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Comment by axegon_ | Hacker News Reader

Come to think of it, this is great thinking. Sure, it's mostly symbolic but the message itself is beautiful: Finland is a wealthy nation and even in wealthy nations people don't get equal start: surely you'd have better options when your dad is an F1 world champion than the local plumber, but even so, this serves as a nice reminder. Sort of reminds me of a short story written about a century ago(and only one English translation that I'm aware of which is absolute crap annoyingly). With that in mind this[1] is probably more worthy of reading than the wretched translation.

[1] https://lamfyk.wordpress.com/2020/05/02/the-tale-of-the-stai...

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I’m not sure if saying it’s a beautiful message does the initiative justice. It was introduced all the way back in 1938 for low income families at a time Finland was quite a bit a poorer country.

I remember reading that a big goal initially was to reduce child mortality rate. One only gets the box if you visit a doctor during pregnancy for consultations which often wasn’t the case back then. But I don’t have source at hand writing on the phone, so might be wrong on that.

I'm talking about today: Finland is one of the wealthiest nations on the planet. In that aspect, it's mostly symbolic.

They continue the policy largely as a symbolic gesture now, but it's an important one that serves as a reminder of how their country grew to be wealthy.

Finland is one of the wealthiest countries today because of policies like this. The government has helped lift Finland's poorest out of poverty over the past 80 years, and made it feel like a country where raising a baby is essentially the same regardless of your income.

Making sure every baby's parents have the resources it needs to grow up healthy and well-educated is how you build a society where everyone wants to contribute to it improving.

> They continue the policy largely as a symbolic gesture now, but it's an important one that serves as a reminder of how their country grew to be wealthy.

The baby box definitely has practical value for families. Even though Finland is a rich country overall, poor Finnish people exist and the price level for necessities is high. For poor families, this box is a lifesaver. And even for those who could afford everything in the box, it's still a great way to make sure that the baby gets all the basics they need without having to rely on parents remembering and spending time shopping. Ask any Finnish parent, pretty much all of them would disagree that it's just a symbolic thing.

No, this rags to riches story is just a myth that Finland (the same goes for Norway) tell to themselves.

In reality, in the early 1900s, Finland was poorer than Western Europe and some British colonies, but richer than just about any other place in the world. Richer than Japan, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Poland - and about as rich as Austria or Italy.

Fast-forward to 2021 - Finland is poorer than Western Europe and some British colonies, but richer than just about any other place in the world. Not much of a change, really. This is an unfortunate, but repeated finding of development economics - policy, unless intentionally malevolent, matters very little to the long-run wealth

How do you define rich: currently Finland has higher GDP per capita than Germany, France and the UK... and well Norway is well ahead of the most West Europe (lots to do with the oil but still).

For example, Finland has very low amount of capital. GDP is the revenue stream. Amount of capital reflects actual wealth and potential for return of investments.

Comments like this is why people ignore economists when it comes to personal finance.

Macroeconomics is so difficult to grasp for me and feels so far away from anything that is remotely related to my life that just talking about it feels silly.

The amount of capital in the US or even my state feels like completely divorced from whether I feel comfortable having children and raising a family (I don't at all).

Sure! But when the question is "Is country x rich or poor" it's hard to gauge it any other way than using macroeconomics.

"How would you feel living in country X" and "how does a person in a similiar position as myself feel living in country X" is quite personal question and probably quite detached from macroeconomics unless comparing countries with wildly different GDP:s.

If you use 'national capital' as a measure then Norway is by far the richest country. It's sovereign wealth fund has more than 1.3 trillion dollars, and owns "about a 1.4% stake in all the world’s public listed companies."[1]

I don't think many Norwegians would say they feel like they're the richest people on Earth though.

EDIT: According to Wikipedia the wealth fund is worth 2.3 trillion now. That's for a country with a population of 5 million people.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/palashghosh/2021/04/07/norways-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sovereign...

> Sure, it's mostly symbolic

Is it? The maternity box is worth a lot, and that the box itself doubles up as a crib (by design) seems like a huge convenience.

FWIW, you can actually choose a cash payment (170 euro) instead of receiving the maternity package, but 95% of first-time mothers choose the maternity package and two thirds of all mothers.

You can choose a cash payment but the box is worth significantly more, something like double, plus the peace of mind that you should have most of what you need as you learn to care for your first.

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