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.

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....

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

  Because social programs get their money from coercion

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

[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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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...

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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)...

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

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

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.

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...

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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?

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

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.

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

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 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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...