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Comment by s4vi0r | Hacker News Reader

Jesus, your comment and the other replies just straight up reek of privilege/ignorance.

What you're suggesting is obviously the pragmatic choice - obviously, if she's poor as shit and can't afford regular diapers, using reusable cloth ones is a great solution. But that's not the fucking point of the article - its $CURRENT_YEAR in the richest country in the world, this absolutely shouldn't be a thing that happens in the first place.

I'm not even a communist or anything, but its absolutely insane to me that Americans don't realize how "third world" their country is in some ways. Do you think that back in the 50s and 60s when your parents or grandparents were buying the first mass produced disposable diapers, they would have expected 60 years later people would be forced to go back to washable cloth diapers because they couldn't afford regular diapers? What a stupidly low standard to have for the wealthiest country in the world.

Capitalism is an awesome thing, but it seems conservative pundits and the rich have convinced a lot of people that you can't have both a strong, capitalist free market economy along with a government that actually gives a shit about its citizens and not just the top 10,000 guys with the biggest wallets or whatever.

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They also wouldn't have imagined that not making everything disposable and plastic would be a bad idea and yet here we are.

Not everything is better because it happened in the past. God forbid you have to be a little bit more mindful of wanton consumption than people were in $CURRENT_YEAR - 50.

Calling a country third world because you can't throw away tons of disposable diapers... now that's a low standard, or just ridiculously privileged.

You are right about consumption and throwaway society issues. At the same time, i dont believe the reason people can’t afford diapers is that they are expensive to protect the environment... plus creating lots of trash shouldn’t be a privilege for some - it should be prohibited for all.

It should be priced. If you are full vegan, and recyle everything for years, and never travel, so your environmental load is minimal, you should be able to afford a year of time saving with a baby, by using disposable diapers.

And maybe it could be price adjusted for income, so everyone should do the same effort for the environment.

There definitely should a price system that also encompasses the health/environmental/social damage a product brings over its full production and lifecycle!

That would generally reward people so much for the good things you mentioned that they still could afgord the one bad thing...

This has nothing to do with the argument, at all.

It completely does. Why are cloth diapers third world? Why are disposables seen as so superior that they should be had at a discount? They should be expensive to account for their environmental cost. Just because they didn't care about that in the 50s doesn't mean anything.

So yeah, it's incredibly relevant.

No, you entirely missed the point.

Cloth being better is something else entirely, nor was I suggesting that disposable diapers be discounted with taxpayer money. The point was "Why does the poor in the richest country in the world have to worry about something as inane as affording diapers in 2018?"

I agree that people should use cloth - but the response to "Hey, this poor person can't even really afford to buy diapers!" shouldn't be "wow that damn government making her dependent on welfare bux, shes so dumb she doesn't even know about cloth too!". It just reeks of being completely out of touch with the poor experience in America. Maternity leave isn't really a thing for someone like her - should she maybe be working an extra job or two to afford better diapers? Even if she doesn't, how do you know she has the time to deal with changing and washing cloth diapers? Being a stay at home mom doesn't exactly work as well as it did in the 50s or 60s, and she doesn't have a husband working for a tech company or whatever who can support a family on a single salary.

Let's be clear and honest about this article: there was no second job for her to work because she quit her first job before the baby was even born to go on assistance. Your argument doesn't hold water with me. My mom worked when she was pregnant with me and went right back to work after I was born. My wife, a physical therapist with a physically demanding job, worked until the very day both of our sons were born and then went back to work four weeks later. The girl in this story did none of that. Again, I don't blame her--the system practically invited her to do this.

The discussion was about how something that almost every parent uses, relating to one of the most basic human functions, could be outside of the purchasing power of an inhabitant of a major developed country.

I don't disagree with a discussion on how we externalize costs in cell phones, take out food containers, packaging for toilet paper, or whatever else. But however reasonable that discussion is, it was besides the point of this discussion.

    > Do you think that back in the 50s and 60s
    > when your parents or grandparents were
    > buying the first mass produced disposable
    > diapers, they would have expected 60 years
    > later people would be forced to go back to
    > washable cloth diapers because they couldn't
    > afford regular diapers?

I tried looking up the real price of diapers since the 50s until modern day, and the only thing I could find suggests that this statement is outlandishly inaccurate.

Here's a document that quotes prices from the 50s in the US[1]:

    [...]Prices typically ran above—sometimes well
    above—ten cents per diaper, while cloth
    diapers sold for 1-2 cents each and diaper
    services typically charged 3-5 cents per
    diaper.

According to http://www.usinflationcalculator.com 10 cents per diaper in Today's money would be $1.03. I don't live in the US (although I do buy diapers), but looking at Amazon for even small packages you've got prices like $15 for a 40-pack of Pampers, which is $0.40 per diaper. It looks like you can easily get that price down to half of that if you buy bigger packages, buy non-brand etc.

So I think you can tell your grandparents in the 50s that accounting for the price of soap etc. their grandchildren are going to live in a country where disposable diapers are as cheap as cloth diapers. That doesn't sound so bad.

1. https://www.edana.org/docs/default-source/default-document-l...

... their grandchildren are going to live in a country where disposable diapers are as cheap as cloth diapers. That doesn't sound so bad.

I'm going to regret sticking my head over the parapet on this one but ...

You're making the argument that it's great that diapers are a quarter of the price that they were, and isn't that great. But we're speaking in the context of how the poor can't even afford them at that price.

I've no stake in this argument. The dynamic of poverty and privilege is a topic that demands robust discussion. But I couldn't let such an obvious contradiction slip by ...

No, I'm not trying to make that argument. There's certainly people today that have kids and can't afford diapers in first-world countries even if they were say 1/4 of current prices.

I'm specifically responding to a part of the GPs comment that seems to be claiming that things have been getting worse since the 50s.

Which is not to say that anyone being unable to afford diapers can't be considered unacceptable, or that you could argue that social policies should be changed to amend that problem.

But it doesn't help anyone if the discussion isn't factually based. As far as I can tell poverty has been going down since the 50s[1] (with some bumps), and more generally, if you would present anyone in the 50s struggling to raise kids at their income level to swap with someone in 2018 at proportionally the same income level they'd take that swap in a heartbeat.

All of which is not to say that thing can't get even better, but there's no way to set sensible social policy for the future if we don't look at the data showing where we've already been, and what current trends are.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States

I would have to seriously question your assertion that poverty has been on the decline since the 50s .. I've seen the stats you present, but also stats to the contrary so the case is far from closed.

What I do know is that the average industrial wage relative to the cost of living has been steadily declining with a marked plunge from the 80s onwards.

I will concede that the 50s is a poor comparison, as much of the western world was in the midst of a post-war economic boom at that time.

Yes that may be wrong, however it would have to have gotten much worse for someone buying diapers to be worse off than 50 years ago, since their price in terms of purchasing power has plummeted in the meantime.

I don't know about the average "industrial wage", but that sounds like a bad metric to focus on. Manufacturing in the US has dropped from around 25% during this time down into the single digits, so it's not as common a job as it used to be. If anything I'd expect the wage to have gone up, since those jobs are now more specialized.

> If anything I'd expect the wage to have gone up

You'd think so, wouldn't you? The truth of the matter is most manufacturing companies are facing the same problem tech is right now: a "talent" shortage. The pay hasn't kept up with living costs in most areas. The days of buying a house and raising a family on an "industrial wage" are long gone. The pay is hardly enough to keep one person alive these days. As a result, nobody wants the jobs. The companies can't keep their assembly lines fully staffed, but they don't want to pay more either.

You're quoting prices for a diaper service--one that comes to your house and picks up the dirty diapers, launders them, and gives you clean, folded diapers in exchange. This is a rich person's service. My parents didn't use a diaper service in the 1970s, they washed them in the washing machine like virtually everyone else. So, in today's money, those $0.01-0.02 cloth diapers would be about $0.10-0.25 in 2018 money each and let's say that soap would be another $3 in 2018 money. 40 cloth diapers and soap is about the same as that 40-pack of Pampers and you get to keep and re-use the cloth diapers. You're breaking even after one load.

Any parent here who has ever used cloth diapers can tell you: they save money. They should be teaching cloth diapering like they teach breastfeeding to mothers of newborns.

I mistakenly over-quoted the paragraph and included the sentence about diaper services, but the prices I was discussing were the retail prices quoted before that.

But yes, I'm willing to believe that cloth diapers were cheaper, and still are cheaper. But that's a digression from the main topic at hand, which is the question of whether or not disposable diapers are cheaper than in the 50s when adjusted for inflation.

Honestly, I have no idea. My parents were struggling when I was born, but they were also living in the hippy-dippy 1970s when a "natural" choice like cloth diapering was the favored option. Either way, the diapers were cheap and they worked well--I potty-trained very early.

Your comment is completely contradictory.

You say the OP's comment reeks of privilege/ignorance, but you go ahead and expect government privilege in $CURRENY_YEAR.

The OP was commenting that certain people leech and do not want to find a job and help themselves, but rather want more help from the government.

I grew up with cloth diapers not because my family was poor, but just simply because it was a better choice for us at the time. My Family grew up in the 50-60s with cloth diapers, because other types of diapers weren't available. I don't see that cloth diapers are a poor-people's choice. Why is that so "third world"? Is it bellow some "level" you think should exist - that my friend is the privilege/ignorance you were smelling in other comments.

You don't even understand what privilege means, my dude. I expect my government to serve myself and the people, and not a handful of old dudes at the top of the food chain. If you think a government serving its people is a privilege, I think you have a very poor idea of what democracy is (or should be).

>...certain people leech, do not want to find a job...

This is privilege and propaganda at work right here. Being so far removed from what its like to be poor that you unironically believe some bullshit like "poor people just want government bux for free".

>I grew up with cloth... Not because my family was poor, but because other types weren't available... I don't see that cloth diapers are a poor-peoples choice.. Is it below some "level” you think should exist?

Absolutely - I expect that the poor in the richest country in the world aren't forced to regress to the standards of 50-60 years ago for their children. There's nothing wrong with cloth diapers or the fact that you were brought up with them. The issue is that people like you don't think its a problem that somebody in the USA in 2018 has to get cloth diapers not because they want to, or their baby's skin handles it better or whatever, but because they literally cannot afford not to.

What the fuck is with this race to the bottom? Yes, I absolutely expect there to be certain standards of living in different countries that are upheld by society and government. How am I the crazy one here? I don't want to live in a fucking country where I'm making 6 figures, comfortable in my air conditioned home while down the street somebody has to shit on the street because public toilets were abolished because muh taxation is theft or something.

There's nothing shameful about being poor or different countries having different standards of living - there is something shameful about a society which looks at somebody struggling and instead of lending a hand tells them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

First of, you're not the crazy one here. We are just simply discussing things - I apologize if you felt like I thought you were crazy, because that's a tough word. Whether we disagree - sure :)

OT: To my eyes - there is a big difference in a sign "WILL WORK FOR FOOD/MONEY/ETC" and "PLEASE GIVE ME 100$ I NEED IT". Should the USA be like Mother Theresa, lend their helping hand to everyone in need?

I can tell you for a fact that there are tons of people who live on social aid, that are eligible to work, maybe even have degrees and just simply don't want to work. The whole point is, the more you help the more will the people get used to it and will start leeching - it's in the human nature.

I think enjoying bodily pleasures is great - but having a baby is something you need to ensure you can handle. If you can't raise a child right, don't raise it. I have seen people have 5 children - only so that the mother can live off of welfare.

You can give your wealth away - that's what I'm doing, but I'm not expecting my government to provide diapers, I buy them for the people in need. I expect my government to provide health care and jobs, the people will take care of the rest.

I don't mind USA helping people in a real need, but people who are just reckless should not be helped, because they knew what a child brings.

Privilege is that I'm saying that people get used to government help and dont want to work? That's not privilege, that's called common sense. No point in discussing this further.

Oh - but government creating jobs and providing health care is serving old dudes? If what you're saying continues, you will end up with a world full of people that have no ability to resonate, work or be challenged.

> OT: To my eyes - there is a big difference in a sign "WILL WORK FOR FOOD/MONEY/ETC" and "PLEASE GIVE ME 100$ I NEED IT". Should the USA be like Mother Theresa, lend their helping hand to everyone in need?

There might be a difference between those two signs, but I'm not sure it's as profound as you make it. People change and learn as they grow. Someone holding a "Need $$ for beer" sign today may be holding a "Will work for food" sign tommorow, and who knows, perhaps "Now hiring" the next. Should we make sure the man starves to death in the first or second phase before he has a chance to mature and contribute to society? What percentage of humans are irredeemably intolerable? Can we not afford to help them out anyway just to make sure we don't miss the others?

I agree that people ought not have babies they cannot afford, but given that the entry bar is low and, ya'know, it does happen, is it fair for society to leave the child adrift in the wind to... punish its parents? Does society work better when it's comprised of adults who were such children?

You're correct I trivialized it a bit to help my argument. No one should be left to die and everyone should get help when in need. That's a humane and right thing to do.

Just to clear it up - my issue is with people feeling entitled to get help, while they can work.

Yes, no tiny creature should be punished, but there has to be a thought put into it at first I believe.

You mean the adults who were left to starve? No, it works better when children are loved and brought up in a normal environment. I see your point :)

I threw up a little bit in my mouth reading this.

I am glad you did, now you can freely eat it.

Is that what you do? Eat your own puke?

For me it was straightforward enough to just quickly swallow it again as it emerged. No need for any additional ceremony.

No I leave that to ignorant commenters that add nothing to the discussion.

Since you have a policy in place, I guess you must be very used to people vomiting upon your utterances.

Not to throw you flowers, but I frankly wish more people reasoned like this. Well said.

Can you maybe not resort to insulting other's intelligence?

The word privilege is a common term in thr English language and I'm sure the person you're responding to knows what it means.

The OP was commenting that certain people leech and do not want to find a job and help themselves, but rather want more help from the government.

I do not see how you got that from OP. Your sentence is very loaded. You are reading this with your own filters, it seems.

What I got from OP is the government is not helping people become self reliant. Instead it is helping them financially, but also hurting them long term by impeding their ability to learn ways to lift up.

I don't blame this woman. I'm not pissed at her. I'm pissed, however, at the politicians who have created this dependency web to trap people like this woman and ensure that there will always be a need for do-gooder politicians.

unless, of course, you have a system that encourages dependence on public assistance and actually ends up hurting a woman's self-sufficiency and puts her little boy at a high risk of being helpless and dependent, too.

By having the government helping them more, they fail to become self-reliant, thus get used to leeching and are expecting from the government to help them. You have people purposely living on food stamps and government help, even though they're capable of finding work. If you're not aware of this you might want to check your filters as well.

I want to get rid of income qualifications for any and all government program. In fact, I want to make it illegal to ask for income information when providing government services. If Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos want their kids to get free lunch at school, the school shouldn't be able to say you make too much money to qualify.

It is disgusting that we create these perverse incentives and demonize people for dancing to our tune.

I would support this - but who would pay to the school? That would mean taxing the income at 50% or more?

You'll be able to afford it with all the free lunches!

You seem to think first world means everyone is happy, content, and without struggle. No country such as that has ever existed.

The common concept of first world is so misconstrued by people who live in it that those from second and third world countries would ridicule you for your comment.

Perspective, don't forget it.

No, but there's a lot that the US (which, remember, is THE RICHEST AND MOST POWERFUL COUNTRY IN THE WORLD (caps for the people in the back)) can do as a country to improve the basic standards of living. Basic things like affordable health care for everyone (and free health care for those that can't afford it), education and equal opportunities for everyone (so that kids whose parents are poor can still go to university if they have that drive / intelligence - I'm saying that because I had that opportunity), etc.

The cost of disposable nappies is not the issue here. Neither is happiness or contentness. It's being the richest country in the world while 13.5% of its population is living below the poverty line, while people are literally dying on the streets due to being neglected by both the government, their neighbours, and a lack of acceptable health care. With the poor staying poor due to no social mobility, access to education, or normal jobs that don't involve having to scrounge the bottom of the barrel looking for e.g. passengers to drive around.

“It's being the richest country in the world while 13.5% of its population is living below the poverty line,“

I don’t want to get into the political or moral issues, but I just want to point out that this is almost a non sequitur. The USA’s dominance is relative to other countries, but the poverty line is intra-USA. The single poorest person in the USA could be richer than everyone outside it and there could still very well be a poverty line - and people below it - in the USA.

There is such a thing as "absolute poverty" - rather than relative poverty [0]

"a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but also on access to services"

I don't know, if the statistic for the USA is as high as the 13.5% cited by GP, but based on what I read about, and some small amount of personal experience, it is unusually high for such a wealthy, proud nation.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty

It would bebizarre If you would be billionaire and your brother don't have enough money for diapers. A month of diapers would cost the same than Whole Foods fancy meal.

That's how bizarre this things looks.

I live in Argentina, not first world by any means, and we have a lots welfare programs.

Switzerland is a third world country (look it up [0]).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World

I never wore disposable diapers; my mom raised me in cloth diapers. They were two young parents, trying to get my dad's little one-room bicycle shop off the ground in a time of 25+% interest rates. I'm sure that scrubbing my shit out of cloth diapers wasn't fun but my mom did it.

Please, spare me the privilege argument. I've been so poor as a kid that I walked to my grandmother's house to ask for food. I've been so poor that I shared all-you-can-drink small size sodas at Taco Bell to make it to pay day. When you're poor and motivated, you do what you have to do.

Nothing is guaranteed when we are born into this world. Nature is out to get us, and it's survival of the fittest.

People who are born into wealth have it way easier, but they can still lose it all and go broke. Then they'll adapt and try to overcome it, and the ones that can adapt survive. Just like nature's always been.

I'm from a first world country and grew up (in the 80s) woth washable diapers. Surely the privilege is expecting everyone deserves cheap disposable products?

That's one way of looking at it. Another is that the privilege is having time and energy with which to apply to cleaning diapers. We're increasingly time-poor these days, in particular when we're working multiple jobs to make ends meet.

My parents used cloth nappies with my oldest brother in 1990, we weren't poor, and we lived in a developed nation.

Disposable nappies are horrible for the environment.

But people are lazy. A child is work seemingly very few people are willing to put into.

Hm, can i afford a child, can i raise a child? Should i have a child.

Wow, struck a nerve, did he?

Please keep this vitriol and personal attacks off of HN. OP was polite and posted a well-reasoned response. You making personal attacks out of ignorance that may not even hold true in the OP’s case is just petty.

I'm really tired of hearing the argument "we're the richest country on Earth and "X" still happens!"

Of course "X" still happens. "X" is lower on our priorities list than other more pressing issues. Are diapers really the cross we're going to die on now?

We spend ~$3tn helping people every year (federal, state, and local). I think its safe to assume the "richest country on Earth" is trying.

More pressing issues like building yachts for rich people to make sure they're still "incentivised" to produce wealth?

We can at least discuss how the 3tn are allocated, and yes, lament that what we consider the bare minimum is not met in some cases.

Yes of course but that's not the argument I'm responding too. I'm responding to the idea that "there's always more in the piggy bank". For an example of the mentality please reference aninhumer's response to me.

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