it doesn't help anyone if the discussion isn't factually based. As far as I can tell poverty has been going down since the 50s[1] (with some bumps), and more generally, if you would present anyone in the 50s struggling to raise kids at their income level to swap with someone in 2018 at proportionally the same income level they'd take that swap in a heartbeat.
All of which is not to say that thing can't get even better, but there's no way to set sensible social policy for the future if we don't look at the data showing where we've already been, and what current trends are.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States
What I do know is that the average industrial wage relative to the cost of living has been steadily declining with a marked plunge from the 80s onwards.
I will concede that the 50s is a poor comparison, as much of the western world was in the midst of a post-war economic boom at that time.
I don't know about the average "industrial wage", but that sounds like a bad metric to focus on. Manufacturing in the US has dropped from around 25% during this time down into the single digits, so it's not as common a job as it used to be. If anything I'd expect the wage to have gone up, since those jobs are now more specialized.
You'd think so, wouldn't you? The truth of the matter is most manufacturing companies are facing the same problem tech is right now: a "talent" shortage. The pay hasn't kept up with living costs in most areas. The days of buying a house and raising a family on an "industrial wage" are long gone. The pay is hardly enough to keep one person alive these days. As a result, nobody wants the jobs. The companies can't keep their assembly lines fully staffed, but they don't want to pay more either.
Any parent here who has ever used cloth diapers can tell you: they save money. They should be teaching cloth diapering like they teach breastfeeding to mothers of newborns.
But yes, I'm willing to believe that cloth diapers were cheaper, and still are cheaper. But that's a digression from the main topic at hand, which is the question of whether or not disposable diapers are cheaper than in the 50s when adjusted for inflation.
Please keep this vitriol and personal attacks off of HN. OP was polite and posted a well-reasoned response. You making personal attacks out of ignorance that may not even hold true in the OP’s case is just petty.
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.
How many of us would have to chip in another $10-$20 in taxes to cover those without, so a parent and his/her children can take a shit and dispose of it in a way that meats their commitments as appropriate?
Further, where does it end?
"I want a good brand of disposable diapers, not the cheap ones" (Note: a lot of working families are buying those cheap diapers!)
"I want a $1000 stroller with an easy-collapse handle and nice tires so my kids don't get jostled as I take them over bumps in the park"
"I need a subsidy for a minivan because a small car is very inconvenient with kids"
"I need a subsidy for ORGANIC food, not just any food for my babies."
etc.
The standard could easily become more than the average US household income, without even trying hard to grow the list.
Remember, it's not about ability to have any diapers at all, they're arguing that they deserve a higher standard of convenience.
Meanwhile, I need to commute to work an obscene distance because NIMBYs won't allow more housing to be built, keeping me away from my children for many more hours than I would otherwise need to. But please, prioritize taxing me even more to pay for conveniences for people who are home with their kids while I work to feed mine.
I wouldn't mind a subsidy on cloth diapers to be honest. The landfill waste from disposables is insane.
Time spent cleaning cloth diapers is time not spent working and earning money.
Being poor is expensive. Being poor means you are on an hourly wage in shift work not a salary. That means half an hour late for work means half an hour less money.
If you feel guilty about earning money easily, feel free to give it away. Personally, after already high taxes (40%+ not counting sales tax) I feel that I would like to give what's left to my own family rather than involuntarily donating it to random people.
Are YOU going to send my kids to college? Buy them cars? A house?
It's easy for some who may feel they have enough, or "got theirs" to say that people who "earn a lot" (aka still climbing the ladder) need to give more.
Nobody is preventing you from donating your money to a nonprofit.
The research is pretty clear - the difference in happiness and stress levels between making 300k and 400k as a family is pretty much nothing on average. The difference in happiness and stress levels between a family making 20k-40k is enormous.
I'm all for designing some kind of social contract, but I would like it to consider more than just relative wealth.
Also, in general I think it's a good idea to segment the population by net worth rather than income, not that I would advocate taking from those with high net worth either...
The unfortunate fact of our world is that, statistically, very few people escape their demographic and psychographic destiny. You can predict a 6 year old kids earnings as an adult fairly well from a mix of their birth geography, parents income, an iq test, and the marshmallow test. Some level of redistribution, that still rewards capitalist endeavors, makes sense in a society as unfair as ours.
Like I said, I'd be happy to discuss some kind of social contract, but I get nervous about people saying "well he makes a lot of money, let's take it from him". That's too simplistic.
The question is not what someone pays you but what worth do you really bring to the society that also feeds and supports you.
So while doing your wellpaid job, you probably pay only 5 or 10 an hour to the persons cleaning your toilet so you can do your „human business“ in a conveniently clean place. Don’t you think this person is responsible for a big and relevant part of your life quality?
I make a pretty fair amount of money, but unlike you, I am not a lazy person; I worked my ass off to get where I am and I made sacrifices along the way. I strongly object to paying more taxes just so you can assuage your personal guilt. Contact the reporter for the story, explain you are a guilt-ridden rich person who wants to help that woman out. Then send the woman $290 per hour of your money. Do it for a month. Until you do that, then I’ll invite you not to suggest that we should pay more taxes to support someone because you feel guilty. Taxes aren’t for solving your guilt — charity is. Forcing people to help someone because YOU feel that you don’t work hard enough? That’s ridiculous. Charities were invented for exactly that purpose — people can voluntarily give to their heart’s content.
Just imagine if every liberal person freely donated some amount that would be taken by the government in plans they can't get passed? We have the power as a people to organize, fund, etc. Maybe conservatives would see the good that these donations do and be impressed to contribute in kind.
I just think we could all do better as a people collectively in every aspect.
Not saying everything is fixed with tossing more money at it, simply setting priorities and building value for more people without always looking at the short term profits. And in some countries perhaps closing questionable cash flows towards those who clearly are benefiting unnecessarily.
Then pay more taxes if you will, or donate to some charity, just don't force other people to do so.
What do you want to do to help them?
In other words, you want to help the person in a way that doesn't require you to pay anything or spend any of your time.
1 in 3 families in the US cannot afford diapers? A full one third of families? The richest country in the world, indeed.
Why do we hate the poor so much?