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.
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://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.
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.
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.