The Baby-Formula Crime Ring (2018)

That's terrifying! You would think such an issue would be worthy of a major investigation, what would happen if a baby lived on that powder for weeks?

No the lesson is don’t order food products from Amazon! Order them from Target which has a far more controlled supply chain.

What country are you in? Is that a serious criminal offense? Did law enforcement get involved?

What was the replacement powder exactly do you know? Sounds like something you should have involved police in.

Is there anywhere online with a large selection (electronics or food) that doesn't allow third party selling and actually sells legitimate product?

This also sometimes happens with returns at retail stores. I bought a $20 gallon of Acetone at Home Depot, took it home, and all it contained was water.

Sign up for Target Circle and use the Target card - 5% back by default and they OFTEN run a "buy two formula, get a $10 gift card" deals. Keep an eye for those.

Same situation with my young one. Nutramigen worked great but caused runny poops. We went with HiPP HA Combiotik which really improved our baby's skin.

It's also a little cheaper than Nutramigen, especially if you buy in larger quantities (8-12 boxes at a time).

Ha-- having been in that situation this past October, that simple description is incredibly evocative for me. Even in that dazed, sleepless state, though, I remember a sudden upwelling of intense sadness when I realized for the first time how expensive such a basic necessity was... and how they felt the need to keep it all locked up. Real moment of clarity about the state of this country (US).

Lol. Based on date, we were pregnant and deciding which formula to use since we knew ahead breastfeeding was not an option for us. The funny part is we never used any of it because the little shit would only eat the pre-made liquid form and we only bought powder types. I still don't get why but the exact same product he loved came in a powder form and it was really incompatible for him. The joke was "he has expensive tastes"

Also, my advice to all new parents is don't stock up or plan too much on food related items/tools. Don't buy a dozen bottles until you know they like them. This applies into toddlerhood.

Well you definitely have the wrong idea. About 20% of Americans do live in extreme economic precarity. But things are not out of a horror movie. That’s in fact why there hasn’t been a violent revolution, things aren’t bad enough here (yet?).

It's unlikely you will get a representative set of answers form this site, which skews towards what you might call "upper-class" individuals.

That being said, if you're very, very poor it's not terrible to be a US citizen.

- Community college is free via a Pell grant.

- Housing is expensive, but you will qualify for Section 8 (welfare) and will eventually get housing for free.

- Hospital costs are irrelevant if you're very poor (5th percentile or so)

- Life-saving medicine is in the same boat. You would likely qualify for Medicaid if you're dirt poor

- You would likely work multiple jobs if you're dirt poor.

- You likely wouldn't have vacation if you're dirt poor.

- Same thing with maternal and paternal leave.

That being said your life in the USA depends very much on where you live. If you lived in Massachusetts, for example, you get maternal and paternal leave.

The real struggle in the USA is if you're between the 25th and 50th percentile. Where you're rich enough to not qualify for the things I mentioned above, but not so rich that you're on a more or less guaranteed path to financial independence.

America has a high ceiling and a low floor for quality of living.

For above average, America is arguably better (with some caveats). For the average person, its better than Europe (in that you can afford more since you are paid more and taxed less, but Europe definitely gets more paid time off / leave). If you are poor enough to qualify for government assistance its roughly on par with Europe--though maybe a bit worse.

But there is a bottom 10-25% (where the line is, I'm not sure) that would be a lot better off in Europe.

The average college debt (~30k) is about the same as a single year's difference income between high school and college graduates (~30k). They are paying for a personal investment.

Housing (not in California, NYC, or DC) is cheaper in the USA than other rich countries).

90%+ have health insurance that covers hospital visits

A high percentage will have medicine covered by their insurance

Less than 6% of people have multiple jobs.

No mandatory paid vacation (but any halfway decent job will get you 2-3 weeks). Europe gets more, but we get paid more. I'd probably rather have the time off, but some people would rather have the money.

Education can be really expensive. However, there are many great state schools, and there is also a lot of financial aid. Many people get a great education and are not saddled with debt.

Housing is impossibly expensive in metro areas where people make a lot of money. The US is a large country and there is a lot of variability to housing costs throughout the US.

A single hospital bill could be thousands of dollars or 0 if it's covered by your insurance. If you are really poor then you get insurance from the State. If you have a good job, then you get insurance through your work.

It could be or it could be not very much depending on the factors described regarding hospital visits.

Unpaid, effectively mandatory overtime applies to salaried people with well paying jobs. It's a bad situation, but if this applies to you, then the other issues aren't as bad.

Many poor people work more than one job. Working class people need to get paid more. Maybe the minimum wage will be raised at the Federal level, but probably not. Minimum wage is also location dependent, so it's already higher than $15 in some locales.

People with good jobs get PTO. Working class people in bad jobs do not get paid vacation.

States provide some benefit for maternal and paternal leave. It's not 100% of your wages though.

I don't think Paternal leave is taboo or strange. I don't think that's part of the culture.

Maternal leave depends on the State and the company that they work for. If you have a good job, then you will get more Maternal leave.

I'm sure there were a lot of rugged individuals in 1930s Poland.

* My education left me with 12k USD of debt, but provided significant earning opportunities. For me, it was worthwhile. I did elect to forgo a graduate degree, despite my above-average grades and desire to obtain one, because it would have incurred upwards of 50k USD of additional debt. One of my friends graduated with nearly 80k USD of debt to obtain a masters degree of engineering, and has not paid it back fully after ten years. Another person I knew graduated with a bachelors of fine arts from the most expensive institution in my state, with nearly 200k USD worth of debt. It has ruined her financial life forever. So, there are many possible outcomes. Meanwhile, my mother worked part-time during the summer holiday and was able to use those wages to fully pay for her own tuition and board at an excellent state school. In general, I believe the extension of easy credit, un-dischargeable in bankruptcy, has encouraged schools to raise prices without limit.

* Housing is highly location dependent. Many communities have been utterly deprived of income-producing work, and housing there can be had for a pittance. Places with opportunity to work are flooded by those seeking out the few remaining opportunities. In the past, companies and individuals would go to less-populated areas to establish manufacturing or farming ventures, making profitable use of the cheap land. with those sorts of industries leaving the country or being consolidate by conglomerates, the few remaining opportunities to earn income are consolidated into a minority of cities. Cheap credit here, too, has allowed the desirable land in these areas to be consolidated into a few financial-real-estate instruments. In other words, there is historically extraordinary demand for a commodity which is practically monopolized.

* Single hospital visits are always thousands of dollars. In the past, the American Medical Association lobbied congress to increase the cost of medical care, because they were embarrassed that the poor were able to afford the services of physicians. See the history of "friendly societies" in the US for details. Then, also, medical insurance began to be offered by companies to their employees as a way to increase tax-free wages. When this practice became common, some politicians viewed it as politically convenient to force these insurance companies to cover non-emergency procedures and doctors visits as well. This is an economic problem called "third party payer" which always results in rising prices. Medical practitioners cannot legally have two pricing tiers for the insured and the uninsured, so the high prices are what sticks.

* As for medications, take note that the previous president edicted that the prices of certain medications be lowered. The current, mainstream, president rescinded those edictions in less than one month. It is in the interest of the powerful and wealthy in this country that these prices remain high.

* The way employees may be treated depends on their classification. Hourly wage employees are legally required to be paid a premium for overtime work. Salaried employees are considered exempt from such requirements. This creates an incentive to classify employees such that they are exempted from the overtime protections. See also the practice of classifying employees as contractors to exempt them from legal protections, or preventing hourly employees from working enough hours to qualify for certain legal protections.

* The previously mentioned employee classification system is the direct cause of many people having to work multiple jobs. The people I know that had to behave this way would have preferred to work longer hours at a single employer but that would have caused their employer to provide them with the legal obligations for a full-time employee.

* Paid time off for any reason is a feature of many positions but not all of them. In practice, employers would just work to re-classify employees such that their overhead per employee was at a level they considered acceptable, regardless of legal obligations, as stated previously.

Life in the US is largely controlled by the very wealthy (oligarchs) rather than by democratic processes. This has been the mainstream political order in this country since at least the 1970s, but has been present to a smaller degree for some time before that. I will further note that there are exceptionally vast cultural, moral, practical, and ideological differences between different parts of the country, and your individual experience depends heavily on that fact.

Financially, it sounds pretty bad and unstable:

> more than a third of Americans said they could not cover an unexpected $400 home repair or hospital bill without going into debt

> a third of U.S. adults say they are having difficulty covering everyday costs such as food, rent or car payments

> survey after survey for years has found that most people in the U.S. live paycheck to paycheck.

https://www.npr.org/2020/12/16/941292021/paycheck-to-paychec...

40% of us have iPhones, it can't be that bad.

There is definitely a "sweet spot" where things could be very uncomfortable for you, if you're doing well enough to not qualify for government assistance but poorly enough to need some kind of help. In general I think a lot of stories are somewhat sensationalized and that our culture is more enthusiastically self-critical than Sweden's.

Schools are an example, how you always hear about the ruinous costs of expensive schools, but it forgets all manner of grants, academic assistance, and the existence of much cheaper schools (everything from in-state to community colleges). A greater portion of American citizens have tertiary education compared to Sweden[1], so it would be weird if education were effectively/relatively more expensive here.

Healthcare is similar. It's provided free to people who can't afford it and people with good jobs will get health insurance from their jobs. There is a window, the sweet spot I referred to, where people can "technically" afford healthcare so it isn't given free by the government, but affording it is a genuine hardship for them or an unexpected illness crushes them financially. You can also shrug off lots of medical debt by declaring bankruptcy or telling the hospital you will declare bankruptcy unless they negotiate better terms for you to pay - and hospitals can't turn you away in an emergency.

Housing is impossibly expensive only in some areas and incredibly cheap in others. Go on Zillow and look at houses in Houston, for example. I expect you'll see large and luxurious houses for relatively good prices. Houses in some cities (Seattle, New York, SF) are expensive but not in all/most.

Regarding overtime it depends how you get paid. If you're paid by the hour then unpaid overtime would be illegal. If you're paid salary then the expectation is that you do your job if it takes 8 hours a day or if it takes 12 (or if it takes 4). Some jobs exploit this but again, it's right in the sweet spot. High end jobs either compensate you enough so it's worth it (think: your high priced business lawyer will answer your 2 am phone call, but you pay him millions) and other jobs won't exploit you too much because you'll leave if they try it (work life balance isn't good).

I have less knowledge around maternity leave and paid vacation. I've only seen that stuff from my perspective and I've been lucky enough to work at places where both have been generous.

1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiar...

While that's all true, in the literal sense that those protections/benefits aren't legislated in the US, a significant number (maybe a majority, don't know for sure) of workers do get these things from their employer.

Education - yeah, this one is a problem. College costs too much. State schools in my area are $18k/year for in-state students and $51k/year for out-of-state/international students. That doesn't include room, board, book/supplies.

Housing - highly dependent on region. NYC, SF, LA are very expensive, but so are London and Tokyo. DC, Boston, Chicago are expensive, but "affordable" in the sense that most people with solid employment can purchase a home (anecdote - 2 friends of mine are UPS delivery drivers and both owned homes in their late-20s).

Health care - most workers have insurance through their employer. There are often large co-pays and deductibles. And the US as a unit overspends massively on health-care compared to Europe, Japan, and others.

Mandatory OT - highly dependent on job. Hourly workers get OT pay. Salaried workers (exempt) do not. IMO, a lot of salaried workers are misclassified as exempt when they should be hourly wage earners, but that cow left the barn a long time ago.

Vacation/PTO/holidays - highly dependent on job. Most salaried workers receive 3+ weeks/year of PTO. Hourly workers is hit or miss. FWIW, I have 5 weeks vacation, 2 weeks sick leave, and 10 holidays. This is about as good as it gets in the US and I've been at my employer 18 years (stared with 3 weeks leave, 2 sick, 10 holidays).

Parental leave - yeah, we lag WAY behind here. It's terrible.

1930s Poland we are not. But, there's LOTS of room for improvement.

[insert political rant about people voting against their own interests]

“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” -― Ronald Wright

A lot of these generalizations comes from headlines and they often don't hold true (or there's more to the story but it's not clickbaity enough). Some of it is flat out misinformation.

A good example is education. Community Colleges are, mostly, free. State schools are incredibly affordable and private non-profits (think MIT) often have need blind admission where they will make sure anyone that is admitted can attend. But there are for-profit schools that will try and charge the maximum they can and it's those you hear about in the news.

Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. We don't want that here. More generally, please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. They lead to extremely repetitive discussion (the opposite of what we want on this site), and usually turn nasty if not outright hellish.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This comment is wholly ignorant of the many good reasons one might have for feeding formula to a baby.

The same fraud could happen with other foods.

Shaming women for not breastfeeding is really shitty.

There are many reasons - medical, personal and otherwise, that families rely on formula.

Let me guess, zero children?

Please don't take HN threads into flamewar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html