Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes | Hacker News Reader

Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes

bbc.co.uk

486 pointsakandiah261 comments

Now this is my kind of nanny state. A thought:

This program started for low-income families but was extended after a few years to all families. The nice thing about universality rather than means testing is that a) middle class families are more apt to continue supporting it if they can experience its benefits first-hand; b) you save the money that would otherwise be spent testing, enforcing and auditing the system; and c) it builds solidarity and shared values rather than socioeconomic conflict and what I've come to regard as revenge egalitarianism.

One question I find interesting is to what extent governments should be in the business of building solidarity and shared values.

Personally, I'm all for it - but that's a product of my age (40s), location (Scotland) and where I grew up (a small village in the North of Scotland).

NB Having a father who served in the RAF during WW2 probably influenced me far more than I realised at the time - my political views around 20th century history are now almost identical to what his used to be.

The better question is why governments spend so much time trying to reenforce social stratification by placing so many qualifications on social programs.

Money. Resources are limited, so it makes sense to prioritise (Whether the resulting accounting efforts end up costing more than it's otherwised saved, it's another matter).

> to what extent governments should be in the business of building solidarity and shared values.

To the extent that government is the actual exercise of the public's solidarity and shared values, I'm inclined to think it does have a legitimate role to play in giving expression to those values.

I think building solidarity and values is tremendously important, and here's why: what is the government really responsible for? Even as you go down the political spectrum to libertarians (short of anarcho-libertarians), you have consensus that government should at least provide security, from domestic crime and international threats, the enforcement of contracts, etc. Most people would go on to say that it's the government's job to provide at least basic education, utilities and transportation, etc, and do so with low waste and corruption. Fostering a culture of solidarity and shared values goes directly to those basic functions of government.

When you look at Scandinavian countries, and wonder how their systems work so well, you have to consider how shared culture and values plays a role in that success. When you wonder why the welfare state works so poorly in the U.S., you can't ignore the impact of the tremendously acrimonious culture we have, steeped in animosity between the races and between different socioeconomic classes. And if you go further down the spectrum of dysfunction, you can't help but notice the stark contrast between the extensive but relatively corruption-free governments of the Scandinavian countries and the very limited but highly corrupt governments of places like India or Bangladesh. I think that comes from a lack of solidarity. There is no motivation to, say, not take a bribe, if your mentality is that you're only in it for yourself.

I think most people are troubled when they think the government is engaged in political activism or campaigning -- in fact it's illegal. So it's a difficult questions to answer, and you didn't directly answer it: "to what extent governments should be in the business of building solidarity and shared values?" You just identified the results of shared values or lack there of.

If the majority of voters do not want the government to build solidarity, or to build it against the status quo, then the only way the government can legitimately pursue such an agenda is to label it a constitutional or human right. And that is indeed the language we see used by some to promote universal health care or a living wage.

My pet theory is that homogeneity of culture makes it easier to share wealth.

I think the vast majority of Americans would not object to the government building solidarity and shared values. That is and always has been a core function of the educational system. The debates, to date, have raged about what those values should be.

My pet theory is not just that homogeneity of culture makes it easier to share wealth, but that it makes most things easier: dealing with crime, dealing with education, etc. E.g. in Chicago, there is a deep schism between the heavily black south side, and the whiter north side. Now, every city has poor parts and rich parts, but what's really stark about Chicago is how completely the two parts disassociate from each other, due to in no small part a lack of shared culture.[1] This is, of course, to the detriment of both. The school system (CPS) is a primary example. Its a deeply dysfunctional piece of welfare: generous on one hand (relatively high spending/student), but crippled by the fact that whites and the middle/upper classes all but "opt out" of the system (CPS is 90% minority and 90% low-income).

[1] My wife grew up in a small town in Iowa, where there were also rich people (doctors, store owners) and poor people. But there was tremendous shared culture: everyone went to the same high school, one of a small number of churches, participated in the same set of after-school activities, etc.

Your wife's experience sounds a lot like my own childhood in rural Scotland - where everyone did go to the same secondary school (each village had its own primary school).

Now I live in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, which has a remarkable percentage of kids in private education (~25%) and very clearly drawn boundaries around social class.

I think the vast majority of Americans would not object to the government building solidarity and shared values. That is and always has been a core function of the educational system.

Really? But Wikipedia tells me that After 1970 the desirability of assimilation and the melting pot model was challenged by proponents of multiculturalism,[4][5] who assert that cultural differences within society are valuable and should be preserved, proposing the alternative metaphor of the mosaic, salad bowl or "American Kaleidoscope" – different cultures mix, but remain distinct.[6][7]

You seem to be writing from an exclusively US point of view. In much of the world governments don't act like that at all (think of France, with their agenda of protecting the French language).

Looking from outside at the US it seems to me that the overt patriotism that is almost uniquely widespread in the US is a shared value promoted by the government.

What is the government really responsible for?

Large and long-term investments. Acting strategically over decades on behalf of millions of people. Most organisations aren't in a position to be acting on those scales.

> .. you can't ignore the impact of the tremendously acrimonious culture we have, steeped in animosity between the races and between different socioeconomic classes.

That is actually symptom of the problem, not the cause. It's not too long time ago when Finland had one of the bloodiest civil wars in European history[1], but still country was made enough unified to survive during WW2[2][3] and of course build 'nanny state' we have today.

Only reason that was possible was that big differences between classes was seemed as primary problem, caused by the system, instead of thinking it was caused by external forces which cannot really be affected. Maybe biggest success in this front was to ban private schools for kids and provide good basic education for everyone. Take note that all of the kids went to same schools, so kids from both factions of civil war shared classrooms, meals, etc.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Civil_War

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuation_War

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War

I don't find that interesting at all, I find that question to be very scary, because I don't want a government that is in the business of telling people what is right and what is wrong. I want a government of people smart enough to themselves realize what is right and what is wrong and to ensure that the government follows these things.

A government that runs Guantanamo and puts people in jail for smoking joints isn't an entity that should tell anybody what is right and what is wrong.

This is a great idea, until you remember Finland has a population of about 5 million. LA itself has a population of almost 4 million.

While I think this a great idea, it's pretty easy to do with such a small population. Once you start talking about a scale the size of the US, it gets rather spendy in a hurry.

Why don't they chop up the US in 60 Finland sized bits, if it's so much easier to have success in a small country?

Great idea. We can call these bits: "states"

Uh, it's been chopped up into bits since it existed as a country (currently 50), and they're all a little different.

I have to assume this was sarcasm, but they're called states, and many Americans would like to see them regain power relative to the Federal government.

A baby box is the kind of thing California would do, if we weren't broke like everyone else. Though, California alone exceeds the population of all Nordic countries combined.

Why not 50... and call them "states"?

America also takes in taxes from it's vast population, so it still "costs" the same per capita.

Exactly, if anything it should be cheaper for the U.S. to do this per capita due to economies of scale.

Once you start talking about a scale the size of the US, it gets rather spendy in a hurry.

Yes, but look at the long-term benefits. Under-privileged children end up costing society much more over the longer term.

The cost per capita is the same, so your argument doesn't really make sense. By the way, I see that argument every single time when someone proposes the USA to do something better. "It's a big country, we can't fix anything".

It is in the nature of some people on the libertarian / autistic / engineering spectrum to look at any issue out there and reduce it to trivial financial arithmetic. It's not out of ill will, it's just that this is their entire reality.

His point was that the financial arithmetic isn't prohibitive. A box full of stuff costs the same amount whether you give out 5 million or 300 million (in fact, economics of scale says that the US could probably do it cheaper than Finland can). We have 300 million people (or whatever the birthrate is) which is certainly more than Finland has, but we also then have 300 million taxpayers.

Sure, the absolute cost is higher, but the cost per capita is not.

Well, about 300 million people, but less than 100 million taxpayers. About 130 million workers in the US [1], of whom about 30% have a negative income tax rate[2]. Doesn't completely change your point, since less than half of Finland's population works as well[3], but I thought it worth mentioning.

[1] http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/05/employed-persons-1999-2...

[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/09/18/w...

[3] http://www.tradingeconomics.com/finland/employed-persons

Just because you have a zero or negative federal income tax rate doesn't mean you don't pay any taxes in the US. These people are still paying 7.65% payroll taxes on that income, sales tax, property tax, and the seemingly endless list of other taxes and government imposed fees we all pay on many other services. Since most social welfare programs are funded by a combination of federal and state taxes I don't think the number of people paying federal income tax is meaningful one way or the other.

http://translate.google.fi/translate?hl=en&sl=fi&tl=...

"The employment rate of employed persons between 15 and 64-year-olds in April was 68.7 per cent, which was 0.2 percentage points higher than a year earlier. Employment rate for men fell from the previous year to April by 0.1 percentage points to 68.6 per cent. The female employment rate increased by 0.6 percentage points to 68.8 per cent. For seasonal and random variation, the trend was 68.7 percent."

Source: Statistics / Labour Force Survey

Until you consider how the US Government runs any program into the ground, is blanketed with regulations and bureaucracy, and generally hurts the people who it's supposed to help.

Here's a few examples just in case you need some evidence:

The US Postal Service: http://www.economicfreedom.org/2012/12/12/stamping-out-waste...

The War on Poverty: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/062612-616212-war-o...

Medicare: http://www.aei.org/article/health/entitlements/medicare/why-...

Cash for Clunkers: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020488440457436...

You can also add these to the list:

Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, AmTrak, No Child Left Behind, and the Fair Housing Act.

I would be more in favor if the government had a good track record with some of these programs, but when you see how horrible these programs are run, you feel like we really can't seem to fix anything. Sad but true

"Until you consider how the US Government runs any program into the ground, is blanketed with regulations and bureaucracy, and generally hurts the people who it's supposed to help."

Sounds exactly like the complaints I read on my social feed from fellow Finns :).

To respond to a point from the first article you linked (one which I think generalizes well):

"So why isn’t the USPS making innovations and meeting customer needs like Outbox? Simple: because consistent financial support from the government eliminates incentives to do so."

Anybody who thinks it really is that simple is someone to be wary of when getting information or analysis.

The biggest reason USPS doesn't make changes like this is that congress ties its hands -- free market devotees don't want it competing in new areas. Or even old areas, like postal banking/payments (imagine the outcry here if someone decided maybe a public digital/physical payment infrastructure might be beneficial if competitive with the various private services). Some don't want it doing anything at all, but they can't really get rid of it, so they join up with the next group: budget-watchers who want it revenue neutral (which it managed pretty well for a long time)... AND now subject to pension/healthplan requirements well above and beyond any private standards. Meanwhile, cutting service is seen as a no-go.

Some people have actually speculated subjugating the USPS to this set of no-win requirements is actually an intentional strategy to bolster the case for privatization, which would pretty much have been a non-starter before 2006.

You could say that this proves that the US Government is ineffective, I suppose, but in a representative democracy, what that mostly proves is that US politics either prevents good policy thinkers from being elected or prevents them from effectively doing their job. Or letting others do theirs.

There may be an institutional component too (our legislature in particular is less representative than one might think), but I suspect the biggest factor is cultural/philosophical.

Did you not read about economies of scale when you were reading whatever libertarian crap you found?

It's even more expensive to do nothing when your health care system has to pick up the pieces. Appropriate preventative strategies can be cost-effective, and should be easier for voters to support (since they benefit everyone rather than just the ill.)

No, the reason it will never happen is because every single interest that sells any baby anything will oppose it (unless they are written into the bill to sell to the government at 110% retail). Even if 99% of the population wants it, Target gets a veto. That's why all these great programs that anyone mentions have started 50+ years ago; back when something could get done even if you could find one large corporation that it wasn't in the best interests of.

Yeah, this program meets even the literal wording for nanny state program.

Even on a fiscally conservative level, this isn't a bad government program. It address a specific education / health problem and fixes it for everyone at a much lower cost than a lot of other attempts in other countries (think much fewer personal and administration costs). It is statistic-based[1] and save total cost[2].

I shudder to think of how expensive that box would be in the US after all the contractors and graft.

1) Although one would think infant mortality would be a straight forward stat, it actually isn't because of how people class "viable". Even inside the EU it is approached differently by different countries. One of the big dangers of comparing statistics across countries.

2) think problems that could be fixed in childhood / pre-natal as opposed to living costs later.

Also (d), it doesn't create a disincentive increasing one's income. It's pretty easy to get into a situation in the US where you have more money making 30K a year than 35K, just because you lose access to means-tested benefits.

It's not really in the interests of the ruling class to build genuine solidarity and shared values. Divide and rule.

Lovely article. However, I must say that the box is only the tip of the iceberg. It's been almost four years since we went through the gauntlet so my memory may be a bit fuzzy but if I remember correctly the FREE tier of forming babby in Finland includes:

- Initially monthly (increaing to weekly) pre-natal checkups that include bloodwork, metabolism tests, ultrasounds and any treatments necessary to ensure the baby's and mother's health.

- About 12 hours of parental training which I found surprisingly useful (containing none of the Lamaze class stereotypes I had been expecting). Also, our group of people contained an absolutely adorable teenage couple, everybody else was in their late twenties to mid thirties.

- The whole "actual business". Now this bit we did have to pay for, about $80 per day that we stayed in one of the maternity ward's private rooms with full room service.

- First weekly and later monthly post natal checkups (also for the mom) including vaccinations. At two years the schedule switches to annual checkups and starts including dental chaeckups. At some point during the first months a doctor actually visits your home to check up on how you are dealing with the whole situation. If there are clear indicators of problems (e.g. alcoholism) the doc can point you in the direction for help.

- You start getting about $150/month from the state for the baby (until it is 18 years old), this is about half of the cost of municpal daycare. In addition to this you get financial support during (m|p)aternity leave (the amount is actually scaled based on your salary). Maternity leave is about 100 days, paternity leave is about 50 days and on top of that you are entitled to 160 days of parental leave (either mom or dad can take this). Your place of employment can get state compensation if they decide to pay you a full salaray during your leave. Then there is a general child care leave than can extend to three years, it gets nitty gritty with the bureaucracy of compensations but effectively it is possible to take care of your kid for the first three years and still have your old job back when you're done. In our circle of friends there are at least a couple of "career women" who have checked out for ~5 years to have two kids and successfully gotten back into the game.

So yeah, the box is nice but it is only the icing on the fabulous cake that is having a baby in Finland :-).

It is worth noting that all this is not free, but paid for by the tax payer. Many European countries have similar arrangements.

Personally, I think all this is money well spent by the governments as it gives nice financial boost to young parents and a sense that someone/something cares about them and their baby.

True, true, I didn't want to go into that because that way lies a never ending comment chain on fiscal policy ;-).

Also there is more bang for the buck making sure babies are raised well and healthy, over trying to fix maladjusted and unhealthy teenagers and adults years later.

> It is worth noting that all this is not free, but paid for by the tax payer.

While its technically true, its really misrepresent it. Every time i hear that argument it sounds like a kid holding one part of a singular share of Microsoft stock, proclaiming to the world that he has now "funded Microsoft!" because of his $10 investment.

Sure, in societies with lower tax, the state would be less likely to be funding a baby box. However, in trade of, society itself tend to then evolve a culture of charities to handle the slack. The US is a good example here, where such a box would likely also exist in some places, but maybe coupled with a bible or a cooperation logo on. People could then argue that such a thing is also "not free", but provide under advertisement for a religion or brand.

So while its technically true that this is a gift paid by tax payers money, that description deserve a lesser attention that we currently are giving it.

It's more than a baby box. I do not know how familiar you are with some European countries' social system, but young parents are usually given quite a few months of vacation time and salary from the state, a sort of children allowance until a child is 18 years old (100EUR or so), tax deductions for every child until a child is 18 years old, kindergarten 'bonuses', free health care for every child and similar.

So this definitely deserves a lot of attention as it makes young parents' lives quite easier. And I am not arguing against it, just that in the end someone has to pay for it.

> And I am not arguing against it, just that in the end someone has to pay for it.

What if it turned out that the baby pays for it because the improved average upbringing allows the baby to earn more and consequently pay more tax in absolute terms, though not in percentage terms?

Would it be a cost to the taxpayer then?

As it happens, I am one of such tax payers, since I live in a country with similar arrangements for young parents as Finland. Also, by having two kids, I have been twice a beneficiary of this system. To repeat, I completely support such system, I just don't agree with ProcessBlue's statement, quote, ".. bit fuzzy but if I remember correctly the FREE tier of forming babby in Finland includes ...".

It depends. "Brain drain" is a real problem for many nations.

Not the ones with advanced economies and reliable social safety nets, though. People tend to leave places that don't offer economic security and opportunity for those that do.

I think this idea is often over looked. How much money/time is spent solving problems caused by overwork?

but you're assuming that this improves the upbringing.

If you're suggesting that health and parental attention does not contribute to a quality upbringing, I'd like to see some studies cited.

What if the improved upbringing opens up more opportunities for the child -- in other countries? So now instead of an average taxpayer you get nothing at all?

Obviously the opportunities afforded in your own country weren't sufficient and you should probably work on that rather than crippling children.

It certainly gives lots of job opportunities - for example in the USA. With finnish mediocre salaries and high tax rates, americans think young couples are crazy to return here to raise their families. Yet they do. Certainly they're not returning directly because of a cardboard box.

There are many places which extract some high value years from the workforce of some other country, for example I've heard that many educated german speaking young people go to work in Switzerland for a few years but ultimately return.

It's a bit unclear to me who wins here.

... but young parents are usually given quite a few months of vacation time and salary from the state, a sort of children allowance until a child is 18 years old (100EUR or so)...

In the US we earn 30% more money than Finland (adjusted for cost of living, which is quite high in Finland), so we can just pay for these things with savings if we want to. Most of us choose not to, suggesting these benefits are worth less to us than money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

> Most of us choose not to, suggesting these benefits are worth less to us than money.

Or you could be suffering from a Tragedy of the Commons. Your American viewpoint may be preventing you all from pooling your money together and saving overall. Instead you all have to act as individuals, and in this case it is in your individual best interests to not spend the money, since you only get the saving if you all act together.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

I don't understand. The tragedy of the commons is about resource depletion in the absence of price signals. If I choose to work rather than take paternity leave, what resource am I depleting? Or more generally, what harmful externality am I creating?

> The tragedy of the commons is about resource depletion in the absence of price signals.

This is a narrow view. Think about it more generally, and you'll see that the same concept applies here.

Ask your kids.

That's right kids, Americans choose never to have any vacation time and spend all their lives in work...

Also LOL @ Savings. From what I've read only around 55% of Americans have more savings than credit-card debt.

More likely, you prefer not to pay because it costs way more than it should. I am not familiar with analysis of e.g. Day care costs, but Americans pay significantly more for healthcare than Europeans, and get significantly worse results; also, they pay significantly more for education and get significantly less.

The party line is that it is a preference - but anecdotally, I've only heard that preference from people who never really looked at the numbers, and from the obscenely rich.

More likely, you prefer not to pay because it costs way more than it should.

Americans earn 30% more than Finlanders adjusting for PPP. I.e., taking into account higher cost of health care, lower cost of most other things, we still have 30% more on average.

Americans do pay more for education than Europeans, but our results are quite good compared to most of Europe. The only reason it appears our educational system is poor is because certain subgroups of the student body drag our averages down.

http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-abou...

Perhaps American's would be even more educated if they used a system like Finland's, often held up as the worlds best education system. Paying less and getting better results sounds good to me. Maybe Finland's high educational achievement level starts with the picture book in the box?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Index

If it's so easy to copy, how come no one else in the world has actually managed to do it?

Some parts of Germany now rank as well as the Finnish average in the PISA tests. (And Singapore ranks pretty well, too, but that was not a result of an effort spurred on by the testing.)

So do some parts of the US. Ethnic subgroups of the US with similar ethnicity to Singapore also rank quite well.

http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-well-do-above-...

One reason is that education politics are extremely conservative.

>> The only reason it appears our education system is poor is because certain subgroups of the student body drags [sic] our averages down.

Yeah, lots of people forget how great we really are once you compare our best to everybody else's average! It's pure bias. Individually (booyah!) almost every one of us is well above average. It's just that there are too many of the others who don't deserve to count.

> Americans earn 30% more than Finlanders adjusting for PPP.

You're taking PPP to mean much more than it actually does. Just consider the fact that there's no accepted "PPP" measurement methodology.

But even assuming one existed (pick your favorite), it only effectively encodes one specific consumption profile - one that e.g. takes into account the health care costs of a 30-year-olds with healthy 4-year-old kids, but not that of your average 50-year-old which are considerably different.

> taking into account higher cost of health care, lower cost of most other things, we still have 30% more on average.

Averages are totally the wrong tool to measure anything like that - especially when disparity in the US is so much higher.

Compare the proverbial USElbonia to Eulbonia:

In USElbonia, 1% make $16100/month, 99% make $100/month' avg=$260/month

In EUlbonia, 1% makes $400/month, 99% make $200/month, avg=$202/month

USElbonians, make, on the overage 30% more - but every single EUlbonian is at least 100% better off than 99% of the USElbonians.

Real stats are not quite as bad, of course - but disparity in the US is ridiculously high. But there are many respects in which all EU people are better off than US people which do not make it into any PPP comparison -- e.g., http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/06/05/bankruptcy.medical.bill... "Unless you are Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, you are one medical emergency away from bankruptcy" - I can't find a real European comparable, but http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2009/11/17/no_one_goes_ban/ suggests that there's more the quality than 30% parity-adjusted purchasing power can buy.

> The only reason it appears our educational system is poor is because certain subgroups of the student body drag our averages down.

Cherry picking statistics will get you anywhere you want, regardless of any "truth" however that may be defined.

Consistently in STEM, about 50% of PhD and postdoctoral students in the US are not USA citizens, and this has been going on for at least 20 years. I would take that as empirical evidence that the US STEM education is, indeed, poor.

> so we can just pay for these things with savings if we want to.

Uh, who's "we"? You mean the 60% of Americans with more than $500 in savings? Are those the people who can "just" pay for it out of savings?

Not to mention all the Americans who choose to consume at American levels (considerably higher than European levels), rather than saving.

As for people at the bottom, they typically do choose free time over money. About 90% of those classified by the government as poor choose not to work full time, for example.

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2010.pdf

They choose not to, or there's no full time work for them to take so they work part time instead?

It may be that they make the choice (I admit to not having read the paper), but lets not jump to that assumption just because they're not in full time work.

Sorry, yummyfajitas was being sarcastic.

They choose not to, or there's no full time work for them to take so they work part time instead?

The answer is in the report I linked to, which measures involuntary part time employment in addition to labor force participation.

Or another way to look at it, Infant Mortality rates in Finland are so much lower than in the US, suggesting they value a babies life higher than Americans value money.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_m...

So this definitely deserves a lot of attention as it makes young parents' lives quite easier. And I am not arguing against it, just that in the end someone has to pay for it.

The beneficiaries likely return it and more through increased productivity. It's a lot easier to be productive when you don't have to worry too much about essentials.

Not only that, but I expect the neonatal benefits amount to a public good - an expenditure of public money that saves more than it costs by improving outcomes and reducing the need for expensive interventions.

Why exactly is this worth noting?

Nobody jumps to point out that there's still somebody paying for the "free" tiers of Dropbox or GitHub or whatever. Yet the moment somebody mentions a "free" social program, people suddenly have to hammer on the point that somebody pays for it.

We're not a bunch of imbeciles who think that social programs just rain from the sky....

Irregardless of your extremely poor attitude, I shall point out the obvious: 'ProcessBlue' himself has stated in capital letters that it is free. I was just correcting that.

Everybody knows what "free" means in that context, so your "correcting" is not actually adding anything to the conversation. Perhaps you think you are informing people, but everyone who reads your comment already knows what you're saying, so it's not informative at all.

Regardless whether or not people are imbeciles, they still have a habit of abstracting away common knowledge, and then forgetting that the common knowledge exists. I see this all the time in the computer industry. It's good to remind everyone now and again that free is not necessarily free.

Why do people only ever bring this up with social programs, and not any of the many other "free" things that are discussed around here?

Because social programs get their money from coercion. GitHub doesn't. (To the extent that you think you can find a private company that can and does use coercion, I object to that too.)

Even as a liberatarian, I'm happy to say some things are well worth the coercion. But it should never be forgotten, because otherwise people do start thinking it's just free money that has no other concerns whatsoever, and start spending it stupidly. We know this by simply looking around at political discourse, to the point that I almost wonder if you're dissembling when you claim that nobody thinks this way. Look harder. We should never forget that social spending is a cost/benefit question that never has zero costs.

I actually personally find it a bit bizarre that people find this an objectionable statement. Realizing that money is not free and should be spent on worthwhile things to account for the coercion should lead to better spending. Defending the proposition that we shouldn't be so concerned about the costs is a recipe for producing less efficient spending, as always happens when costs are misjudged. The fact that this sort of thing has been politicized ought to lead you to wonder who is politicizing it, and what they're hiding behind it.

This is far from unique to social programs. In the US defense spending is ridiculously over the top stupidly high because in large part because there is little cost benifit analysis just how much can we increase it. The same can be said for targeted tax breaks, capital gains being taxed at 15% shafts everyone that does not have significant investments.

I don't think any of the people who think taxes are free money post to HN.

Constantly reminding HN posters that "free" government programs actually cost money, like every single other thing in life, just derails the conversation. It serves no useful purpose, because we already know. It's just political grandstanding.

Imagine if every single post on HN about the success of some company included comments like, "it's not really their success, since they used public roads and electrical infrastructure, oh and that whole Internet thing started out as a government program!" You'd probably get annoyed pretty fast at people shoving their politics in your face where it's unnecessary.

'Imagine if every single post on HN about the success of some company included comments like, "it's not really their success, since they used public roads and electrical infrastructure, oh and that whole Internet thing started out as a government program!"'

Errr... I don't really have to imagine. That happens pretty frequently. I sort of agree that it's a grandstanding distraction either way.

Despite a set of politicians views, that wouldn't be the logical conclusion.

The services provided by the government are paid for by the people (citizen and non-citizen) as taxes, foreigners as duties, or debt. The logical conclusion is that a person or company is paying for those roads and infrastructure. It is just another service, no more sacred than the cellular contract or rent on office space. We don't generally attribute the rent to our success.

> people shoving their politics

How is pointing this out politics? If pointing it out is politically conservative, ignoring it is politically liberal? I don't get it. It's one of the few economic absolute truths we have.

> "it's not really their success, since they used public roads

That happens already. You didn't build that! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_didn%27t_build_that

  Because social programs get their money from coercion

Language matters, and the verb 'coercion' in this context, to me, is actually repugnent.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coercion):

"Coercion /koʊˈɜrʃən/ is the practice of forcing another party to act in an involuntary manner (whether through action or inaction) by use of threats or intimidation or some other form of pressure or force,"

I don't see taxes (and I pay a fairly significant share) as our evil government squeezing out our hard earned cash by threatening, or intimidating us.

Quite the opposite: taxes are our entrance fees to a civilized society, to a working infrastructure, to good and fair education and to umpteen other things that make up a society.

You may argue how the public money is spent and how much of it should go into social programs and how deeply the state should get involved. Interesstingly, more equal societies, like the Nordics, seem to provide generally a higher quality of life for their citizens.

You can see taxes as a necessary evil, or hate them, but defining taxation as coercion is pretty loaded and rather close to Orwellian newspeak.

Different strokes for different folks.

Taxes are certainly not voluntary. If you do not pay them, you will be coerced into doing so. Hence the use of the word.

"You can see taxes as a necessary evil, or hate them, but defining taxation as coercion is pretty loaded and rather close to Orwellian newspeak."

In addition to what refurb said, I feel you're exactly backwards. We should always remember that taxes come from the threat of imprisonment if you don't pay and coercive force. There are things that are worth this threat. Civilization is a big deal. It's a good thing. I'm rather Hobbesian on my view of Nature; in that sense I'm probably more enamored with civilization than the average liberal who believes in the inherent goodness of man. I think we have much farther we can fall than such a person would. But people should not casually use this power. To wipe away the fact that taxation is coercive is to encourage attitudes that spend your time and energy on irrelevant, if not downright wrong, purposes. That's not something we should overlook.

Taxation is a big deal. It's intrinsically coercive. It should only be used on really important things, not for things like shutting up some interest group somewhere, or buying votes, or lining the pockets of your buddies, or worthless administration (and please note the word "worthless" isn't superfluous there), or any of the other myriad of ways government can coercively spend the fruits of our precious, precious time on this planet.

That said, by the way, I think this particular thing is a solid use of taxpayer dollars. Or at least it is, provided it's somewhat efficient; if they're managing to blow $10,000 a box or something, as the US government would probably find a way to do (a snipe at our particular government today, not the concept of government in general), that's less true.

Also, if you do not today agree with me, wait three years. When a Republican is President again, it will once again be a popular notion that we shouldn't have to pay our taxes blindly to the government and we should think really carefully about how we're spending on things. I'm just ahead of the progressive curve here, that's all.

Taxation is a big deal. It's intrinsically coercive. It should only be used on really important things, not for things like shutting up some interest group somewhere, or buying votes, or lining the pockets of your buddies, or worthless administration (and please note the word "worthless" isn't superfluous there), or any of the other myriad of ways government can coercively spend the fruits of our precious, precious time on this planet.

That's a very good point. I, for one, consider taxation to be theft, plain and simple. But yet I don't try to defend myself from this theft via force, for pragmatic reasons (they employ more men with guns than I do, for one). So, I grudgingly tolerate a certain level of coercion, even though it is extremely distasteful to me.

BUT... I maintain that if you're going to steal my money and spend it - nominally - in my name, then you better damn well spend it wisely and on something important. This is one reason government agencies piss me off so much.. I see so much waste and inefficiency and fraud and other shenanigans, and it just enrages me that they are taking my money and blowing it on idiotic shit, or - worse - things that I'm fundamentally morally opposed to.

> You can see taxes as a necessary evil, or hate them, but defining taxation as coercion is pretty loaded and rather close to Orwellian newspeak.

By your own copypasted definition, how can they be anything but?

Even if you love taxation and government spending, this is factually true.

I don't see taxes (and I pay a fairly significant share) as our evil government squeezing out our hard earned cash by threatening, or intimidating us.

And what if you decide that you have a better idea of how to spend your money than the State, and stop paying "your taxes"? Do it long enough, they send men with guns to arrest you, and put you on trial and (probably) put you in jail. If you resist any portion of this process, you will probably be shot to death by the men with guns.

How is this not "use of threats or intimidation or some other form of pressure or force"?

All State power is ultimately rooted in the use of force. Just because many (even most?) people happily pay "their taxes" out of rote habit, or because they've grown to accept a certain measure of coercion as acceptable, doesn't change the underlying principle.

I guess it is not coercion due to the fact that no one is preventing you by force from packing your bags and leaving the USA.

You say that using the word "coercion" is repugnant, and then quote a definition that perfectly fits taxation? You've got some nerve. You can see it however you want, but if you don't pay taxes, someone will come and physically haul you off to jail whether you like it or not, someone who is prepared to escalate to deadly force. Sure sounds like coercion to me.

Taxation might make sense as an "entrance fee" if someone asked you whether you wanted to participate, and gave you an honest chance to say no, but we don't really have that. You usually can't even just hide out on your land and not interact with anyone except dealing with trespassers, because of property tax, a form of coercion I find particularly repugnant.

Yes, language matters, which is why "coercion" is the perfect word for taxation.

It is a curious thing that you object to this.

Are you not also being coerced to conform to virtually every other societal norm? Try walking out naked down the street in broad daylight. See if you're not jumped by the police. Try hunting some deer in the non-hunting season for food, -- because afterall you're hungry and the meat would do: you'll meet the heavy side of law.

You're seeing things from a libertarian-lens I think. Human society is built on a social contract, that pretty much basically boils down to an agreement of certain rules and guidelines so the collective fares better in the end. It's a thing to avoid a tragedy of the commons. We recognize that the unprivileged are not given the same opportunities as the privileged ones (their children are not going to schools where their peers are supportive/smart, they don't have the right role models, they don't have access to the same resources), and we decide that it is only fair that they receive a little help from the privileged. You can choose to stop paying taxes and in the end be left with a deteriorating society with unable customers... but you don't want that do you? What is so hard to understand about this?

Thank you for saying this. It really bothers me how arguments are reduced to meaningless 'facts' around here so quickly, when the real world is a lot more nuanced than that. A 'fact' without context is effectively meaningless (i.e. saying "the sky is blue" would be useless if we had no concept of a "sky"). The simple fact that "coercion" is defined in such a way that aligns with the way taxation is implemented is about as useful as one of those "fun facts" you see under snapple caps. Yeah, that's nice coincidence, but it's really only notable when you look at it for what it is: a relation between a word definition and a system implementation. In other words, the connotation of the word and the context of the system implementation are not necessarily guaranteed to be congruent, as there are many paths that lead to the same destination. And as you clearly stated, taxation is just a special case of the more general practice of governance through law enforcement. And while a lot of people here like to see 'law' as equal to 'right-ness', it too is not necessarily congruent but rather a close approximation (much the same way that I.Q. scores are a rough approximation of 'intelligence' -- another relatively 'vague' concept). What's funny, is that this incongruence makes itself pretty clear whenever drug laws are brought up. Several clamor to "legalize", yet many of the same people then go on use law/law-enforcement as an accurate metric for 'right-ness' in argumentation. The thing is that law is a pretty good metric for what society deems to be right in general for practical usage in implementing guidelines, but the system behind it is never going to be responsive/fast/informed enough to represent a useful snapshot of societal values that can then be used for argumentation[1]. If culture/society were generally static then that would be fine, but this big mess of dynamic interactions is much too complicated, so we just resort to using simple arbitrary factoids to end discussions.

[1] Not to mention that a government's body of law as a whole is not generated by a fixed algorithm; different laws arise from different needs/contexts/scenarios, and not understanding what context brought about any specific policy, yet still using it in argumentation, is essentially a strawman.

Where did I say I objected to it? Coercion has it's place, and government's role is to use coercion where and only where it's justified. My point is, let's be clear that when we talk about things the government should do, we're necessarily talking about things for which coercion is justified.

Because social programs get their money from coercion.

Garbage. I quite like paying taxes, because it suits me to outsource some money allocation to the government. You have a vote, and presumably when you benefit from things you voted for you don't go around feeling guilty at how you've coerced other people into going along with it.

Defending the proposition that we shouldn't be so concerned about the costs

You're focusing only on the costs, while ignoring the potential savings. Finland spends this money because it expects to get something in return: lower infant mortality, and its correlate, lower rates of infant ill-health and negligence. Bringing a baby to term and delivering it only to have it die represents a massive loss of productivity, and that loss is not confined to the grieving or irresponsible parents, it ripples out through society, both via spending by the parents' relatives and friends and through loss of economic productivity from illness, despression and so forth, not to mention that underprivileged children who do survive are more likely to suffer from mental illness, fall into crime, become homeless etc.

This notion that social programs are just a cost and deliver no benefit is asinine. It's highly economically efficient to provide new parents with the essential tools for looking after a baby, and a great more productive than issuing homilies about the (tiny) marginal increase in taxation that results.

"You're focusing only on the costs"

Bollocks. I'm saying we should talk about the costs, not ignoring the benefits. I actually think this is a net good move on Finland's part. I know you're projecting, since you've imputed claims to me I actively disagree with.

Well, why is it so imperative that we talk about the costs if we're in a agreement that there's a net benefit? Perhaps I am projecting, but generally when people are at pains to point out that things are not free and there's a cost, what they mean is that there's a net cost to society (or think that there is) and that the money would be best spent somewhere else or not collected at all. When you lead off with a complaint that the money from social programs was extracted from you by 'coercion' the implication is that you're being forced to pay for something people should have to finance themselves.

I really don't get how you think this is a net good move but couch your argument in the form of a complaint about the government taking your lunch money. By definition, a net good is economically less costly to provide than to withhold. Even over the very short term (ie within the same fiscal year) I suggest that the opportunity cost of supplying the baby box is no more, or possibly lower than the costs of autopsies and lost productivity resulting from a higher rate of infant mortality.

It just means they feel like the other party is forgetting about the cost. For example, if I hear my friend raving about this new phone that only costs 99 dollars, I might remind him that it would require him to upgrade to a data plan that costs 20 dollars more per month. That doesn't mean that the phone isn't still worth buying, just that it's not as cheap as I think he is imagining it to be.

Honestly, and especially in the case of public goods like the baby box discussed here, I think people are perfectly well aware that they don't fall out of the sky or grow on trees, even if they can't articulate the entire cost-benefit structure at the drop of a hat. But people who say the cost is being forgotten usually complain that it has to be picked up by 'the taxpayer' (meaning themselves), as if the expectant parent(s) had no history or prospects of ever paying taxes themselves.

Intentionally or not, the implicit suggestion that the costs are being picked up by someone else is rooted in economic stereotypes that remain widespread in the US despite a lack of supporting evidence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen or for a more current example: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-04-09/politics/38405...

There's a net benefit to eating out every night (it's tasty and we don't have to do dishes), but my wife and I still consider the costs.

Just because something produces a net benefit does not mean that there are infinite funds to allocate toward it.

Those are benefits. A net benefit means it's more economically efficient than the alternative - which might be true for you, but isn't necessarily so.

Thinking about it though, if you are assuming people are operating at that level and don't understand what the "free" means in this context, do you really think a simple explanation will all of the sudden enlighten them?

Using the analogy and talking about common knowledge in computer industry, this is basic enough that's the equivalent of "most computers need an electrical supply to work". If you are talking to someone about building a data center or scaling out a database and then you need to remind them that computers don't work based on unicorns but on electricity not sure if it makes sense to even remind them or continue the conversation.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

There are plenty of people that think the government has unlimited money and should spend it on the people. These people don't know that it is literal wealth transfer from one person to another with the government acting as middle man. Sure, you may realize that this is the case but many people don't.

It's the same mentality that leads people to believe that insurance companies should pay for everything until they realize that it is other insurance company customers (including thenselves) that actually foot the bill for it.

Do any of those people post on HN?

Or exist, for that matter?

You would be surprised about how many people don't realize that or who choose to ignore it.

My aunt for example really doesn't understand that the government has any limits on their funds at all. She proposed to me that shopaholics should be given money by the government to found their addiction.

If you ever have the misfortune to work near or in social services, then you realize yes they exist and are not an urban myth. Sadly, some government programs encourage the behavior (e.g. "free" cellphones).

"Obama gave me a phone!"

> There are plenty of people that think the government has unlimited money

Technically, any government that has sovereign control over its currency does have unlimited money. We have examples of governments utilizing this fact to disastrous results, but that doesn't make it less true.

> These people don't know that it is literal wealth transfer from one person to another

This isn't necessarily true. For state governments or governments that don't have a sovereign, fiat currency, it is true, but not for a national government like the USA federal government. If it were true, all wealth would be a "zero sum game."

You're correct about people's misguided perceptions about government spending and insurance companies, but it's also harmful when the pendulum swings too far the other way, and we don't want the government to spend any money because we think it only obtains that money via taxes.

> Why exactly is this worth noting?

Because it's one of the best ways to make sure it never happens in the US. Another good way is to call it Socialist.

There are many imbeciles who think that social programs just rain from the sky. Maybe not so much here.

I disagree, there is a tremendous amount of discussion here on HN about the real cost of "free" services, particularly in light of the recent end of Google Reader, sale of Instapaper, etc.

Reading through the comments on the current front-page stories about Bitbucket and Zynga, I don't see a single comment saying that their free services aren't really "free".

> It is worth noting that all this is not free, but paid for by the tax payers

Not sure why you are saying that. It is something I would tell my 5 year old maybe. Perhaps some do think God makes cardboard boxes magically appear in Finland out of thin air, but is it really worth mentioning that in this forum, if you expect your audience to operate at that level?

It's a pity that in neither ar nor new york does babby get a box. I haven't heard of it happening this mroing or on any other day. You will not get a box, even if you have three kids ; i am truley sorry for your lots

In all seriousness, though, even though the United States' infant mortality rate is declining[1], it's still very upsetting to me that we're aren't far lower than we are, given how wealthy we are as a country.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/health/infant-mortality-ra...

Interesting that the health system in Finland has the concept of paid 'luxury' options. In the UK NHS that would be considered anathema.

Definitely in the NHS it would, but there's always the option of opting-out to the private system.

That's very much all-or-nothing though.

Do you mean the private room? That wasn't a luxury option, I should have been more clear on that :-). All rooms are private, and though we got lucky and got one that was slightly larger than the others it didn't cost extra. I think the small fee they impose is simply meant to encourage people not to overstay.

I'm experiencing extreme envy at these private room stories.

I had my first child in a great hospital with the same room all to my family for our full two-day stay.

For my current pregnancy, I switched care providers, but I chose the new midwife based on her ability to deliver at the great hospital where I had my first child.

Last month (when I was seven months pregnant), my insurance company decided they no longer cover the awesome hospital. My midwife said insurance companies almost never let you stick with the hospital you'd planned in these situations. So unless I want to pay for the whole thing (despite being insured at great cost to my employer and me), I can spend my first days with my new baby sharing a room with some random family of strangers and their new baby, at a hospital where there's a high likelihood that the other family's new baby will be enduring significant medical problems.

Hooray for privatized health care, right? Clearly better than any other possibility.

Most NHS hospitals allow you to pay for certain extra services. TV and internet access is common. In many hospitals it also includes being able to pay for private rooms with en suite facilities.

EDIT: Specifically regarding maternity wards: We did pay extra for a private room when my son was born, so I have first hand experience with that.

We payed for a private room as well. I did note that this wasn't something that was "advertised" but if you asked they were more than happy to give you a room.

Mind you this was 13 years ago in the old maternity hospital here in Edinburgh - don't know what the arrangement is in the new Royal Infirmary.

NB My wife gave birth in a private room in the midwife run "Normal Delivery Unit" which was fantastic - we only asked for a private room a few hours after she had given birth after she had been moved to a ward.

Generally the criteria is that clinical needs go first, so if someone needs a room, they'll chuck you right out again (and not charge you), which is fair enough, but also a reason for them not to create a too high expectation or demand.

Overall the NHS trusts have quite a bit of latitude in carrying out private services to offset costs by increasing utilisation of facilities and equipment (private surgeries are often carried out in NHS operating rooms, for example), but the extent to which they take advantage of it varies quite a bit.

They should do this in the UK. From observing the locals, the maternity grant (until yanked by the government) was used to buy designer gear for the mother, cigarettes and some expensive fashionable buggy for the baby (usually topped up by the baby's grandparents).

Unfortunately essential stuff was forgotten.

This solves those problems.

Same as Australia in most cases unfortunately.. They have now removed the "Baby Bonus".

Really? In "most cases"? My wife and I, and all our friends who have kids (which is the majority of our friendship circle now) used the baby bonus(es) to buy, you know, stuff for our babies. Like clothes, sleeping gear, safety stuff for round the house, prams (one for the first and a dual P&T when the second came along ... both off gumtree). We used it to pay for the ridiculously high electricity bill caused by having a heater running all the time to keep the temperature optimal so our baby would sleep properly in our shitty rental house in winter. We used it to pay for proper car seats, to have those seats properly installed, to install a metal grate so crap doesn't fly from the back of the car into our children's faces when we stop suddenly.

Whilst there were some pretty high profile cases of misuse (especially when it was given as a lump sum payment when it was first introduced as pork barrelling measure to gain ground amongst "Howard's Battlers") I think your claim that it was misused in "most cases" only goes to show that you don't have kids.

Could you publish a citation referencing these problems?

Stand outside ASDA in Feltham or Hounslow and observe.

So, no?

Not everything needs citation in the form of a survey or scientific paper. I doubt the results of it would be honest as the people who they would be surveying have an interest in lying about the things they have purchased with it.

Some things are blatantly obvious if you peel your eyes occasionally and observe humanity.

Please read up on the difference between anecdotes and data, and selective perception.

I know the differences, probably more than you realise.

I presented a hypothesis, which you can turn into a theory by sitting outside ASDA for a bit with a clipboard and a copy of SPSS. My suggestion was that you should try it.

Then you should know that your hypothesis remains unsupported by any data until that is done, and that it's not the job of people who doubt your hypothesis to do so.

Apart from that, the location itself would introduce a bias, and I'm curious how exactly you would recognize women in the process of spending the maternity grant.

Yes it is unsupported. I admit that. But it's clearly observable. I'm sure many people here observe it regularly.

You specify the problem the wrong way around.

The women got pregnant because the maternity grant was offered as is a cosy council house and a career of being pregnant. That's how it works here.

When you have three children like myself you spend a lot of time around parents and maternity units and the general consensus of the particular social stereotype is that a baby is a meal ticket and the £500 would go nicely on some Uggs and enough Silk Cut to get you through the first 9 months after it's born.

You can see the results of the maternity grant spending at ASDA which is basically the decked out in designer brand children being pushed around in their expensive buggy but the mother is buying £50 worth of cigarettes and her other three children are consigned to economy grade processed meat wrapped in breadcrumbs and some reconstituted potato product and some panda pops as their entire diet.

It's not down to poverty: just selfish idiocy, apathy and a complete lack of morals and ethics.

Sorry, but you are simply trotting out right wing UK tabloid lies. Please stop it. As a Brit, I find you and your lies crass and offensive. You see what you chose to see, and assume it applies to all. Mean while, you are Mr Perfect, right?

You and your attitude disgust me.

Sorry, HN, this is the first time I have had to post here like this. But I cannot let this "person" get away with such garbage. Not here.

See my reply here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5818507

I try to live a life which is entirely ethical and I treat people with respect where earned. I will not be an apologist though and if I find something morally reprehensible I will exercise my right to mention it as you are exercising your right to criticise (which I accept).

Your comment by nature is to demote the "right wing" which means you are playing to typical partisan political ideologies.

I care not for either.

Many things are "clearly observable".

My using the "observable" trump card, I could claim that it is usual to hang around billionaires all day and spend the working day sailing. I've observed that first hand.

But without evidence of frequency, it is a meaningless observation that is more likely to say something about observational biases than society at large.

I'm sorry, but since your comment is entirely unsupported by a citation explaining philosophical fallacies or similar, your criticism remains unsupported, and hence it's not the job of the person you're responding to to satisfy your demand.

What a vicious circle we create by demanding citations for any claim.

Yes indeed.

Philosophical note:

1. I think things that are desirable are easy to offer citations for because there is a motivation to promote the desirable.

2. Conversely, things that are not desirably are not researched by people who do not desire the result.

So the citation is moot if either way it is biased. If you ever read any medical papers, they are a fine example. Look at the efficacy of Seroxat/Paroxetine for a fine example. GSK papers = utterly wonder drug. Independent researchers = suicide pills.

Which is where we stand on everything more complicated than basic scientific issues.

Applying that to my point, there is nothing citable as the result is probably not politically desirable.

It's all "in my humble opinion".

Your original statement was "the maternity grant (until yanked by the government) was used to buy designer gear for the mother, ..."

That it's happened at least once, I have no doubt. But I think you mean to use the phrase "was used to buy" to mean that it happens often enough to base a policy decision upon.

The useful questions are "how often does it happen?" and more importantly "did yanking the policy lead to overall improved infant mortality rates?"

Those cannot be answered by "sitting outside ASDA [in Feltham or Hounslow] for a bit." As an extreme example, even if 100% of the people in those two places immediately pop into an off-license, use the money to buy liquor, walk outside, and pour it down the drain, you would need to see if that pattern is the same across the country.

In this extreme example, it might be that 0% of the rest of the country misuses their funds. There are 254,00 people in the London Borough of Hounslow. There are 62 million people in the United Kingdom. If no one else misused those funds, then an overall misuse rate of 0.4% across the entire country is rather good, and the appropriate policy decision would be to understand what is special about Hounslow and how that one region might be improved.

Thus, doing as you suggest would not provide sufficient information to establish an answer for my first question, much less my second.

While you write "Some things are blatantly obvious if you peel your eyes occasionally and observe humanity.", it's very hard to "peel your eyes" and see things when you aren't there.

How many cases of infant mortality have you seen?

I agree entirely.

I did not state it was citable or sound, but an observation.

The observation/hypothesis is valuable as it's the starting point for a discussion.

Presenting the extreme is disingenuous.

The answer to the correctness of my argument is neither yes or no - it is simply mu.

Others in this topic's comment page made observations to the contrary. Thus a discussion can go no further without more information. That's why you were asked for "citation referencing these problems."

You responded with an extreme, which was disingenuous, I agree.

In any case, any Hofstader fan knows what you mean now. Thank you for confirming that you agree that there is no meaningful basis for your opinion that the UK government should change its aid policies, and that your personal observations of the matter are not relevant.

Because ASDA in Feltham or Hounslow is a probability sample of humanity? I don't think so.

No, but in the UK there is a wind of judgemental tabloid nastiness in this area. Lies like this are made up daily, based on a very small minority, and huge chunks of people are tarred with the same brush.

So, yeah, where is the research?

Well, there is none, because apart from tabloid smearing lies, there is none.

What is "obvious" is how nasty people are in the UK towards the poor working classes, who are under constant attack.

And by making the distinction of working class are you not contributing to that bias? I treat all people as classless.

The people described by myself are not bound by class, but by attitude and morals. There is no class distinction involved.

The problem is not specific to one traditional "class".

The whole "tabloid smearing lies" drivel is another form of enforced division by promoting classes of reading.

This sort of stuff annoys me.

(for reference I have never purchased a newspaper and rarely even bother to look at the news unless it's technology related)

> I treat all people as classless.

What a convenient fantasy.

> The problem is not specific to one traditional "class".

Except it is, because it is only a problem by the implication that signs of wealth means that insufficient money must have been used on what is needed for the infant

Firstly it's not a fantasy unless you make it one. As someone brought up on a shoestring budget in one of the worst bits of London, I can assure you that in the real world, class is entirely irrelevant and ethics and morals are. There are people earning a quarter of what I do and three times what I do living either side of me and we're all on the same page, have the same ideals, hopes and goals.

There are no classes other than in the media.

Secondly, health is more important than purchasing branded and luxury goods. That is universally accepted as to shortcut ones health is to cause harm and the "golden rule" backs that up. To observe both signs of wealth and signs of poverty at the same time has certain obvious implications.

It's all logic.

> I can assure you that in the real world, class is entirely irrelevant and ethics and morals are.

I believe you in your claim that ethics and morals are independent of class. But that is entirely irrelevant to the argument over the existence of classes.

> There are no classes other than in the media.

So everyone have the same economic means and same influence over their life? The owner of a factory and the worker of a factory's interests are directly aligned with each others?

> To observe both signs of wealth and signs of poverty at the same time has certain obvious implications.

I'm not quite so sure the implications are as obvious as what you claim. But that is in any case irrelevant, as individual observations are still just that.

> It's all logic.

Logic does not substitute for missing data.

"I treat all people as classless."

Interesting then that you made that comment about Asda and not Waitrose.

What I see when I stand outside ASDA are a bunch of normal people, and then some poor people who struggle to buy food and pay their rent. I don't see fancy clothes and designer pushchairs, I see old tracksuits and second-hand pushchairs, I see people who don't have jobs and feel bad about themselves.

Demand for food-banks in the UK has soared. But if only they didn't spend it on fags and wide-screen TVs they'd be able to eat.

And how do you observe:

1) that essential stuff has been forgotten

2) that those you see were even eligible for the grant (it is only for those receiving income related benefits).

Note while not the nicest area of London suburbs the Job Seekers Allowance claimant rate is only 3% [1] with another 5.5% on Incapacity Benefit or Employment and Support Allowance. The vast majority of JSA claimants have been claiming less than 6 months rather than long term. [2]

There are particularly deprived pockets though but I question your ability to identify by pure observation outside a supermarket real income sources.

[1] http://www.hounslow.gov.uk/local_economic_assessment_overvie... (p iv)

[2] Same report (p 37)

They also had a maternity grant though the box was just opted in 95% of the time though

That is because the 140 EUR grant is of significantly less value, which is absolutely wonderful motivation to do things properly.

I applaud what they do in Finland.

In Portugal, it's the same for most 'grants'. The day after they are payed, there are more drunks in the streets (Wife works in an ambulance, calls for drunk people laying in the floor are 3-4 times more in the days following pay than in the rest of the month)

Having done a little research the grant is £500 available to parents receiving an income related benefit (including some in work benefits) [1].

It was changed a couple of years ago to apply only to first children rather than each child which I presume is the yanking referred to.

Essential stuff being forgotten. That happens there is a lot to learn quickly being a parent. Can you show that reckless spending caused necessary items not to be affordable when the error was realised?

"Expensive fashionable buggies" can easily cost more than £500, pushchairs are unsuitable for very young infants, those on low incomes are unlikely to have cars and may need a better buggy than those only nipping out of car although I'm sure there are solutions well under £500 especially if you look at 2nd hand.

I do agree that a universal box would be a good idea even though I'm not comfortable with your lazy tabloid stereotyping of "the locals". It may be that the box should be supplemented by a cash grant (of a reduced amount) for those currently entitled to the grant.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/sure-start-maternity-grant/overview

The first thing that I noticed about the box is that all the baby clothes are sex-neutral. Here in North America it's almost impossible to find baby clothes that don't immediately scream "I'm a boy" or "I'm a girl".

To my understanding, parents in Finland don't normally know the biological sex of the child before birth. If the box is given before the actually birth, then it makes sense to make the colors gender neutral.

The option to know (during the second ultrasound exam) is there, we for example did know. Some people choose not to know and many more keep the gender a secret from others until the baby is actually born.

Interesting, I understand not wanting to know and I also understand wanting to know, but why would people keep it a secret? (Just in case I'm not judging, just curious)

Because some people basically go batshit crazy when they find out and start getting you super-strongly gendered stuff, and you want to put off having to deal with that crap for as long as possible is one reason. For example, if you have a baby shower _before_ the birth (yes, ok, you're having a baby shower to start with) and you haven't told people the gender, there's only so much bad they can do along those lines...

Interesting perspective, thanks!

No problem. :)

Note that my experiences with this are all in the US. Now that I think about it, in cultures where there is more pressure to have kids of the "right" gender, there are other really good reasons to not tell people the gender even if you know...

No, most parents in Finland do opt to find out. I presume it's just easier to mass-produce a box of unisex clothing, and as the article says you can then easily reuse the clothes for siblings.

I live in Sweden, so I assumed Finland had it similar. Here, parents are not always offered to know the sex. This is sometimes because of hospital policy, or because the ultrasound did not make it clear enough.

Thanks for giving a definitive answer.

Why would there be a hospital policy against gender disclosure?

In China there is.

Im not sure. The best indication I can find is that such identification is seen as unnecessary from a medical viewpoint. Doing a quick search, the only other information I could find on the matter is that not identifying the sex is viewed as standard practice.

To prevent parents from aborting children of the "wrong" gender. It has sadly happened, apparently.

By the time you can tell, you can't have a legal abortion. Black market ultrasound is probably not the limiting factor in illegal abortions in Sweden or Finland.

They can't really tell with 100 % accuracy until birth, but by week 18 they can tell with a very high level of accuracy. And Sweden permits abortions until the end of week 18.

During the prenatal checkups here in Finland, they also do ultrasounds (2-3 times if I remember correctly) and they will ask you if you want to know.

The box contents is neutral mainly for logistical purposes. It's cheaper to have all the boxes with same content than to carry two lines of blue and pink boxes :)

It has been a long time since I purchased any, and I notice only so many, but what exactly is macho or feminine about a white onesie?

True, but that is a cultural item for us. From the article, the clothes color signifies year child was born. I would imagine that would substitute pretty well here if done for years.

If we lived in a world where journalists knew the slightest bit about critical thinking: Hmm, I wonder if the cardboard box cuts Finland's infant mortality. Maybe I should look up infant mortality for Norway and Sweden? Oh, it's exactly the same as Finland's? Can't be the box then.

I'm willing to bet that U.S. infant mortality is the same or even lower -- for people of Finnish descent.

I'm willing to bet that U.S. infant mortality is the same or even lower -- for people of Finnish descent.

Why?

I believe that comment is supposed to be an allusion to the following:

A Scandinavian economist once stated to Milton Friedman: "In Scandinavia we have no poverty." Milton Friedman replied, "That's interesting, because in America among Scandinavians, we have no poverty either." Indeed, the poverty rate for Americans with Swedish ancestry is only 6.7%, half the U.S average. Economists Geranda Notten and Chris de Neubourg have calculated the poverty rate in Sweden using the American poverty threshold, finding it to be an identical 6.7%. (Quoting from http://www.newgeography.com/content/001543-is-sweden-a-false... )

Sounds like Friedman stopped at the first 'why' instead of going to the usual 5+.

It doesn't say the box cut infant mortality, it says that in the period 1940 to 1960, a combination of the box, encouraging visits to doctors and the national health insurance system cut infant mortality.

I've done a small study and it turns out a combination of documenting, preparing unit tests, and cardboard boxes improve my source code quality by quite a bit.

Duh. It's obviously not the box itself that has reduced mortality. The "cardboard box" is a rhetorical shortcut that refers to the contents of the box and all the associated materials such as the written guides on infant care.

There's a strong autistic trait in HN discussion sometimes...

> contents of the box and all the associated materials such as the written guides on infant care

None of that did anything either, since other countries didn't have them and infant mortality went down there too.

Food for tought: if Norway has the same infant mortality rate and is substantially richer, does that mean something?

I am not exactly a socialist but the Finnish people still impress me again and again. (Happen to have a few friends and/or relatives from Finland. )

It means Norway found oil and gas.

And they are plowing (at least some of) the proceeds into public programs, instead of private companies.

...in 1969, 10 years after the mentioned 1940-to-1960 gains.

And those other countries were identical in every respect and hence perfect statistical controls?

Let's turn that around 180 degrees - without statistical controls how can you decide that a box did it?

You have no idea, you just like the box so you declare "the box is the king". It sounds good - the box has something to do with babies after all, so let's assign all the improvement to the box.

Sounds ridiculous doesn't it?

If you want to say "I have no idea whatsoever what caused the improvement", then I'll grant you your statistical rebuttal. But if you want to say "The box did it", then your statistical rebuttal is disingenuous.

That's a ridiculous conclusion to reach.

If I lose weight because I start exercising and my neighbour loses weight because he started eating less, it's foolish to state that my exercise had no effect since my neighbour didn't do it and he lost weight too.

[edit: too harsh]

This word "because" isn't as easy to use as you think.

You seem to be very sure of the exact reason why something happened. But it doesn't work that way in the real world.

Virtually every country on earth had reductions in infant mortality over the years. Only one of them had a box. Clearly the main driver of the improvement is something else.

So you might want to talk about the tiny differences, those things that improved one country more than another. Maybe the box? But see, you've lost all your certainty now, and you can't use the word "because", since you don't really know what improved things - after all the main improvement came from somewhere else entirely.

3rd try: Let's pick something in each country, and declare that thing the "cause" of the improvement! In Finland: A box. In Sweden? Something else.

This is what you did - you have no idea what really did it, you are just picking basically random things.

> You seem to be very sure of the exact reason why something happened. But it doesn't work that way in the real world.

That's completely backwards. You made the absolute statement that "None of that did anything either". How do you know? I see you've even switched now to "Maybe the box".

I wasn't picking anything at all, I just pointed out that your logic was flawed with an example, and now you're trying to argue that I'm wrong by arguing against your very own logic!

If we lived in a world where HN readers read thoroughly the articles they comment on...

I took it as a synecdoche, the cardboard box itself is obviously not very significant.

> It's a tradition that dates back to the 1930s and it's designed to give all children in Finland, no matter what background they're from, an equal start in life.

What a wonderful idea. My daughter was born in Chicago last year, and the hospital (Northwestern Memorial) gave us a little starter kit with bottles, pacifiers, some swaddling blankets, etc. I remember thinking as I walked out the door of the hospital that this was the last time that these kids would an equal shot at life.

Not sure that the pacifiers are a good idea, do they have them in the Finland box?

What do you have against pacifiers?

Nipple confusion.

It's inconvenient and better avoided. Toddlers cry, that's the normal thing. Some are unbearable and then a pacifier is ok but they become addicted and you're easily in deep shit if you travel and forget them or lose them (I had one in each pocket when taking a plane).

I guess most kid don't really need it, parents need it, when they can't bear the cries. But even then I think you just postpone the annoyance. I have a friend whose pacifier story would make a good tv show, with the kid solemnly taking the thing in the dustbin and the father frantically searching the bin at 2am.

> Toddlers cry, that's the normal thing.

Right, but toddlers also normally nurse to comfort themselves. If you're not breastfeeding (or if you're like me and you're the night-time parent but have no breasts) then a bink can be pretty clutch in terms of getting the kid to sleep so you can go to work in the morning.

Why, I don't mind your kid or any other using pacifier. I mind a bit the "pacifier by default" implied by its presence in the US baby box.

Also, if you can get a kid to control emotions early, it is all the better, and pacifier may postpone this a bit.

It is a self comforting device and recommended by AAP: http://goo.gl/ZnR17

Most babies come with perfectly serviceable thumbs for this purpose.

Babies can't figure out how to suck their thumbs right off the bat. Mine took months to master it.

True, though some start in the womb; it is a semi-instinctual behavior. I favor it because I think it promotes cognitive development, whereas a pacifier does not. Admittedly the calculus of this looks a bit different when the baby wakes up at 4am, after finally going to sleep at 2am.

According to the article, Finland remover pacifiers from the box in 2006 in order to promote breastfeeding.

There's a 'biting toy' in the package, but I'm not sure if that's exactly the same thing as a pacifier.

http://www.kela.fi/web/en/maternitypackage

You mean the circle shaped plastic toy at the bottom? That's not the same purpose, it will not block the crying orifice as do the pacifier.

The BBC seems to have taken the story down.

You can see a list of what goes in the box here: http://www.kela.fi/web/en/maternitypackage

seems to be working fine for me as of 22:53 PST

Not working for me either at the moment, but it's in the search index :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/?q=finnish%20babies

Edit: Had the archive url here. Google cache instead :

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

Title of this article sounds a lot worst than what the article presents (thankfully). This is off topic, but as refreshing as this article is, I wonder how many readers avoided reading this due to the title as it could've been a very depressing article.

Me. I thought it was bad news. I saw this in frontpage a few times today. I just read it because I don't have something to do. And well, that was refreshing. It's cute.

That's interesting because I looked at the title and assumed almost the direct opposite to you. I assumed that I would read the article and find something uplifting and happy about babies in Finland. And something interesting about cardboard boxes in Nordic climates.

I visited Iceland years ago and observed that babies were often left outside in prams (rugged up and only during the day) and it turns out that the locals believe that it's quite healthy to do so.

Reading about this more recently shows that this isn't unique and a lot of cultures in colder climates do this.

Infant mortality rates can also be quite deceptive in that they aren't measured the same way between countries.

"Even the use of the most fundamental term, “live births,” greatly distorts infant-mortality rates, because often the infants who die the soonest after birth are not counted as live births outside the United States."

http://www.nationalreview.com/content/infant-mortality-decep...

I don't think the point of the article was to compare infant mortality between countries. Finland had a problem with infant mortality and this is one of the steps they took to improve. The program seems to be working well and makes the Finns happy.

But does it decrease infant mortality? According to the CIA Facebook 2013 figures, Finland has the 12th lowest infant mortality. Not sure if this means the scheme works, or if simply paying a pregnant woman $50 each time she visits a doctor prior to birth would be a cheaper alternative (with the same outcome).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mor...

The WHO recommends countries record all babies born alive as live births, but some countries don't if the baby dies soon after (this makes them look better).

Did you read the article?

"In the 1930s Finland was a poor country and infant mortality was high - 65 out of 1,000 babies died. But the figures improved rapidly in the decades that followed."

It's now 3/1,000.

correlation/causation.

E.g. Italy does not have baby boxes, and child mortality went from 60/1000 to 3/1000 in the last sixty years too.

This happened basically everywhere, and either cardboard boxes play a big role and are used everywhere, or the effect is quite limited.

The article does not claim that the cardboard box itself played a big role.

It implies that the requirement to get prenatal care in order to receive the box played a role. EDIT: And it's not even making a strong claim about that. From the article "Mika Gissler, a professor at the National Institute for Health and Welfare in Helsinki, gives several reasons for this - the maternity box and pre-natal care for all women in the 1940s, followed in the 60s by a national health insurance system and the central hospital network."

well the thing about the article is that it singles out finland as if something special happened there, while similar improvements happened basically everywhere in the first world

I wouldn't dream of saying national healthcare in finland is the same as italy or US, which appears to imply that what really happened is mostly just science marching on and general improvements in wealth.

I don't read the articles focus as being on the reduction in infant mortality, but as a piece about cultural differences in care for infants, by describing one aspect of what Finland does, and where the reduction in infant mortality was mentioned in passing and not much more.

You'll note the title is not "How did Finland reduce its infant mortality rate?" or similar, but "Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes".

It's a human interest piece more than anything else.

sorry I forgot to reply. You are right, and I misinterpreted the article.

"It implies that the requirement to get prenatal care in order to receive the box played a role."

This is the hack of the box that is not being understood here on HN. The hack isn't that its a box or that cellulose is the ideal crib material, the hack is this is the nearly ideal carrot/stick to get moms to prenatal care. There are zillions of other ways to get moms to prenatal care across the whole spectrum of human experience ranging from intensive education, shoved at army bayonet point, bureaucracy and paperwork, tax codes, legal enforcement by goons with guns, who knows what else.

The true hack, the reason this is on HACKER news, is this is an amazing intersection of minimal overall total system cost and its incredibly polite and pleasant and basically civilized.

Its like all the skinner box psychological manipulation brilliance of Zynga, but applied to lowering infant mortality rates at the absolute minimum possible cost.

Frankly I'm not surprised, as a cultural thing, Scandinavian types might not have all the answers to everything, but when they do have an answer, its inevitably always the most elegant and efficient. Health care, architecture... baby boxes... no great surprise once again they rocked it.

This x10. Same thing happens here in the state where I live (São Paulo, Brazil). A similar box (it's actually a bag) is given to lower income expecting women, but only if they sign-up to the Mãe Paulistana program (São Paulo Mothers, loosely translated), which then has them going through all the prenatal and postnatal care that is the actual main focus of the program.

According to http://www.hrsa.gov/healthit/images/mchb_infantmortality_pub...

"The infant mortality rate in the United States showed a consistently downward trend between 1935 and 2000, with the rate declining from 55.7 per 1,000 live births in 1935 to 6.9 in 2000"

So Finland is doing better, but since the US has seen most of that improvement as well very little if any of it seems to be attributable to the box.

The article doesn't say it is attributable to the box, as pointed out by a bunch of HNers already (apparently, the ones who actually read it).

Did you read my comment, what about the article? They only give the box (or money) to mothers who visit a doctor. I was suggesting that the doctor was the reason, not the box, and that the the gift pack (which includes a cardboard box) is just an incentive.

They say that in the article.

I imagine the stress that this would take out of new parents' lives would be enormous. Apart from the physical and financial pressures, one thing that I think would weigh on me most when becoming a dad would be "are we doing this right?" Especially for those that don't have parents or an experienced role model to help them, at least as a concept this seems like a fantastic program for a govt to run.

I like that Finland has added cloth diapers and taken the bottle out. I wish, though, that sleeping with baby wasn't stigmatized, and that ultrasounds weren't deemed to be expected and normal during prenatal care (you may not hear or feel it, but watch a baby who is further along react - they freak out).

Anyway, the Finns seem to have their hearts in the right place. Well done.

Turns out the Netherlands also knows this kind of "happy box" as we call it, and my parents had one as well. I never knew!

I think the article is interesting, but they make the claim that the box may have helped lower infant mortality. Is that supported by any data? Would love to see a study, maybe pair Finland with a close neighbor country that does not provide the box etc.

Well, setting prenatal care as a prerequisite for the box almost certainly did.

Funnily enough, in Germany parents are advised to not let their newborns sleep in somewhere with all four sides closed (as is the case in this box).

The alleged reason is to reduce the risk of sudden infant death.

Fashions come and go in advice. Generations of American babies were put down to sleep on their sides, now the thinking is that they should be on their backs.

Mirror: http://updatednews.ca/2013/06/03/why-finnish-babies-moslty-s...

Is it possible to buy these and get them shipped outside of Finland?

The box is heavily subsidized and even Finns can't buy them directly. Some people re-sell theirs but mostly on finnish language baby websites.

Seems not sadly, but it would make a great gift.

Lots of people will complain about how the state is getting involved in peoples lives etc so it would have been funny if we could buy them online from overseas too, thus creating a profitable business

Unfortunately you can't, but you should be able to buy most of the items off the shelf in Finland (except the original cardboard box).

This page displays the contents of this years box with the contents:

http://www.kela.fi/aitiyspakkaus

Here's an infomercial demoing the contents: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVPw2_A9V5Y

Lot of the clothes are from finnish company Reima, which have an online shop:

http://www.reimashop.fi/

I'm jealous - not of the Finnish babies, but of the companies who provide the boxes and the contents.

It must be a nice sinecure.

You'd probably have lots of free time to send press releases to the BBC.

Nordic countries gets it, in more ways than just this.

A start up (or Google) ought to give a similar kind of thing to their employees on their first day. At minimum it would get marketing buzz.

"Hey Bob, glad you could join the team! Here's a big cardboard box to sleep in, it should fit under your desk nicely. You'll find a couple of onesies in there, some shampoo and shower gel, toothbrush, toothpaste etc. You'll never need to leave the office again!"

"Oh, and don't worry about that 'I'm sleeping in a coffin' feeling, it goes away after a couple of weeks"

That convinces me its a good idea

Agreed. At my first company we used to make sure every employee had a fresh packet of business cards and a mug on their desk for the first day. A nice box packed with thoughtful stuff you'll need is a good idea especially if it includes a few pair of gender-neutral-adult-size-onesies emblazoned with the company logo.

Because they're easy to cut to size: http://satwcomic.com/no-invitation

Gotta love that Infant Mortality graph... if that's not direct proof of a systematic effect and success then I don't know what is.

How about something that accounts for all the other medical advances over the past century or so? I'd say they likely had some input on that graph.

I'm pretty sure the discovery of penicillin had something to do with the drop in infant mortality as well.

> if that's not direct proof of a systematic effect and success then I don't know what is

Two graphs. One for a country with a box, and one for one without.

Interestingly people have made such graphs, and there is no difference.

Do all Finnish babies wear the same clothes then? Seems like a decent way to mix up who's who :-)

Along with this, does anyone know if Finland provides coffins for their recently deceased?

And do they get shipped to you shortly before you die?

It's a pretty interesting case of how an idea becomes an institution.

It looks like the baby has been photoshopped over the box...

I would see how this box would give Finland one of the world's lowest infant mortality rates. You can't lug a crib with you to different rooms. With a box, you can bring it to the same room you occupy, greatly increasing the observation time of the baby. This is a nice gesture of this country. I can't say the same for the blatant waste of taxpayer money I experience in my country.

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