[HN Gopher] I decided to pay off a school's lunch debt
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I decided to pay off a school's lunch debt
Author : dredmorbius
Score : 515 points
Date : 2025-05-04 07:13 UTC (2 days ago)
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| dredmorbius wrote:
| NB: Title from HTML source due to clickbait. The story stands on
| its own without such tactics.
| pragmatic wrote:
| " families who qualify but don't complete the paperwork for
| various reasons, ranging from language barriers to pride to
| bureaucratic overwhelm."
|
| Fear of legal action against them.
|
| Giving all kids a hot meal is a no brainer eat win for society.
| We gave it to them, then took it back.
| M3L0NM4N wrote:
| Is the overhead in deciding who gets free lunch and who doesn't
| and then managing the debt really saving more money than just
| giving all public school kids free lunches with no strings
| attached?
| monkpit wrote:
| Incentivized because it's privatized
| dsr_ wrote:
| If you throw in the effects on school attendance and
| participation, yes.
|
| Massachusetts extended the free school lunch (and breakfast)
| program to all students in 2023. Here's the report on 2024:
|
| https://www.mass.gov/doc/universal-free-school-mealsfinal070...
|
| It's nominally 20 pages but the first five are boilerplate and
| ToC and the last ten are a listing of how much each school
| district received, so you could reasonably read all the actual
| report.
| klodolph wrote:
| You can look at stats from NYC:
|
| https://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/if-no-student-pays-cost...
|
| The report used 2014-2015 numbers, where the cost of lunches
| for elementary students was $102 million and the participation
| rate was 57%. It estimates that universal free lunch would cost
| the city an additional $5.2 million. Part of the costs would be
| offset by federal reimbursements, so the full estimate is
| higher than $5.2... the details are in the report.
|
| So yes, it would cost more to make it free for everyone. I
| still think it _should_ be free for everyone, but it is hard to
| argue that you can save money that way.
| dahart wrote:
| So maybe $5M on a NY state education budget of nearly $40B,
| or less than two hundredths of one percent. Isn't it weird
| that we pay for everything else but keep the food in a
| separate accounting budget?
| klodolph wrote:
| You're comparing the NY state education budget against a
| program for elementary school students in NYC using numbers
| from different decades.
|
| If you want better numbers, a good place to start would be
| to take total cost per student for a given year and the
| cost per lunch for the same year, and multiply cost per
| lunch by number of days and some participation rate %.
| dahart wrote:
| Which decades? Are you saying the $5M number is too small
| because this article was from 2017, and I used budget
| from 2024? Okay, the NY state budget in 2017 was a bit
| over $25B. That actually still leaves the answer at two
| hundredths of one percent, since I rounded up and left
| lots of room for error. ;)
|
| I was more or less trying to do what you suggest, but
| without getting stuck doing research until next week. I
| could be off by a factor of 10 or even 100 without the
| point having a significantly different summary, right?
| Even if we did exactly what you suggest, and even if the
| numbers were more accurate, the outcome doesn't change:
| it's weird to account for lunch outside of the rest of
| the system, when lunch is such a tiny minuscule cost, it
| could be funded without blinking.
| klodolph wrote:
| 2010s and 2020s are the two different decades.
|
| I found $23,884 expenditure per child in 2014-2015, which
| is when the $4.30 school lunch cost is from. With 180
| instructional days, lunch would be $4.30/day x
| 180day/year / $23884/year = 3.2%.
|
| > I was more or less trying to do what you suggest, but
| without getting stuck doing research until next week. I
| could be off by a factor of 10 or even 100 without the
| point having a significantly different summary, right?
|
| You were off by a factor of 150, about. Kinda big. I
| guess you could be stuck here doing research until next
| week. I searched "nyc cost per student school 2014" and
| plugged some numbers into a calculator. I made sure to
| put all my numbers up there with units in case you
| disagree with the numbers or disagree with the formula.
| If you want to use newer numbers you can do that, but I
| think it's important to use numbers from the same time,
| more or less.
|
| These "off by 3x, 2x, 4x" errors add up to orders of
| magnitude if you make enough errors like that. I was
| disagreeing with your estimate because there were too
| many errors. Just kind of a gut feeling.
| dahart wrote:
| I see the problem is I used your $5M number which is NYC,
| and divided by the state budget. However, I don't think
| the $5M number is referring to the total cost of
| providing lunch, and that's what you're comparing it to
| in your calculation. Apples, oranges. Because the schools
| are already providing free and subsidized lunches, the
| additional cost isn't that much and I'm not off by a
| factor of 150. I am wrong, but not by that much. And I
| still stand by what I said - even if the total addition
| cost is 3%, which it's not, and even if I was off by
| 150x, which I'm not, the outcome still points at lunch
| being cheap in the big picture. And even if it does cost
| more, it doesn't explain why we've decided to make
| families pay directly for lunch when we provide all the
| rest, right? I am agreeing with your top point that we
| (the US) _ought_ to just provide the lunch as part of the
| elementary school education.
| klodolph wrote:
| I was replying to an "it pays for itself" comment and
| looking for the most favorable possible numbers for the
| most limited incremental change to the program, to show
| that even then, it doesn't pay for itself. That's where
| the $5M comes from--it's the incremental cost, to the
| city, of providing free lunches to an additional 35,000
| elementary school students, after the federal government
| reimburses $3.24 per lunch, using data from 2015.
|
| I think the comment I was replying to believed that some
| big chunk of the cost was due figuring out which students
| deserve free lunches or not. That's untrue.
|
| The lunch program is substantial and can't really be
| hidden by burying it in some much larger budget.
|
| I get the argument "this is valuable, we should do this"
| but I don't buy the argument "this cost is small".
| dahart wrote:
| I agree with you that the cost of lunch food adds up and
| is more than the cost of accounting. Substantial is a
| subjective word but true if looking at the number by
| itself, and feeding 2 million kids in NY state will
| obviously be a big number compared to most people's
| salaries, which is why it seems substantial. But it's
| still a small fraction of the cost of education, and food
| is a single line item in a much much bigger budget. We
| can't actually separate the lunch costs, when you include
| the cafeteria. It seems very strange that we don't ask
| families to pay for books or bus rides but do ask them to
| pay for lunch. It very much feels like a conscious choice
| to ensure the poor kids are identified.
|
| There was a scandal in the neighborhood I live in because
| one school tired of lunch debt was making the hot
| lunches, letting the kids pick them up, and then taking
| them away and throwing them in the trash, to make a big
| show of parents not paying their lunch bills. That saved
| no dollars and punished the children for what the parents
| did, poor children disproportionately. Even though most
| of the kids' families could afford the lunches, that's
| just a shitty thing to do.
|
| The cost actually is small, in the big picture. The truth
| is that the U.S. can easily afford to pay not just for
| lunch but for all of education, both elementary and
| higher education, and it pays for itself many times over,
| if we look at the extra income tax people with degrees
| pay over people who don't have any higher education. We
| are choosing to not give our kids college degrees by
| default, and we are _choosing_ to withhold hot lunches
| from elementary school kids, and it is not because it
| costs a lot, it would be trivial to fund (and we already
| proved that during COVID.) It's because we have politics
| and a social belief system that is allergic to the idea
| of free lunch, regardless of the costs.
| snarf21 wrote:
| In the current moment, I agree that "the state" can't save
| money by making it free for everyone. However, it is a lot
| harder to quantify how much other savings are realized by
| having healthier kids and reduced healthcare costs. Plus we
| know kids do better in school when fed well and that long
| term taxable income, better colleges, business job
| generation, etc. could eventually pay for itself. Obviously
| this is a much more complicated thing to calculate and
| quantify.
| klodolph wrote:
| I agree... and yet "it's cheap, it's the right thing to do,
| and provides massive benefits" is a different argument from
| "it pays for itself".
| ctkhn wrote:
| the problem is that "it pays for itself" is true in the
| overall societal sense, where a few more kids don't end
| up in jail or psych wards or something, but there's no
| way for the school to capture that value when deciding
| "do we want to feed kids at school?" and so we usually
| don't do it :/
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is worth keeping in mind that the broader effects
| might still be positive. But, I think the original poster
| was just asking about the direct cost of determining who
| gets the free lunches (that's why they frame it in terms
| of the overhead).
|
| While I agree that a full analyst of the social benefit
| would be better, and I bet it would almost certainly end
| up being a net positive (and also, the possibility that
| kids are just not getting fed because of record-keeping
| screw-ups, missed paperwork, or incomplete programs is
| just unconscionable), the question the asked about the
| overhead _does_ have the benefit of being a lot more
| answerable and direct.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Not quite. The argument then becomes about pointing out
| that our accounting systems are stupid, brutish and
| terrible at modelling second order consequences - social,
| economic, even moral.
|
| In fact they seem designed to hide these consequences,
| both good and bad. The features we tag profits and losses
| are right out front, while other important features are
| labelled "externalities" and essentially ignored.
|
| This is very obvious in the differences between US and
| other Western attitudes to infrastructure spending. In
| the EU, public transport is heavily subsidised. It isn't
| expected to be profitable because it provides both direct
| and indirect returns.
|
| No one rational - who isn't a chef - expects their fridge
| or cooker to be a profit source. Big public infra
| projects are no different. They're a kind of giant public
| appliance. You buy them to provide a service.
|
| In the US and UK, the goal of infrastructure spending is
| usually to create private profits. This certainly creates
| returns for a small class of people, but it only seems
| rational because it's pretending other kinds of returns
| don't exist.
| klodolph wrote:
| > Not quite. The argument then becomes about pointing out
| that our accounting systems are stupid, brutish and
| terrible at modelling second order consequences - social,
| economic, even moral.
|
| Are you disagreeing with me, or just reframing the
| discussion? Pick one mode of discussion, please, I find
| it hard to follow if you start off disagreeing but then
| switch gears and decide to reframe the discussion.
|
| I encourage you to speak as much as you want about the
| fact that our accounting system sucks at dealing with
| externalities. However, we are still slaves to
| accounting, somewhat. Nobody rational expects a fridge to
| be a profit source. But if you take taxes, people expect
| an accounting of how the taxes are spent. "This program
| costs money but has benefits that outweigh the cost" is
| pretty easy to understand. The program doesn't _pay for
| itself_ because we don't have a way to put better
| outcomes on the books.
|
| We also don't have an accounting system that lets me show
| a net positive for buying a movie ticket.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > it would cost more to make it free for everyone
|
| That's assuming everyone would sign up for the free lunch. We
| have 2 kids in public schools and pack their lunches even
| though we could sign them up for free lunch (our state makes
| it available to all families). We're not alone in that
| either. (We're also not rich, but we put a high priority on
| healthy food.)
| internetter wrote:
| Without reading into lunch specifically, I'd very much be
| inclined to say yes.
|
| The reason is, I spent many hours researching the fair
| structure of my transit agency. Fares that have, obviously,
| been in the news for being harming to low income citizens. What
| I found was that the city spent almost 1 billion on upgrading
| their collection systems, whereas the yearly revenue from those
| same systems amounted to 1/10th of that. It is very likely that
| these new systems will actually _reduce_ revenue, as the agency
| has admitted. Not to mention the operational overhead of
| waiting for people to tap as they get on.
|
| I strongly believe in social democracies, but our governments
| are awful at spending our money.
|
| https://boehs.org/node/free-the-t
| mjevans wrote:
| I suspect the only real benefit is a change in behavior of
| some passengers. They _paid_ for a thing and therefore feel
| more respectful towards it.
|
| Which would be related to the other symptomatic reasons such
| a barrier might be sought. As a society my country (USA)
| sadly has low respect for the commons generally. There's a
| lack of investment (not none, but not enough), a sense of
| 'me-ism' entitlement in the population (as if sharing and
| consideration of others shouldn't mutually be the priority
| for a public space), and unwillingness to address national
| scale issues that lead to blights upon the commons (mostly
| thinking of people society has failed).
|
| None of those are easy enough to fix that a reasonably sized
| reply could even begin to adequately cover a solution, but
| those problems are some reasons why a gated access to a
| public resource might be sought other than as a form of
| funding.
| internetter wrote:
| While I do not deny that this might very well be a problem,
| it feels fallacious on the part of the American public.
|
| One, they are indirectly paying for it already by way of
| taxation. Two, I'd argue it is much better to be respectful
| towards things you _didn 't_ pay for.
| mjevans wrote:
| We agree. Including to not respect things someone
| (indirectly) paid for through taxation. Part of the me-
| ism issue I called out in the larger post.
| internetter wrote:
| Yes, 100%. Another 'me-ism' I've been thinking a lot
| about recently is the collective unwillingness to ensure
| short term pain in exchange for long term prosperity, for
| instance in regard to climate policy. Likewise, there is
| no intuitive fix, especially when such prosperity will
| mostly extend to future generations.
|
| "I Don't Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care
| About Other People" --
| https://www.huffpost.com/entry/i-dont-know-how-to-
| explain-to...
|
| Such is the tragedy of the commons.
| sitkack wrote:
| Disrespect of the commons has been a 50 year effort on the
| right to normalize ripping off the government to make it
| nonfunctional and illegitimate.
|
| We are to celebrate those who get out of paying taxes by
| any means and looking the other way when others take from
| the commons.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| At some point we have to face the truth that the only
| well organized and ran country in the world is Singapore.
| European governments had barely any right influence and
| they manage to evolve their own disfunction quite well.
| It seems that for some reasons the states after WWII just
| lost their capacity to build things. If you watch
| Oppenheimer - one of the things in the background is how
| staggeringly competent were the administrative guys.
| There is no such things now. Any government project both
| big and small is expected to be cost overrun, delayed and
| if ever finished is a cointoss if it will make things
| better or worse. It is a global malaise.
| dahart wrote:
| Schools seem amazing at spending on lunches, when they can
| feed people for less than $5 a meal. I can't eat for that
| amount, even when cooking at home these days. I'm not seeing
| clearly what your transit agency's payment system upgrade has
| to do with school lunches or why that somehow supports the
| idea that they're not spending prudently.
| internetter wrote:
| The question was asking if making them free actually saved
| the government money. I provided an anecdote suggesting
| that this might very well be the case, by providing an
| example of a place where the government is burning money in
| order to collect less money than they burned.
| autobodie wrote:
| Wrong. The question asked the opposite; it asked if the
| means testing saved the government money.
|
| You answered "yes" in your original comment, but your
| supporting arguments imply "no" so I can see why people
| are confused.
|
| Read the original question again:
|
| > _Is the overhead in deciding who gets free lunch and
| who doesn 't and then managing the debt really saving
| more money than just giving all public school kids free
| lunches with no strings attached?_
| internetter wrote:
| Oh, that's my bad
| autobodie wrote:
| I was going to be shocked if your case study actually
| found means testing worthwhile, so I read your entire
| comment, both others might not.
| dahart wrote:
| The specific problem is that the alternative in the case
| of school lunches does not involve upgrading the payment
| system. Just because transit might benefit in the short
| term from not upgrading doesn't mean school lunches
| would.
|
| TBH I'm a little skeptical of the payment system story,
| it sounds oversimplified and might be agenda driven. All
| our transit systems need payment system maintenance and
| upgrades over time. Riders want & demand tap to pay, for
| example. All costs cut into and balance against incomes,
| but that doesn't mean they can opt out, nor that it will
| save taxpayers in the long run. Keeping the old payment
| system might have rising costs and lead to reduced
| ridership over time, costs which may not have been
| assumed in the story you shared. I doubt the payment
| system is very significant compared to train cars, rails,
| crossing lights & gates, employees, etc.
|
| We tend to cherry-pick and arm-chair debate individual
| budget items without seeing the big picture, in order to
| justify the preconceived claim that governments are bad
| at spending. Making families pay for school lunches is
| pretty funny when taxpayers pay for the building, books,
| teachers, and janitorial and food staff, the sum of which
| is literally thousands of times more than lunch. Debating
| the funding of school lunches is missing the forest for
| the trees, right?
| internetter wrote:
| Hi, your last point makes me think that we're in
| agreement that it's not worth making students pay for
| lunch.
|
| As for your other points, without annualizing it's
| actually a fairly significant line item -- their budget
| is about 3 billion. Annualized it's not as bad, but that
| is hardly relevant as the fact of the matter is it costed
| 934 billion. Why did cost that much? My best answer is
| that a bid was held and cubic transportation systems won.
| This does not mean that the price was reasonable, only
| that cubic won. As for the new income, yes, that's true.
| Trains will run slightly faster as people can board on
| many doors above ground (free system also does this).
| Ridership may increase thanks to tap to pay. I discuss
| this. But they also have, on numerous occasions,
| drastically overestimated the new revenue. Newer
| estimates show that the systems enable more fare evasion
| than before, cutting into profits.
|
| My best guess as to why is mismanagement. After this was
| approved the MBTA's management was overhauled for being a
| circus.
|
| If you want to write a data driven counter argument, I
| would be more than happy to link to it at the top of my
| piece and offer rebuttals
| bombcar wrote:
| One of the "don't say the quiet part out loud" with transit
| fares (which would NOT apply to school lunches) is that
| transit fares are a convenient way to remove unwanted transit
| enjoyers.
|
| It is somewhat hard to define "being disruptive on the
| subway" but it's easy to define "doesn't have a ticket".
| jaggederest wrote:
| We need votekick, but in real life. Clearly this is a
| concept that could have no practical downsides...
| 0max wrote:
| You're reminding me of Team Fortress 2 server nightmares
| from last year with all the hackers and bots
| gs17 wrote:
| Even before the bots, I remember MvM being unplayable if
| you weren't with enough friends to make votekick
| impossible (and that wouldn't stop them from trying, but
| they'd ragequit themselves when no one votes yes, and
| leave you down a player).
| lmz wrote:
| Don't you already have that? They get kicked to El
| Salvador IIRC.
| inetknght wrote:
| That's not VoteKick, that's AdminBan.
| mylesp wrote:
| A solution that I have seen implemented and discussed is a
| flat, very low fare. High enough to keep people off public
| transit that are disrespectful of it, but low enough to
| allow almost anyone to take it thus increasing ridership.
| An added bonus is when using a transit card to tap on and
| off, the statistics of ridership are still readily
| available for governments to better plan infrastructure.
|
| If you pick a low enough price you even decrease the number
| of fare dodgers, which means that enforcing is not as
| important or costly.
| I-M-S wrote:
| Even a very low fare still needs a huge and costly
| infrastructure around to enforce it
| ViscountPenguin wrote:
| Here in Queensland we just paid $400 million for a
| ticketing system that is now used entirely for 50c
| tickets. The marketing line is that the fee is necessary
| for analytics, but the cynic in me says that it's
| probably a combination of secret contract negotiations
| with a pay-per-tap component, and sunk cost fallacy.
| bombcar wrote:
| I liked it when the ticketing systems were the simple
| ticket dispensers and maybe some transit cops checking
| for your ticket.
|
| Millions and millions for apps and taps and other
| worthless junk is annoying, and the recovery barely pays
| for the machines, let alone the lines.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| I've not been in a place with a functional transit system
| where fares were high enough to prevent disruptive people
| from boarding. I've seen rich people get onto Acela trains
| obnoxiously drunk.
|
| I have, on the other hand, seen transit operators (bus
| drivers, mainly) kick people _who had paid fares_ off for
| being disruptive. The definition of "being disruptive on
| the subway" does not seem to be the barrier you think it
| is.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > I've seen rich people get onto Acela trains obnoxiously
| drunk.
|
| Were they disruptive?
| Suppafly wrote:
| It'd probably be cheaper to pay for guards to remove
| disruptive passengers than it would be to implement a
| ticketing system.
| freehorse wrote:
| Maybe I am too sick right now to understand your comment, but
| isn't this an argument for actually making public transit
| free or sth? If merely upgrading the system costs 10 times
| the revenue? Isn't it what is actually argued about for
| school lunches?
| beng-nl wrote:
| Pardon my nitpick, but the "fair" -> "fare" typo is in this
| context more confusing than the average typo, so I thought
| I'd let you know :-)
| two_handfuls wrote:
| Did you mean no? The question was about whether the
| bureaucracy was worth it and you said yes, then show an
| example where bureaucracy is not justified.
| timewizard wrote:
| > but our governments are awful at spending our money.
|
| No. They're really good at it. There's a lot of kick backs,
| deal making, and free tickets behind that purchase. You know
| how hard it is, from the inside, to push through a billion
| dollar long shot like that? Nearly impossible. Whoever did
| this pulled a miracle to make that happen.
|
| Our governments are bad at punishing corruption and graft.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| LA is upgrading its fare collection systems because the
| alternative is for the rail cars to become homeless hotels.
|
| Objectively speaking, the past several years (especially post
| lockdowns) have demonstrated the folly of a fare-free system.
| It only takes one homeless person misbehaving once to
| permanently dissuade dozens or hundreds of other people from
| ever using public transportation again.
|
| In the past few months since LA has upgraded fare equipment
| and begun checking for valid fares, drug use and property
| crimes has fallen by over 3/4th. People have begun riding the
| Metro again now that the homeless aren't using it to shoot
| up. It has worked so well that they're expanding it to the
| entire rail system over the next several years and trying to
| figure out how they can do something similar with the buses.
| tantalor wrote:
| Pittsburgh Public Schools started doing this (free breakfast &
| lunch) in 2014: https://www.pghschools.org/departments/food-
| services/free-me...
|
| This program replaces free & reduced-price lunch for qualifying
| kids, with "free for everybody".
|
| They directly cite reasons like increased participation and
| better service (faster lines). It also cuts down on
| administrative overhead (don't need to separately qualify each
| kid). Another benefit is kids are not shamed for getting free
| lunch, since everybody gets a free lunch.
|
| It is a USDA program: https://www.fns.usda.gov/cn/cep
|
| I'm genuinely worried the current administration will decide it
| is a waste of money, or woke, or some other BS.
| dzdt wrote:
| Indeed universal free lunch programs are on the chopping
| block. To my understanding the cuts are still at the proposal
| stage though.
|
| [1] https://www.chalkbeat.org/2025/03/12/house-republican-
| budget...
| tantalor wrote:
| Thanks, I hate it
| Kapura wrote:
| I feel like there's the administrative overhead, but also every
| child having food when they are learning is sure to be a
| profound positive externality. The only outcome of having kids
| to go to school hungry or receive substandard education is
| keeping the poorer classes of society "in their place." This is
| very gross.
| piva00 wrote:
| The issue is that the positive externality is _really hard_
| to measure, and penny-pinching policies only care about what
| is easily measured, it 's just another instance of the
| McNamara fallacy.
|
| As a non-American, reading about the welfare rules in the USA
| feels absurd, there are so many overlapping programs with
| distinct qualifications, rules, payouts, it simply cannot be
| efficient to keep track of all of that for recipients. It
| feels like the design is to make it as hard as possible to
| keep track of what one is eligible to, it's designed to be
| painful and unreliable.
|
| There is a cultural thing in the USA about punishing poor
| people, as if it's only through their own failure of
| character that they are poor, instead of trying to help lift
| the less fortunate ones the approach seems to be to punish
| them in the hopes that will force them out of their
| precarious position through some heroic individual action. It
| simply isn't reasonable or has any basis in reality, probably
| some weird cultural leftover from the religious nuts who
| founded the country.
| Kapura wrote:
| You shouldn't have to measure the fact that feeding
| children does good, and you should push back against
| anybody who thinks you should (because they clearly don't
| want all children to eat, a strong signal of fucked up
| morality).
| horacemorace wrote:
| This so much. My HCOL area uses a hybrid approach: kids
| can always eat regardless and can run up huge $$$ tabs.
| The parents get pestered once it gets over a few hundred.
| piva00 wrote:
| I absolutely agree, I cannot comprehend why there's even
| a discussion in the USA for not providing free hot meals
| for students. Running tabs, pestering parents, all of
| that sounds absurd for a very simple moral answer: yes,
| kids should have access to food in schools, no matter
| their wealth status. I don't even care about richer
| parents getting free food for their kids at school, all
| kids should be treated the same.
| OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote:
| > It feels like the design is to make it as hard as
| possible to keep track of what one is eligible to, it's
| designed to be painful and unreliable.
|
| This is an understatement. Florida's unemployment system
| for example was designed intentionally to fail when too
| many people tried to file for benefits to prevent them from
| having to pay out. This of course blew up into a whole
| scandal during covid when a bunch of people were suddenly
| unemployed and all tried filing at the same time which is
| how it officially came out that the system was designed
| from the start to function like this.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-
| updates/2020/0...
| FireBeyond wrote:
| To make it worse, I believe that there have been incidences
| where people have tried to do similar (pay off school lunch
| debt) and the School District has refused, citing reasons
| from "processing overhead" to "privacy".
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I would say yes. In our state all public school kids are
| eligible for free lunch by just signing up. What's the worst
| that can happen? Some parents who could afford lunch get it for
| free? I'd rather my tax dollars go to that than going to a
| whole bureaucracy designed to ensure that only those who
| "deserve" it get it.
|
| As far as "rich people are getting free lunches!!!" argument.
| 1) rich people for the most part send their kids to private,
| not public schools. 2) rich people who can afford better
| lunches than the school lunch are going to send their kid to
| school with a lunch.
| AzzyHN wrote:
| Cruelty is the point sometimes as well
| reassess_blind wrote:
| Who's cruelty, and what's the motivation?
| petesergeant wrote:
| Yes, but that's Socialism, and son, this is an America.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| While we bicker this inane question a much vaster sum is being
| transferred to the ultra wealthy from the public coffers.
|
| Penny Rich Dollar Poor.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Food is way cheaper than any work. But the way it is today more
| people can sit in their bullshit jobs and use them as excuse to
| get money.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| It's astonishing this is a thing. I'm thankful to live in
| Massachusetts where all kids can get lunch for free with no
| questions asked. Where I live, kids can get breakfast too,
| however I've heard that isn't universal in the state.
|
| The article points out another issue that is so widespread. Often
| times, being right above or below a cut off line can make a huge
| difference and it's kids just above the cut off line here that
| are suffering. I have a brother with disabilities and there are
| "lines" drawn all the time with funding that are either all or
| nothing. If you cross a line, you lose funding. It encourages
| them to work less, save less money, and be more reliant on state
| funding. Why haven't we figured out gradients yet? For example,
| above this line you get 90% of costs covered. Above this line
| 80%. Above this line 70%. etc... etc... etc...
| candiddevmike wrote:
| During COVID, school lunch was free, and most school served
| free bag lunches over the summer too. That ended in June 2022.
| Congress could've kept it going for a pittance, but alas...
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| That's what happened in MA. It was COVID that started the
| program and then we kept it up because we're decent people.
| ryandrake wrote:
| A lot of the country, majorities in many states, are not
| decent people.
| humanrebar wrote:
| State government, local government, and local philanthropy
| (like the chamber of commerce, etc.) could also buy lunch.
|
| I'd rather keep the dysfunction of national politics away
| from my kids' food, personally. At least I can reasonably
| move if local dysfunction goes past tolerable levels.
| tecirpinslime wrote:
| My significant other work at a school during Covid where they
| were giving free breakfasts and lunches. The waste I
| witnessed from it all was atrocious, due to the fluctuations
| from day-to-day how many students would come in. The staff
| always wanted to err on the side of caution, because they
| didn't want any kids to miss out. We're talking sometimes
| over 200 lunches that were discarded in a day. Some things
| could be reused, but a lot was thrown away. It was against
| the rules to do anything but either give them to a student,
| or throw them away.
| mjevans wrote:
| It sounds like there were a few problems identified.
|
| * Against the rules to hand them out to non-students (even
| after some priority window)
|
| * Operating in an unusual context where relative load is
| highly unpredictable
|
| * No system of reservation to try to forecast load
|
| There's also a bunch of data that's absent, like any
| potential causes for the variable load. Plausibly it might
| have been weather related, or related to families
| participating in a cultural event that's special even if
| they were celebrating in quarantine at home.
| zdragnar wrote:
| These problems aren't easy to solve.
|
| The first is food regulation and safety law; the same
| applies to restaurants who serve buffet style as well.
|
| The second isn't going away. Attendance is spotty at best
| in underperforming schools, in particular the ones that
| need free lunch the most. Many kids also won't eat some
| foods. The amount of waste just gets shifted from "too
| much prepared" to "not enough served food was eaten".
|
| The third is just an attempt to solve the second, but if
| there was a system of reservation in place, it would
| still be part of the problem- after all, what we're
| trying to solve is that parents aren't utilizing the
| already available free lunch programs because going
| through the means testing is too much effort for them.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >The first is food regulation and safety law; the same
| applies to restaurants who serve buffet style as well.
|
| This, food waste is built into the system. It'd be nice
| if it wasn't but every restaurant and cafeteria throws
| away just as much food as they sell, most people just
| don't realize it because they've never worked in food
| service.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >The waste I witnessed from it all was atrocious, due to
| the fluctuations from day-to-day how many students would
| come in.
|
| The waste is just a necessary component even in for profit
| systems. It's still better to feed everyone than to not.
| Even if the only thing you are allowed to do is to give to
| students, then you send them home with several meals worth
| to use up the leftovers.
| newAccount2025 wrote:
| It was a really nice time. One less chore to worry about
| every night.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| This is a problem. If you roll out a program to deal with an
| extraordinary circumstance, some people think it should go on
| forever even when the extraordinary circumstance is over.
| They think it should be a welfare benefit forever.
|
| Next pandemic, no government programs. None. We've seen how
| it goes.
|
| No benefits next time. People just try to turn it into
| eternal government welfare programs.
|
| I don't want eternal government welfare programs to deal with
| temporary problems. Next time, no. No "temporary" government
| programs.
| gs17 wrote:
| >to deal with temporary problems
|
| Hungry children are not a temporary problem, and letting
| them go hungry is only going to cause further problems down
| the line.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| [flagged]
| SamBam wrote:
| Except it does the opposite, because it disincentives you
| from raising your income above that line.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| The goal isn't to make it easy for you to escape the system
| but more difficult under the theory that then you're more
| self sufficient. It's a stupid philosophy of course.
| humanrebar wrote:
| Strawmen usually have stupid philosophies, yes.
|
| The simpler and more convincing explanation is that
| lawmakers write bad laws, regulators write bad
| regulations, and everyone votes on hot button issues like
| the economy, immigration, and trans athletes in sports.
| School lunch policy details don't get enough attention.
| apercu wrote:
| > everyone votes on hot button issues like the economy,
| immigration, and trans athletes in sports
|
| Everyone votes emotionally on issues they don't even
| understand (e.g, there is ~1 trans athlete out of 10,000
| NCAA athletes right now, so why the hell is it even a
| minor issue, let alone a national debate?).
| dani__german wrote:
| Because there is only room for 1 gold medal. Only room
| for 1 silver medal. This is in Pool, which almost a best
| case scenario for women to beat men and yet, in the UK,
| its two former men gunning for gold and silver.
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/trans-sport-pool-women-harriet-
| hayn...
|
| If you truly believe transwomen are women, then its
| great. For anyone who doesn't share that arbitrary idea,
| it looks like women's sports is basically over, at least
| at the high end. Might as well get back in the kitchen,
| huh? Even women's sports is a man's game now.
| aaaja wrote:
| Sports governing bodies in the UK are rapidly rewriting
| their policies to stop these men from competing in
| women's sports, after a recent Supreme Court judgement
| ruled this amounts to unlawful sex discrimination against
| women. So hopefully this ongoing insult to all the women
| who've worked so hard to compete in their sport of choice
| will soon be over.
|
| That said, the ideal outcome would be apologies to every
| female athlete affected by this, and for these men to be
| retrospectively disqualified and stripped of any medals
| or titles, with these instead being awarded to the women
| who would have won had these men not been competing. I
| doubt this will happen any time soon, but if those
| running these competitions had an ounce of integrity and
| sense of fair play, they would do.
| apercu wrote:
| I'll go back to there is ONE out of TEN THOUSAND so why
| is this an issue trumping healthcare and the economy?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Having sex the night before a competition can increase
| your testosterone levels, a known performance enhancing
| chemical.
|
| Should we ban sex for athletes? At a high school level?
| vlovich123 wrote:
| The problem is that sharp drop offs instead of gradients
| are a known and well documented problem as is the desire
| to get rid of the welfare state by one party. You don't
| need to assume best intentions here when the GOP has
| consistently made it clear where their priorities lie on
| this topic. Oh and the GOP has constantly taken "starve
| the beast" and weaponized incompetence approaches to try
| and kill the programs they don't like.
| mcphage wrote:
| That's okay, because "teaches you self-reliance" is just a
| fig leaf. They don't care if it actually happens or not,
| the point is to have something to point to, so when they're
| criticized they can hit back with "Why are you against
| people learning self-reliance? Why do you want them to be
| dependent on the government?"
| MisterTea wrote:
| If only those people knew the hardships some people face with
| mental issues which hinder their ability to function normally
| on a day to day basis. Some people cant pull themselves out
| of bed let alone their bootstraps.
| Onawa wrote:
| The types of people who are against these social safety
| nets don't care. Unfortunately, they will only care if it
| directly affects them.
|
| These people hold the mindset that if you are not disabled
| and don't have any learning disabilities, you should be
| able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
|
| There isn't any room for nuance with them, they will just
| call people who are neurodivergent "lazy" and "welfare
| queens".
| DisruptiveDave wrote:
| "never attribute to malice what can be attributed to
| incompetence"
| mmastrac wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this is malice. They know, they don't do
| anything.
| grimcompanion wrote:
| It's way too simple to categorize behavior like this into
| good/evil. It's a worthwhile thought experiment (and
| habit) to assume that everyone is trying to do the right
| thing, and try to understand how they might come to a
| different viewpoint than you.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Sorry, but my imagination is clearly not robust enough to
| even begin to steelman a policy that puts children into
| debt over near zero-cost food at school, often publicly
| humiliating the child at the same time, without just
| sounding like a cruel cartoon villain.
| mmastrac wrote:
| I don't believe any of this, but I'll try. Please note
| that the below is not my personal belief, just an attempt
| to understand the "other side":
|
| The attempt to steelman the policy probably comes down to
| encouraging personal responsibility (the libertarian
| way). Forgiving debts without consequence promote a
| culture of non-payment, undermining the sustainability of
| school meal programs.
|
| The steelmanned version of why lunches require payment is
| likely down to sustainability of the program in general
| (ie: school budgets are already stretched to the limit,
| so parent contributions are necessary).
|
| Now, this could obviously be solved by just budgeting for
| the entire thing to be included in the overall taxes of
| the state, but then you've got to surpass the hurdle of
| tax raises being insanely difficult in the states.
|
| Honestly, this exercise kind of makes me see (yet again)
| how broken the whole USAmerican system is. "I've got mine
| and I don't want to give any more away for something I
| don't need"
| relaxing wrote:
| OK, so you endorse a policy which not only creates human
| suffering now but harms society and creates more human
| suffering in the future. The cost of fixing it is
| minuscule and outweighed by the future benefits.
|
| What are the good faith arguments in favor of this?
|
| - ignorance
|
| - lack of critical reasoning skills
|
| - religion
|
| - sadism
|
| - ?
| explodes wrote:
| How did they give you the impression they were endorsing
| this?
| relaxing wrote:
| Because that's who we're talking about?
| grimcompanion wrote:
| I absolutely don't endorse it. I just find it
| counterproductive to say things like "malice is the
| point".
|
| I do have trouble finding good faith arguments in favor
| of this policy. It is cruel. But the people who decided
| to implement it aren't "other". They're humans who think
| they're good people (aside from a small minority of
| people who really don't care) and much as we'd like to
| think so we're not that different than them. If we can
| understand their justification, that's a step toward
| actually convincing them there is another way. And yes, I
| have changed many people's viewpoints with this level of
| patience, not everyone is too stupid/mean/insult of your
| choice to change their minds.
| em-bee wrote:
| assuming good will is the only way to get others to
| listen and eventually change their mind. because only if
| we have good will in common we are able to come to a
| solution that satisfies both sides.
|
| it's the continuous assumption of malice that prevents
| people from listening to each other. and that is still
| the case even if there is actual malice. almost by
| definition, if you do not present the assumption for good
| will to the other side, they will have difficulty
| attributing good will to you, no matter whether they
| themselves are acting are maliciously or not.
| relaxing wrote:
| I didn't mean you personally.
|
| The people who decided to implement the policy believe
| that cruelty will create deterrence.
|
| Persisting in this line of thinking despite centuries of
| cruelty and no end to the undesired behavior is what
| leads to sayings like "the cruelty is the point."
| Psychologically, it's well understood there are those who
| really get a kick out of making people suffer.
| explodes wrote:
| I really wish people would exercise more imagination
| while applying the adage.
|
| A cafeteria worker is likely doing what they're told to
| do from the principal and board of education. They're
| doing what they're told because of laws that have been
| passed. At any point along this chain of human beings,
| someone could be relying on their job to keep one of them
| family members alive.
|
| I know I'm throwing out a random scenario, and that
| doesn't make it true, but there IS a story here, and it
| is one that none of us will ever know. There are so many
| human things that happen that people attribute directly
| to malice, especially when they have very little
| information.
|
| Anyways. Point is. I really have a hard time blaming any
| individual here (except perhaps lawmakers) no matter how
| depressing the whole fiasco is. It is simply another
| unfortunate consequence of rigid policies that have
| serious impact.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >I really wish people would exercise more imagination
| while applying the adage.
|
| It will never happen because additional analyzing would
| pretty quickly make it obvious that the problems are
| systemic and cannot be easily described by the kind of
| partisan quips and advocacy for "obvious" or "easy"
| solutions that dominate discussion of topics like this.
|
| Basically any serious effort to understand and solve
| these problems precludes general audience participation
| and will therefore not be popular.
| relaxing wrote:
| I think everyone understands the lawmakers (and by
| extension the voters) are to blame.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Have you started a local movement to pay for kids schools
| lunches? If not, should we assume its due to malice as
| you know there is a problem and "don't do anything"?
| mmastrac wrote:
| I don't live in America, I just watch from the sidelines,
| sad at the state of the world's leader failing to be
| rational about most every social issue.
| relaxing wrote:
| Individually managed efforts doesn't scale.
|
| If you were cynical you might think that is precisely why
| some favor that solution.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > If you were cynical you might think that is precisely
| why some favor that solution.
|
| On the contrary. Many people favor individually managed
| efforts because they disagree with your premise, and
| believe that such efforts scale _better_ than centrally
| managed ones.
| interactivecode wrote:
| if feels like all too often malice is hidden behind the
| veil of incompetence.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| There have been so many studies as to why... I mean
| basically the entire social safety net in the United
| States, back to front, doesn't work at all for any of it's
| stated goals, that anyone who still believes this is the
| way it should be run, just wants poor people to suffer. Or
| they're too lazy to read.
|
| There is deep, culturally entrenched ideas here about how
| wealth is equated to goodness and righteousness, signs of
| $diety's blessings on you, etc. etc. and nobody, absolutely
| nobody is trying to unwind that. It's as American as Apple
| Pie and Baseball.
| r00fus wrote:
| "any sufficiently advanced incompetence is
| indistinguishable from malice"
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >Because cruelty is the point for some people.
|
| It's not the people peddling cruelty, it's the system. Though
| obviously people who personally are ok with or like that will
| be better represented in such a system.
|
| > Or said in their parlance, it teaches you self reliance or
| to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
|
| Rephrased another way you're basically saying "it's not my
| team doing that, it's the other team." And this is exactly
| the kind of divisive garbage that perpetuates the system.
|
| What these systems teach in practice is "don't you dare step
| an inch out of line, no, intent doesn't matter, out of line
| is out of line and will be punished" which in a perverse way
| is exactly the kind of thing government schools will wind up
| teaching because every bit you make those future adults more
| likely to comply will pay dividends in reduced enforcement
| over their lives. Support for that sort of crap generally
| crosses party lines, as does opposition.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > It's not the people peddling cruelty, it's the system.
|
| The rules of the system are made by people. And yes, for
| quite some of them the cruelty is the point when making the
| rules.
| ryandrake wrote:
| That's right. "The system" didn't just appear out of
| nowhere. It's built by people--increasingly built by
| people who believe the government should be used as a
| tool to exact cruelty and humiliation on outgroups they
| don't like.
| apercu wrote:
| > It's not the people peddling cruelty, it's the system.
|
| I'd argue that recent elections demonstrate enough of the
| people _are_ voting cruelty.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's rarely cruelty. It's usually bureaucracy and unintended
| consequences and trying to be "nice".
|
| Often you have a program created, with "free below X, sliding
| scale until no subsidy at Y" - done right, this is "perfect"
| in that each marginal dollar is lightly "taxed" (losing a
| subsidy is the same as a tax, from the worker's perspective).
|
| This is great! Though let's say (theoretically) that the end
| result is a 1% "tax" for our family, so each dollar they
| increase income costs them a penny of subsidy. They probably
| have other subsidies besides school lunches, like WIC, or
| ACA, or whatever. Those are also sliding down at various
| amounts, which can cause it to start to get annoying. But it
| works.
|
| Then the program is expanded, to be "nice" - even nicer! Now
| the subsidy is 100% below X, but they're going to also cover
| 100% up to Y! That's great! Everyone is better off now ...
| except now you have the situation where at Y + 1, you earned
| one more dollar, but lost potentially thousands in subsidy.
| This is NOT ACTUALLY WORSE than before, because at Y + 1 in
| both scenarios you have no subsidy, but it _hurts_ much more
| in the second because the subsidy wasn 't slowly being
| drained.
| thomascgalvin wrote:
| While this is generally true of a certain American political
| party, you see hard cutoff lines even in states like
| Massachusetts, where the majority of voters and politicians
| seem to be actively trying to make things better for people.
|
| The real answer is that gradients are hard, and clear lines
| are easy. A shocking number of Americans don't understand how
| our income tax brackets work; they believe that if you cross
| the line into a higher income bracket, your entire income is
| taxed at that new, higher rate, and you end up losing money
| overall.
|
| Massachusetts, which has the highest percentage of college
| educated citizens in the entire country, also shot down
| ranked choice voting last year, because the math was too
| hard.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _Massachusetts ... also shot down ranked choice voting
| last year, because the math was too hard._
|
| The math wasn't "hard" - it was wrong. The decision process
| was to be instant runoff voting, which has significant
| problems. IRV is basically what people stuck in the two
| party mindset _think_ they want so they can express support
| for a third party. But once a third party gains enough
| traction to become viable, perverse incentives (strategic
| voting) shows right back up again. What we really need is
| Ranked Choice ballots with Ranked Pairs decision process.
| This satisfies Condorcet which means that a winner is
| preferred by the majority of voters.
| wqaatwt wrote:
| Or just multi-member districts with a proportional system
| like STV..
| mindslight wrote:
| I'd definitely take that as well, but it's a much bigger
| change. Especially of deep government dynamics like how
| singular executives then get chosen by the
| representatives.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| You're making the mistake assuming a political party is
| flawless or that a political party having power somehow
| obviates the need to be responsive to constituents who
| might take issue or be swayed to take issue with the policy
| changes you try to enact.
|
| People like the ones I described exist in both parties but
| I think it's telling that people assumed I'm talking about
| one political party because it made those slogans it's
| brand. The hard lines vs gradient doesn't make sense in
| terms of public because this doesn't raise to the level of
| public discourse.
|
| Also Massachusetts is a bad example because they enacted
| free lunches across the board. They may have gradient
| issues in other welfare programs but school lunches is
| something they've solved for now.
|
| As for RCV being shot down, I don't think it's an education
| issue. I personally prefer approval voting as it's simpler
| to explain and faster results. Not wanting to switch to RCV
| (specifically IRV) can have all sorts of reasons and
| claiming it's because the electorate is dumb is the wrong
| take I think.
| r00fus wrote:
| > Massachusetts, which has the highest percentage of
| college educated citizens in the entire country, also shot
| down ranked choice voting last year, because the math was
| too hard.
|
| That's the ostensible reason - the reality is that Blue
| MAGA also really hates power challenges. Look no further
| than CA where they _also_ shot down (even the possibility
| for local elections to consider) ranked choice voting.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >I'm thankful to live in Massachusetts where all kids can get
| lunch for free
|
| What's the cost of living in Massachusetts again?
| SamBam wrote:
| The cost of living isn't a single number. A state like
| Massachusetts, with a high cost of living for people with
| high income living in or near Boston, can also have large
| social services, like subsidized housing, good-quality public
| education, free healthcare, and free school lunches.
|
| It is true that this can end up having a donut hole effect,
| where the middle classes are squeezed out of areas that they
| cannot afford, and yet are too wealthy to qualify for social
| services.
| mbfg wrote:
| the cool thing about cost of living is taxes tend to track
| cost of living, so the ability for government to pay for
| school lunches is likely similar anywhere.
| criddell wrote:
| In Texas, schools are primarily funded through property
| taxes. That means wealthy neighborhoods have well funded
| schools that can easily afford free lunches, poor
| neighborhoods do not.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| The thing I find more hilarious even than the -4 that my
| original comment got, is that I wasn't talking about
| taxes, but "cost of living". I was under the mistaken
| impression that the term refers to the cost of groceries,
| housing, fuel, utilities, and so forth, rather than
| taxes. But I must have touched a nerve. Guess they don't
| call it _Taxachusetts_ for nothing.
|
| No one gets to live in that state unless they earn far
| more than I do, or suffer the misfortune of having been
| born their to parents too impoverished to leave decades
| ago.
| runako wrote:
| Georgia resident here.
|
| Our state income tax rate is 20% higher than that of
| Massachusetts, and we don't provide free lunch to kids.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| Why do you ask?
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Because it's strange to call the lunches free, when it
| costs so much to live there. If I (for some reason) wanted
| to move to Massachusetts to live there for the rest of my
| life, you know, for those "free school lunches"... how much
| would those cost me? Turns out that it's alot. And it's
| magical thinking to suggest that for people already living
| there that the cost is zero, they're already paying that
| cost and have been for a long while. I can't prove it, but
| these free school lunches are probably really expensive.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| Do you think I that I think that the lunches magically
| appear and cost $0?
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Do you use the word "free" to describe them? Do you use
| that word ("free") even to mean that the recipient of the
| lunch gets the lunch for no cost at all?
| glitchc wrote:
| Gradients would impose a significant burden on the bureaucracy.
| It's already complicated enough to figure out where a person's
| unique circumstances place them on various thresholds. Add
| gradients and the complexity grows exponentially. The net
| result would be a 100x increase in the number of public
| servants.
| interactivecode wrote:
| why? income number input results in output number of support.
| or you know it could just be a of their part time income %
| with a fixed min and max. or something like a reverse income
| tax.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| I don't think you should be getting downvoted, you are right.
| I don't think it's "100x more", but more complicated rules
| require more resources dedicated to their management.
|
| It's one of the reasons people push for UBI. Welfare programs
| waste a lot of money trying to make sure the "right" people
| are getting it; UBI just gets rid of the waste.
|
| The solution is simply: Make school lunch free for every
| student.
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| 100x? I think this deserves a bit of a deeper insight. The
| inputs are the same, which means the verification steps are
| also exactly the same. The only change might be volume, but I
| highly doubt it would be 100x.
|
| Outputs would change from bool to float between 0-1. That
| much is relatively easy given a calculator.
| bombcar wrote:
| Gradients can impose a burden, but they can also be simple
| enough to just "run with" - and many of them that are already
| gradient-based are.
|
| They just go off of last year's 1040, with overrides for "now
| a thing happened" - like job loss this year when you made a
| good amount last year.
| trollbridge wrote:
| You can reapply whenever your income changes (and generally
| you are obligated to report such). At least in my state,
| the system to do so is mostly automated, although they do
| have a caseworker manually review such things. A good deal
| of people who receive government benefits aren't filing
| taxes at all, and they qualify for programs based on other
| proof, like a pay stub.
|
| I think steep gradients are OK, as long as they are not
| over 100%. When someone is working and earning very little,
| they need all the help they can get. As they earn more,
| they need less help, and should start to shift to instead
| contributing to helping others. There is probably some
| ideal "ramp" that provides the right set of incentives. I
| think 75% is probably too high.
| GarnetFloride wrote:
| Haven't you met people who refused a raise because they were
| scared of moving to a new tax bracket? Same thing only this is
| where it actually happens.
| SSJPython wrote:
| The only people that do this are ones that have no
| understanding of marginal tax rates and progressive taxation.
| bombcar wrote:
| Which is a surprisingly large percentage of the population.
|
| Some huge number of people think "writing it off as a
| business expense" means it's basically almost free.
|
| Most people like receiving a big fat refund.
|
| Many don't understand saving for anything, let alone
| retirement.
| ponector wrote:
| Is it? There are situations where it makes sense to avoid a
| rise and stay in the tax bracket. Like if with 5k rise you
| loose a 10k childcare benefits provided by local
| municipality.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Yes, the anecdote about misunderstanding a particular
| thing may be broken if you introduce additional factors.
|
| The absurd thing in your scenario is the steep cliff on
| the benefit...this doesn't change the observation that
| some people have absurd beliefs about how progressive
| taxes are implemented.
| Suppafly wrote:
| That's not tax brackets though, that's income. Talking
| about tax brackets is weirdly indirect way to talk about
| income. The people who avoid raises because they think
| they'll be taxed higher on all their income because they
| don't understand how brackets work aren't the same people
| who avoid raises because it'll cause them to earn too
| much to be eligible for government assistance programs.
| creer wrote:
| > no understanding of marginal tax rates and progressive
| taxation.
|
| Which is how some parts of US taxation works, but not other
| parts. You seem to be in one part, and unaware of the rest.
|
| (And is a mix of taxation and other "eligibility" issues,
| with poorly advertised massive cliffs here and there for
| extra helpfulness).
| fortran77 wrote:
| There may be some cases--if a person is on the edge of
| being eligible for SNAP, or for SSDI for a dependent
| adult in their houshold, where getting a raise might
| actually make them poorer. It's wrong to say people do
| this because they're too stupid to know about marginal
| tax rates.
| trollbridge wrote:
| My state fixed this so the marginal rate was never over
| 100%, but there is a rather wide range where the marginal
| rate is about 75%. For every dollar you earn, you keep
| 25C/, and are paying in 75C/ in the form of getting fewer
| refundable tax credits, food stamps, energy bill
| assistance, and so on. (If I include the energy bill
| assistance, the marginal rate is 85% in a few bands.)
| jacknews wrote:
| "It's astonishing this is a thing."
|
| Indeed, any decent modern society should provide free quality
| education, and that should include free quality meals.
| Especially the richest country in the world.
| ponector wrote:
| Free education means no one will value it. Education should
| not be free, just cheap. However there should be help and
| assistance to people who wants to get an education but cannot
| afford it.
|
| Same with food. Subsidize it for everyone. Cannot pay? Serve
| few hours to the local community and get a meal. There should
| be no starving people anywhere in the world.
| jacknews wrote:
| "Free education means no one will value it"
|
| Ridiculous.
|
| Of course, if it's free, then it's just the default, and
| some people will strive to be better than 'the masses' and
| pay for private education.
|
| But in any case, your whole society gets decently educated,
| which makes everyone richer, in every way.
| ponector wrote:
| I'm from a country where university degree can be easily
| obtained for free. As a result:
|
| 1. Students usually are not interested in attending
| classes, like at the middle school. 2. Bachelor/masters
| degrees means nothing as everyone has one.
| jacknews wrote:
| There's a big difference between 'degree for free' and
| 'education for free' I think.
|
| One is just worthless paper, the other is equal
| opportunity for everyone to actually attain the standard
| required for a degree.
| ponector wrote:
| But education without a degree already is free and
| accessible for everyone everywhere where internet is.
| Free courses, free books, free lessons!
|
| During my student years I could only dream of attending
| lectures from Stanford or MIT! Nowadays they are at your
| fingertips anytime you want.
| trollbridge wrote:
| America provides food stamps that provide groceries to those
| who need it.
|
| However, I'm not sure it is the responsibility of a "decent
| modern society" to provide free quality meals to the
| populace. How far does this go? Does the government need to
| run restaurants? Vouchers to use at restaurants? I'm not
| convinced restaurants are even serving necessarily "quality
| meals".
|
| I think a program providing groceries is a good idea, with
| some additional support for the rare cases of people who are
| completely unable to prepare meals from groceries.
| jacknews wrote:
| I didn't say free restaurants for everyone, that's a
| ridiculous extrapolation.
|
| But it is the responsibility of a decent modern society to
| ensure kids get at least a basic level of care and
| education. Morally, and in fact in the interests of having
| a decently educated and functional society.
|
| For foodstamp groceries, are you expecting the kids to
| prepare their own lunch? It seems like another callous
| 'personal responsibility' argument.
| trollbridge wrote:
| Our "decent modern society" already does this, because
| the government SNAP program guarantees that anyone for
| whom the standard food budget is not met by their income
| receives government support.
|
| Groceries, however, are expected to be bought by parents
| and then meals prepared for their children. I don't
| expect children to prepare their own lunch, but I do
| expect their parents to - and the same for breakfast,
| dinner, and snacks. I consider not doing this to be a
| rather serious form of child neglect. Correcting this
| problem would be another responsibility of a "decent,
| modern society", although usually the best way to do that
| is to require parents to go to parenting classes and get
| help to overcome their neglect.
| jacknews wrote:
| Again, just provide the kids themselves with decent (not
| stratified) meals, rather than tying it to parental
| responsibility or otherwise. It's like you're trying to
| make a mean society.
| trollbridge wrote:
| How are children in such situations supposed to get
| breakfast and dinner?
|
| I'm not arguing against universal school lunches here. I
| am arguing against the idea society should somehow be
| providing prepared meals, unless "society" includes
| "children's parents".
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Gradients introduce a tremendous measurement problem.
|
| It's more efficient to provide services gratis (think of
| community-funded fire, police, education, and parks services),
| and apply the measurement problem to the revenue side through
| progressive taxation of income or assets (wealth).
|
| This also creates a larger political constituency for the
| service as _everyone benefits_. This was the thinking behind a
| universal social security system, rather than providing a
| needs-based system.
|
| There's a fair argument for abandoning free market principles
| when one considers both that children are literally outside the
| market (they have no independent wage or income), and that the
| positive externalities of rearing and educating children
| redound on the local community. (Well, net of out-migration /
| brain drain, which is in fact A Thing, and not a minor
| consideration in many cases.)
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Oh, and there's the deadweight loss of those who _would_
| qualify for a benefit (under law) but fail either to jump
| through the proper bureaucratic hoops, or who _do_ hoop-jump,
| but are still denied benefits, whether through bureaucratic
| error, inefficiency, corruption, or other reasons.
|
| TFA describes the first circumstance.
|
| Patio11 has noted that the optimum level of fraud is non-
| zero, a point picked up by Cory Doctorow as well:
|
| Patio11: <https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-
| amount-of-fra...> (HN discussion:
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38905889>).
|
| Doctorow: <https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-
| net-2025-04-24...>
|
| Means-tested benefits are something you _really_ want to
| think through before advocating. Gradient-benefits or
| sliding-scale benefits are forms of means testing.
|
| I don't know if there's well-developed theory of when means-
| testing should or shouldn't be applied. There are some
| surprising arguments from surprising positions (a quick
| glance at the beginning of this _National Affairs_ article,
| from a conservative position, is _against_ means-testing,
| though it 's also critical of social welfare programmes
| generally:
| <https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/means-
| te...>).
|
| I'd suggest that means-testing / sliding scale works _better_
| or is _more appropriate_ where:
|
| - It's applied locally rather than globally, to small
| populations in regular contact and where even eyeball
| assessments are likely roughly accurate.
|
| - Where resources and/or services offered are limited.
|
| Provision of sliding-scale services (healthcare, dental,
| vision, legal assistance) often falls under such cases.
| School lunches _might_ , but the risks of abuse and long-term
| community harm are high.
| kbelder wrote:
| And there may be many unrelated programs that fully cut funding
| at nearly the same level, making it a compounding problem. You
| might lose several benefits the moment your household income
| moves from 149% of poverty level to 151%, for instance.
|
| But, also, that's because there isn't one monolithic agency
| that's in charge of all benefits... and that may be a good
| thing.
| msravi wrote:
| Do different kids get different meals in US schools? I mean for
| non-medical or dietary purposes? The article doesn't seem to be
| very clear on that... Is it that when the school's debt gets to a
| certain point, all kids' meals are replaced by "alternative
| meals"? Or do some kids' meals only get switched? If so what is
| the deciding criterion?
| infecto wrote:
| I can remember at least in High School that usually happens.
| None of it is healthy or good but you are allowed choice.
| stephencanon wrote:
| Varies enormously between states and school districts.
|
| In our public elementary school, there are two or three options
| each day: a hot meal of some sort, some days a hot vegetarian
| meal, and a salad bar that kids can choose what they want from
| (which usually includes some options that you wouldn't call
| "salad").
|
| It's not fine dining, but the quality and variety is generally
| pretty decent. The kids have accounts, and parents are expected
| to refill a negative balance, but every kid gets the lunch of
| their choice regardless.
| mbfg wrote:
| Only kids who can't afford the "regular" meals get switched to
| alternative meals.
| trelane wrote:
| Only in some places. In others (like ours) they can keep
| buying lunch when they've a debt. The kid just can't buy side
| items (junk food like cookies, ice cream, chips, soda)
|
| This is not a universal.
| neolefty wrote:
| > When the school's debt ...
|
| It's not the school's debt, it's individual families. If they
| fall behind on lunch fees, their children have to eat cold
| meals.
|
| > Do different kids get different meals in US schools? I mean
| for non-medical or dietary purposes?
|
| Depends. US schools are run by the states, so it varies from
| place to place. As other commenters have said, some states just
| fund lunch so debt isn't an issue. I'm sure some accommodate
| dietary requirements & preferences more than others.
|
| My experience was that if you have specific requirements that
| the school can't meet, you just bring your own lunch. If you're
| lucky enough to have organized parents.
| maxlybbert wrote:
| I believe the current rules ( https://www.fns.usda.gov/nslp )
| require the schools to make some effort to avoid certain
| allergens.
|
| When my children were in school, their school said that anybody
| who didn't have lunch would be given a "sun butter" sandwich
| and food from the cafeteria. I wasn't familiar with sun butter;
| it's peanut butter made from sunflower seeds, because people
| allergic to peanuts may not be allergic to sunflower seeds.
| airstrike wrote:
| This is the most poignant article I remember reading in recent
| years. Wow. Thank you for sharing.
| infecto wrote:
| Nit: could not stand the writing style. It took 3-4x more words
| than it should have.
|
| On the topic I agree and believe strongly that all kids should
| receive free food at school. It amazes me people will fight to
| prevent when to me the costs are small but the benefit can be
| huge for the next generation.
| alwa wrote:
| It frustrates me when advocates get righteous about something
| that they only imagine and don't take the time to see for
| themselves (while claiming it's widespread and easy to
| observe):
|
| _"I never actually witnessed this scene myself, but I've
| interviewed enough lunch ladies, principals and kids to
| construct a sort of composite mental image that now plays on an
| endless loop between my ears. It's become my own personal film
| of educational injustice, frame by frame, in high-definition
| slow motion: the momentary confusion on the child's face, the
| hushed explanation from the cashier, the sudden understanding
| dawning in the kid's eyes, the burning shame that follows."_
|
| And from that, cooking up an opening paragraph precipitated on
| "witnessing" it, and Nuremberg-like somber intonations about
| the banality of _"the ritual humiliation of second graders.
| It's watching the adults in the room -- ordinary, decent people
| who'd never dream of snatching food from a child in any other
| context -- perform this strange ceremony with the mechanical
| resignation of DMV employees, while around them life continues
| uninterrupted, because this is just How Things Are."_
|
| ==
|
| He _didn't_ witness this. He talked to people who were
| heartsick about it happening at all. Even in his imagined
| example, the kid doesn't go hungry, the kid gets a sandwich
| instead of an institutional pizza slice.
|
| The adults I remember from situations like this would
| absolutely go out of their way to treat kids with dignity--I
| remember foodservice workers seeking out any kids who still
| looked hungry to slip them leftover hot food from the line, and
| in some cases workers or counselors or teachers covering kids'
| meals themselves.
|
| Dunning lunch debt is probably a silly way to run a program,
| but there's no honest policy assessment here. I don't see why
| school lunch _shouldn't_ be free at the point of service, but I
| also don't know why it _isn't_ under the status quo. I bet it's
| not raw sadism. The pearl-clutching seems to focus on behaviors
| that are unsubstantiated at best.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's good to remember that AI isn't the only thing that
| hallucinates scenarios.
| em-bee wrote:
| he talked to kids. how many kids to you have to talk to
| before you can make a picture? maybe the kids didn't get
| hungry, but if they tell you they felt humiliated, then that
| is what happened. the kid still knows. the other kids know.
| it doesn't matter if people went out of their way to avoid
| that. it doesn't matter that the story given is just an
| anecdote. teachers covering for kids are anecdotes too.
|
| you can be the most courteous about helping a kid out, and it
| may be that in many cases that avoids humiliation, but in
| some it doesn't. and that's enough to make that picture.
|
| and don't think that people working in schools can't be
| humiliating. i have had to experience it at least once
| myself. not because of lunch money but something else, but
| that's besides the point.
|
| also how exactly are they supposed to see for themselves?
| it's not like they can just walk into a school and hang out
| during lunch until they see it happen.
| gs17 wrote:
| >the kid doesn't go hungry, the kid gets a sandwich instead
| of an institutional pizza slice.
|
| Unless it's gotten a lot better from when I was in grade
| school, the "alternative meal" was the bare minimum they
| could get away with (it was a piece of white bread with
| cheese, although it sounds like now the standard is a seed-
| butter sandwich). It doesn't exist to feed the kid, it exists
| to shame them, and any nutrition provided is a happy
| coincidence.
|
| I had to get it once as a kid (although my parents didn't get
| a bill) and it was too embarrassing to even eat. Even at a
| table with all your friends you feel like an outsider through
| no fault of your own.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Because that's what makes it a "story" people will remember,
| rather than just a few more sad statistics about our society
| that people will see and then forget.
| infecto wrote:
| Disagree. The story rambled forever. The substance was good
| but it fits into a few paragraphs, the rest was word filler
| imo.
| dataflow wrote:
| I'm confused about the mechanics of the process here. Could
| someone explain how paying off the lunch debt translates to hot
| meals? I'm confused because the fact that a continuous debt --
| however the amount -- means your expenses exceed your revenue. So
| even if you pay it off... doesn't that mean when doors open
| tomorrow, there'll be new debt, and thus the problem will still
| recur? Or is the idea that the debt was decreasing?
|
| Edit: Fixed some misunderstanding in my comment.
| neolefty wrote:
| It's not the school that's in debt, it's individual families
| who owe money to the lunch program.
|
| But yeah, the problem you point out -- families can go into
| debt again -- is real, I think.
| dataflow wrote:
| Thanks for explaining. I somehow had my wires crossed and
| couldn't figure out what was going on. Updated the comment to
| address that.
| maxlybbert wrote:
| The federal government provides money to schools so that
| schools can provide low-cost food in their the cafeterias. The
| food provided has to meet nutritional standards (
| https://www.fns.usda.gov/nslp ). The federal government also
| sends some actual food to the schools (
| https://www.fns.usda.gov/usda-fis ). Honestly, even with the
| subsidy and supplies, it's hard to imagine how the schools
| provide much food.
|
| Students from low income families can qualify for completely
| free lunch, and others can qualify for drastically reduced
| prices for lunch.
|
| I don't know if there are any federal requirements about how to
| handle students who forget or lose their lunch money, or
| students who normally bring their lunches to school but somehow
| forget or lose them. Most schools will have a specific policy,
| such as providing the food to the student and requesting the
| money later. The "debt" in question is between the school and
| the student, not between the school and its suppliers.
|
| There is a relatively new policy (maybe ten years old) that
| schools with a large number of low income students can provide
| free breakfast and lunch to all students (
| https://www.fns.usda.gov/cn/cep ), so school lunch debt would
| be an issue in areas doing just a little better than that.
| bombcar wrote:
| When you're a student you get a card or pin or something to
| identify you to the school cafeteria.
|
| You have a balance it charges against. In theory, when it hits
| zero, no more food for you.
|
| But that's impractical because kids are bad about just about
| everything, and so denying food because they forgot to remind
| their parents to recharge the thing is harsh. So the system
| lets them go into "debt" and still get a lunch.
|
| And it doesn't really stop, but the school will often put up a
| bit of a fight over final grades or diploma to try to get the
| debt paid off, but often it just gets written off.
| dataflow wrote:
| Thank you! This clarifies a ton.
| mindslight wrote:
| Based on the article it seems like there is another level of
| enforcement here where once there is significant "debt", they
| take away the kid's hot lunch and give them a cold lunch
| instead. (and presumably this all happens at the cash
| register after the kid already has a hot plate of food in
| front of them)
| labrador wrote:
| My mother suffered severe post-partum depression when I was 7 so
| I got my 5 year old brother and I off to school most mornings in
| the 60's. Thankfully I grew up in California so we were never
| food shamed unlike some states that still think lunch debt is a
| moral failure.
| andreicap wrote:
| My poor country (Moldova) just implemented free lunches for kids
| in primary and middle schools.
|
| What is the reason US doesn't have this already at federal level?
| rdtsc wrote:
| Very little at primary school level is controlled federally.
| It's mostly state and school district based. That has both good
| and bad ramifications but it's just how it is.
| klodolph wrote:
| If Moldova were a US state, it would be the 35th largest state,
| by population.
|
| Most of these programs are done state-by-state in the US.
| Because the US is so large, it takes a large amount of
| political willpower to push programs out at the federal level.
| Education is mostly handled on a state-by-state basis. The
| funding split is around 90%/10%, with 90% handled by the state
| and 10% federal. (That may be changing.)
|
| As a rule of thumb, it makes more sense to compare countries in
| Europe against individual states in the US, rather than
| comparing countries to countries.
| boxed wrote:
| Same reason they have expensive university, extremely expensive
| healthcare, for profit prisons, etc, I guess. There's a dog-
| eat-dog mentality over there which is quite puzzling to us
| Europeans.
| compootr wrote:
| > mentality
|
| individualism; I think people in our crazy state of states
| tend to be only interested in what they want, and no other
| interests
| okanat wrote:
| Europe has quite a bit individualism too. Maybe even more
| when people can freely express themselves without judgment,
| you know.
|
| But to have individualism for everybody, everybody needs to
| eat and have a dignified life.
|
| Cutting less lucky people's food and healthcare for penny
| pinching, or worse religiously followed ideology isn't
| individualism. It is sadist selfishness. It kills
| individuality of large swaths of people for a tiny
| minority's extravagant and boringly repetitive habits.
| tarxvf wrote:
| Because the US is really 50 small countries in a trenchcoat
| that aren't all on the same page of the script.
| healsdata wrote:
| There's a significant number of people in the US who view any
| safety net as a handout and don't want others to get something
| for free that they themselves aren't getting.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| My rich country that is often accused of "socialism" (Canada)
| has no real lunch program at any school level. Kids pack and
| bring their own lunch, though a lot of high schools have a
| bespoke cafeteria where you can buy some fries or a burger, it
| operates more like a restaurant than a meal plan, and
| elementary/middle schools don't have kitchens at all.
|
| With four kids I've made a lot of lunches over the years.
|
| More recently schools have started "nutrition club" kind of
| things for kids that fall through the cracks, but it is mostly
| just things like nutrigrain bars or apples.
|
| So it kind of varies.
|
| I don't want any child to go hungry, but it is unfortunate that
| school meal programs usually seem to involve prison-style
| terrible food. I did see a program on Italian lunch programs
| and that stuff was just amazing.
| sitkack wrote:
| I am in the states, my elementary school had excellent cooked
| food, the middle school was slightly less good, but it had a
| great salad bar.
|
| High school was like eating at a truck stop. But it did have
| a salad bar that was excellent, although myself and Lisa
| Simpson were the only students that used it.
| trollbridge wrote:
| I have the same observation in Canada. There seems to be way
| less "benefits" in terms of things like the food stamps
| program in America. I am a bit appalled at the situation with
| some acquaintances of mine in Ontario who simply struggle to
| afford food each month; they don't make a great deal of money
| but they just do not qualify for any assistance. Food banks
| are not well stocked either.
|
| Meanwhile in my quite red state, a family at the 20th
| percentile of household income with 1 kid will get $480 in
| food assistance per month, which is basically enough to
| afford groceries to stay afloat.
|
| My son's school is private but has a "free lunch" program
| (apparently paid for out of grants and involving the local
| grocery store's deli); we send him with a lunch we pack
| ourselves because we prefer he not eat Goldfish and apple
| juice boxes every day.
| Suppafly wrote:
| > (Canada) has no real lunch program at any school level
|
| It's always crazy to learn that you guys are so different
| from us when you dig into the details of things.
| atonse wrote:
| In the US, schools are managed at the state level, not the
| federal level. There are occasional grants given to states to
| run certain school programs, but states really run the show.
|
| Which is why I'm actually not sure why certain states don't do
| this. Like richer states like Maryland, Virginia, New York,
| California.
| gensym wrote:
| California did recently start doing this, and some other
| states are following suit. https://frac.org/wp-
| content/uploads/HSMFA-Report-2024.pdf
| throwaway7783 wrote:
| California claims to be the first state to provide free
| school meals to all children in 2022-2023
| (https://calbudgetcenter.org/resources/universal-school-
| meals...)
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Which is why I'm actually not sure why certain states don't
| do this. Like richer states like Maryland, Virginia, New
| York, California.
|
| Not sure about other states, but...
|
| All NYC public school students can have free meals[0]:
|
| "New York City Public Schools offers free breakfast, lunch
| and afterschool meals to all NYC public school students
| during the school year."
|
| As for NY State -- well, better late than never[1]:
|
| "Universal School Meals: Governor Hochul Announces Free
| Breakfast and Lunch for More Than 2.7 Million Students in New
| York as Part of the 2025 State of the State"
|
| To be fair, free and reduced price meals were already
| available across NY state, but with a means test[2]:
| The School Breakfast and Lunch Programs are federal programs
| providing free, reduced or full priced breakfast and
| lunch at participating schools throughout New York
| State. In New York State the New York State Department of
| Education administers these programs, and local schools
| operate the programs. The meals are the same for all
| children regardless of payment category, and schools
| are not permitted to identify students who get free or
| reduced-price meals. Eligibility
| Meal Categories Eligibility Free Income up to 130%
| of poverty ($39,000 for a family of 4 annually)
| Reduced (no charge to student) Income up to 185% of poverty
| ($55,500 for a family of 4 annually) Full price* -
| paid by family Income over 185% of poverty ($55,500 for a
| family of 4 annually)
|
| [0] https://www.schools.nyc.gov/school-life/food
|
| [1] https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/universal-school-meals-
| gove...
|
| [2] https://otda.ny.gov/workingfamilies/schoollunch.asp
| ipsum2 wrote:
| Most states have free or reduced priced lunch for those who are
| low-income. The families who can afford to pay, do.
| AngryData wrote:
| Because the US is run by wealthy people and highly corrupt. If
| it isn't a problem for those with money, nothing will change.
| Look at all the major problems the US has and nearly every one
| of them can be easily walked around if you have a lot of money.
| Expensive healthcare? Well I got money. Overzealous police
| force? Well in an expensive neighborhood cops don't dare
| harass/extort random citizens. Harsh and exploitive justice
| system? Money will bleed to courts dry until they give up.
| Shitty local schools? Private education. Shitty infrastructure?
| Buy large SUV and generator. Polluted water? You can get good
| water delivered or run a whole-house reverse osmosis system.
|
| It is highly inefficient, but if you are on top of the wealth
| pyramid none of that matters to you. Average citizens however
| can't afford all of that.
| cpursley wrote:
| That's very kind. Now if we can start getting some real food into
| American school instead of SNAP Slop. If France and South Korea
| can manage it, we can as well.
| senectus1 wrote:
| (I'm in Australia) I dont understand why this concept of schools
| providing lunches ever became a thing...
|
| Why did this idea ever take off?
| neolefty wrote:
| Do you mean you always have to bring your lunch to school with
| you, in Australia?
|
| I went to a weird high school in the US where that was the
| case. They just didn't have a lunch room, so everybody sat in
| the hallways at lunch time. But yeah, all the other schools
| I've heard of provide lunch. Most offer breakfast as well, as
| an option.
| senectus1 wrote:
| correct. most schools have canteens you can buy lunch from...
| but the "norm" is for every kid to bring recess and lunch
| foods every day. Keeping the bloody crows from getting into
| your bag and eating it is an added challenge that most rise
| to fairly easily.
|
| _note_ its also expected that you 've already had breakfast
| before you arrive at school.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| School lunch programs across the world get setup and
| perpetuated for a variety of reasons. They also have a variety
| of funding models.
|
| For the US specifically, major federal programs began during
| the Great Depression as a two for one combo. It solved the
| direct problem of... people being poor and their kids not
| having food/lunch, and it also provided a reasonable supply
| sink for the government to buy out supply from farmers to help
| keep things going.
|
| Anyhow, since then for a variety of reasons, subsidized/free
| lunches have stuck around. Primarily because the underlying
| problem (food insecurity) has not been adequately solved.
| School lunches also tends to be amongst the more politically
| palatable/defensible forms of welfare in the United States,
| since its very structure and beneficiaries make it harder to
| criticize.
|
| So while expansion of SNAP or other programs that might help
| tackle general food insecurity might run into headwinds, most
| of those arguments tend to falter when it comes to feeding
| children directly at school. For example, it's hard to argue
| that getting free lunches at school would encourage "abuse and
| malaise" amongst students. Similarly, since the composition of
| lunches tend to be under control of the supplying organization,
| there's reduced concern of people spending their assistance on
| "luxuries".
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I'd looked up and read a few articles on the topic whilst AFK
| after reading GP comment above.
|
| Among those:
|
| _TIME Magazine_ , "School Lunch in America: An Abbreviated
| History" <https://time.com/4496771/school-lunch-history/>
|
| Wikipedia, "School meal programs in the United States" <https
| ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_meal_programs_in_the_Un...>
|
| PBS, "The History of School Lunch"
| <https://www.pbs.org/food/stories/history-school-lunch>
|
| And a 1971 PDF from the US Department of Agriculture (Dept.
| Ed. hadn't yet been created), "History of the National School
| Lunch Program" <https://www.fns.usda.gov/nslp/program-
| history> [PDF]
|
| icegreentea2's summary is brief but accurate. There was some
| earlier Progressive Era (~1890--1915) work largely at the
| city level (Boston and Phladelphia), and through volunteers
| and charities.
|
| The Great Depression emphasized the scope of the problem, and
| WWII raised it to a level of national security (under-fed,
| malnourished, and poorly-educated children cannot grow to
| defend the country).
|
| The period also parallels growth of secondary (high-school)
| education from a small fraction of children (~6% of 18-year
| olds claimed a high school diploma in 1900, that grew to
| roughly 95% by 1950, where it's largely held since:
| graduation rates and graduate test scores tend to balance off
| one another, as one rises the other falls, both are fodder
| for much political jawboning). Education statistics are
| presented in "120 Years of American Education: A Statistical
| Portrai" published by the US Department of Education (1993) <
| hhttps://www.google.com/books/edition/120_Years_of_American_E
| ...>
| senectus1 wrote:
| fascinating and horrifying.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Nutrition is an important precursor to education. It saves time
| and effort of the parents providing individual lunches, as well
| as guaranteeing a certain minimum level. There's always a few
| kids whose education is impacted because they're not well fed,
| due to poverty or chaos at home.
| triceratops wrote:
| If the government forces you to be someplace, under threat of
| imprisonment for your parents, then they'd better at least feed
| you.
| bombcar wrote:
| The US has discovered that there's a substantial portion of the
| population (which for this could be 1%, 10%, 20% whatever) who
| is really bad at raising kids, basically. If the school doesn't
| provide lunch, the kids would simply not eat any lunch. So they
| provide lunches, because it's easier than handling the fallout
| from some kids not eating, etc.
|
| As a child I never had "provided lunch" but I also went to
| private school; we didn't even have any option through
| elementary (grade 8, about 12). High school had a greasy burger
| joint (think: high school football game concession stand) but
| that was it.
|
| Providing lunches involves enough work that providing
| breakfast, too isn't much more expensive.
|
| (The programs may have started for other reasons but the above
| is usually why they _continue_. It 's also hard to stop doing
| something like "provide kids food" once you start.)
| senectus1 wrote:
| >The US has discovered that there's a substantial portion of
| the population (which for this could be 1%, 10%, 20%
| whatever) who is really bad at raising kids, basically.
|
| I'm a center-lefty, but America appears to be mostly right
| and I find it fascinating that this is just "accepted".
|
| Why does America just accept that some (a large enough number
| that most schools have to feed them) people cant raise their
| kids?
| lesuorac wrote:
| Are you going to require people get a license to procreate?
|
| Or perhaps are you saying that the government should
| provide a nanny to everybody that can't raise their kid?
| gs17 wrote:
| We already have a system where the government can send
| "child raising inspectors" to your house and potentially
| take away your children. It's dysfunctional, yes, but it
| exists.
| senectus1 wrote:
| this is not the only alternative....
|
| What I see is a cultural/community problem.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Because for a not insubstantial portion of America, they
| see it as their "Christian duty".
|
| I see people on Facebook who refer to their kids,
| unironically, as "future warriors for Christ".
| em-bee wrote:
| at what time do kids in australia come home from school? for
| comparison in germany the average school day is 4-6 hours,
| depending on age. in the US it is 6-8 hours. in germany kids
| usually come home for lunch. in the US they usually don't.
| those two hours make a big difference in what kind of food the
| kids need to bring to school. in germany a snack is enough.
| that's easy for parents to accomplish. kids in the US need a
| real meal for their lunch break in school. but cooking food in
| the morning that kids can carry and eat 5 hours later? even
| wealthy parents don't have time for that.
| senectus1 wrote:
| start at 9 am finish at around 3pm
| phkahler wrote:
| >> But what if the truth is that we need all of these approaches
| simultaneously? What if paying off a specific child's lunch debt
| today doesn't preclude advocating for a complete structural
| overhaul tomorrow? What if the emotional resonance of specific,
| concrete actions is precisely what builds the coalition necessary
| for systemic change?
|
| That might happen, but I hate to say that another possibility is
| people come to _expect_ that someone will just pay the debt.
| Where unpaid bills may look like some kind of problem, a lack of
| unpaid bills looks like things are fine and no change is needed.
| Short term solutions are best implemented along with long term
| ones. But to the authors point, you gotta start somewhere or
| _nothing_ will happen.
| em-bee wrote:
| when i considered whether patching up the problem might be
| counterproductive i realized that the people who benefit from
| those payments and who might come to expect that the debt will
| be paid are not the people who would go out to fight for a
| solution anyways. the caterers are not going to lobby for a
| change, they'll just continue to refuse to feed children who
| haven't paid or they'll haunt the parents for payment because
| in their eyes it's the parents who are at fault. and those
| parents don't have any power or resources to change something
| either. they are busy making ends meet.
|
| but patching up the problem involves new people. people who do
| have more resources and are thus actually capable of lobbying
| for change. and that's exactly what seems to happen.
|
| also, a simple law change just to enforce that all children get
| the same food, whether it's paid or not, even without any
| funding moves the incentive for the caterers to lobby for more
| funding. so even that would be a win.
| Smeevy wrote:
| >[...] that another possibility is people come to expect that
| someone will just pay the debt. The last few months are making
| me respond to that question with "so what?" I would rather that
| earnest efforts to reduce human misery accidentally benefit
| someone undeserving rather than to allow those problems to
| continually get worse.
|
| Heck, I'm even ready for brand new unforeseen problems arising
| from those efforts. After decades of being lectured about the
| myriad slippery slopes that come with "too much" charity I'm
| ready try taking a slide down one or two for a change. We've
| been trying nothing for a long time and it doesn't seem to have
| much effect.
|
| Please note that I'm absolutely not disagreeing with you and I
| apologize in advance if my tone comes across as strident.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| > $835.
|
| > ...
|
| > It was less than some monthly car payments.
|
| I'm not sure what kind of car, but that's way above any car
| payment I've ever had to pay. ;)
| criddell wrote:
| According to this site [1], the average car payment is $724.
|
| [1]: https://www.lendingtree.com/auto/debt-
| statistics/#:~:text=Th...
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Interesting, I think so far I've only had used cars, but even
| so my wife has a newer car than I do, bought it brand new,
| and she's paying below that threshold so it surprised me to
| hear that amount.
| m-hodges wrote:
| I just popped over to Honda's website and clicked through on a
| new CR-V. I went with the EX trim which is the 2nd cheapest of
| six available trims. After clicking next on every screen
| without adding any upgrades, it offered me $33,745 MSRP with
| 36-month financing at 2.49% APR, which came to $1,035/month.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| For 3 years? Yeah that makes sense, but if you do 40k (think
| SUV / upgraded mid-sized car) at 70 months, at 5% its in the
| 750 range a month, which is still not quite that high. I
| can't imagine most people do 3 year car loans.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Yeah, I have to imagine that the convergence of:
|
| - people buying new
|
| - but looking for the cheapest trims
|
| - on an aggressively short loan
|
| is particularly large. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of
| the 108 month or more loans starting to show up, but still.
| SSJPython wrote:
| Car payments have skyrocketed since the pandemic due to the
| massive increase in prices and the increase in interest rates.
| klntsky wrote:
| It always felt strange to me that although the US is clearly a
| guilt-driven culture, it has shame-based mechanics of control
| when it comes to finances. May it be due to protestant
| christianity losing its former position of influence? So that
| more archaic forms of human behavior control take precedence?
| fred69 wrote:
| Shame is the Protestant enforcement mechanism for guilt.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >May it be due to protestant christianity losing its former
| position of influence?
|
| Nope. At least not AFAICT. In fact, it seems to have a lot to
| do with the Prosperity Gospel[0] which, IIUC is a Protestant
| thing.
|
| The primary tenets of that are (others please do correct me if
| I mis-state this) that if you are a devout servant of Christ,
| you will be rewarded with riches on this Earthly pale. If
| however, you are not sufficiently devout, you will _not_ be
| rewarded.
|
| As such, if you're rich, you're a decent, devout Christian. If
| you're not, you are insufficiently devout or just downright
| evil and, as such, you _deserve_ your poverty.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology
| jccalhoun wrote:
| It is capitalism. If you fail it is your fault. Don't question
| the system. You just need to work harder like those rich people
| who were born slightly less rich.
| ItsBob wrote:
| In The Peoples Republic of Scotland, all primary kids get free
| lunches now, I think (Primary is aged 4/5 to 11/12).
|
| When it was introduced, my son was in P1 or 2. We spoke to the
| head and asked if we could pay for our son's lunch as we didn't
| need the freebie. She said there was no way to pay for it: it was
| free whether you wanted it or not.
|
| Crazy.
|
| I'm a rampant capitalist, every man for himself and all that but
| there is something about denying kids the fundamentals, like
| shelter, food etc. that rubs me up the wrong way. There should
| never be a situation where they are denied proper lunches. Never.
|
| School lunch debt is an adult-designed problem that we shouldn't
| be passing onto kids.
| bombcar wrote:
| What I've seen which works decently well is an official policy
| of charging, and a policy of free for those in need, and then
| just cancelling or writing off the "debt" for those that
| didn't/couldn't pay.
|
| One state's form of children's medicaid or whatever it is bills
| a "please pay this amount" each month, but the bill has a note
| that says "not paying this won't affect your coverage" and the
| coverage is granted not on whether you paid, but your financial
| situation. So the end result is the "bill" is actually an
| optional payment.
|
| At least in the USA, if you ever think you were wrongly given a
| tax or other financial advantage, you can donate the largess
| back to the government:
| https://www.pay.gov/public/form/start/23779454 (yay they take
| Venmo)
|
| I couldn't find something directly for Scotland, and I know
| that assuming the UK is the same thing has caused spicy
| reactions before, but this does exist:
|
| https://www.dmo.gov.uk/responsibilities/public-sector-funds-...
| mproud wrote:
| I love living in Minnesota.
|
| Walz passed the Free Meals for School Kids Program[^1] at my
| elementary school, no less! about two years ago.
|
| I'm happy that other states are finally realizing, _gee, this is
| such a straightforward issue we could actually solve._
|
| [^1] https://education.mn.gov/MDE/dse/FNS/SNP/free/
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> gee, this is such a straightforward issue we could actually
| solve
|
| Shifting the cost from the parents who had the kids onto the
| taxpayers is not solving the problem.
|
| It's making people who didn't cause the problem subsidize the
| people who did cause the problem.
|
| That's not solving the problem.
|
| It's making sure there will be more problems.
| gecko6 wrote:
| I don't have kids, and will never have kids, but even so I
| don't see people whose children are being denied food as a
| problem that the children's parent's caused. I see hungry
| kids who can't learn because they're distracted by hunger as
| the problem, and I will gladly pay taxes to see that they
| don't go hungry.
| bnj wrote:
| It's hard to tell from your comment whether you mean the
| lunch debt is the problem, or the kids are the problem.
| AngryData wrote:
| Without kids living and being born and learning and becoming
| productive members of society your lifestyle would not exist
| and current economic models would collapse in a handful of
| years.
|
| You are shooting everyone including yourself in the foot
| because you personally don't need to walk places.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "and current economic models would collapse in a handful of
| years."
|
| It's possible that's not a bad thing considering they're
| built on excessive consumption and an ever expanding
| population.
| AngryData wrote:
| I would agree that current models are crap, but what kind
| of alternative would actually be viable with dumber, less
| healthy, and a shrinking population? We could do with one
| of them, maybe two if we are just scraping by for time,
| but all three? That is a one way ticket to a collapse
| that wouldn't be overcome for many generations.
| timewizard wrote:
| > and becoming productive members of society
|
| Child labor was legal until 1930. It has been a part of
| society for longer than it hasn't. I think your calculus is
| a little off.
|
| > your lifestyle would not exist
|
| Because /some/ children struggle to eat enough? Which,
| again, has been a norm in our society for longer than it
| hasn't. We didn't fully get rid of horses as beasts of
| burden in agriculture until the 1950s.
|
| > you personally don't need to walk places.
|
| Carrying everyone who can't walk is not a universal good.
| Particularly when some of those people can't walk because
| of a tiny, temporary, and highly solvable problem.
|
| Now you have people who make it their career to carry
| people. Their motivations are to carry as many people as is
| possible. If we actually made it so no one had to be
| carried they would be out a job.
|
| We live in a world of odd incentives. There is no point at
| which abandoning the middle way will benefit you,
| regardless of how pretty those ideas sound.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Child labor
|
| Are you serious.
|
| > Because /some/ children struggle to eat enough?
|
| They said "without kids", not without this particular
| program.
|
| > Carrying everyone who can't walk is not a universal
| good. Particularly when some of those people can't walk
| because of a tiny, temporary, and highly solvable
| problem.
|
| > Now you have people who make it their career to carry
| people. Their motivations are to carry as many people as
| is possible. If we actually made it so no one had to be
| carried they would be out a job.
|
| These are children. Someone is carrying them no matter
| what.
| timewizard wrote:
| > Are you serious.
|
| Yes. I'm calling into question the idea that modern
| treatment of children is responsible for the world we
| live in. Clearly it is not given the relative scarcity of
| it in our history. I'm not saying we shouldn't give
| children a free lunch just that the OPs reasoning was
| rather lofty and detached from history.
|
| > They said "without kids", not without this particular
| program.
|
| They're replying to someone with the obvious implication
| that this program is in some way critical to children
| "learning and becoming productive members of society."
|
| > Someone is carrying them no matter what.
|
| Now are you serious? Do parents consider it their career
| to raise their own children? Does this career have the
| effect of increasing the number of children they care for
| in exchange for greater profits?
|
| Which is why I invoked incentives. The tragedy here being
| that schools consider their primary obligation to the
| child and not to the family. So when parents are in a
| situation where they cannot care for their children
| successfully, for whatever reason, we completely ignore
| the core problem and instead patch over it. Worse it can
| sometimes create negative stigma for the child and work
| to further destabilize their living situation.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| Extended families, charity and churches exists long
| before public school exists.
|
| They have been taking similar role before the industrial
| revolution.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > I'm calling into question the idea that modern
| treatment of children is responsible for the world we
| live in.
|
| > They're replying to someone with the obvious
| implication that this program is in some way critical to
| children "learning and becoming productive members of
| society."
|
| They were not saying it's "critical" or that the specific
| treatment of children is responsible for anything.
|
| It was a very simple argument that everyone should care
| about children growing up well because we need them.
|
| > Does this career have the effect of increasing the
| number of children they care for in exchange for greater
| profits?
|
| This doesn't make any sense. I understand your incentive
| argument but what is Big Lunch going to do, make pro-
| birthrate propaganda? We're already sending children to
| schools and expecting them to eat the school lunch by
| default. It doesn't matter who pays as long as the school
| has motivation to reduce costs.
|
| > The tragedy here being that schools consider their
| primary obligation to the child and not to the family. So
| when parents are in a situation where they cannot care
| for their children successfully, for whatever reason, we
| completely ignore the core problem and instead patch over
| it.
|
| It would cost so so much more to do that, and while I
| agree that it would be good, fixing poverty is super far
| outside the scope of a school's job.
|
| > Worse it can sometimes create negative stigma for the
| child and work to further destabilize their living
| situation.
|
| This is an argument for giving all students free meals.
| No stigma.
| bobsomers wrote:
| For fucks sake, this is a heartless take.
|
| Having not-starving kids is beneficial to literally everyone
| in the community, not just the kids who use the program.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Shifting the cost from the parents who had the kids onto
| the taxpayers is not solving the problem._
|
| No, but it's well documented that students who eat lunches
| generally perform better.
|
| > _It 's making people who didn't cause the problem subsidize
| the people who did cause the problem._
|
| Sorry buddy, but you won't find a lot of sympathy from people
| who actually care. School lunches *are not expensive*, and
| there are plenty of parents who are in poverty and literally
| cannot _afford_ to pay for their child 's lunch.
|
| Should the child starve? No. I strongly believe that anyone
| who thinks a child should starve, for whatever reason, does
| not belong in civilized society.
|
| > _That 's not solving the problem._
|
| You're right, it's not. But you also don't offer a different
| suggestion. How will you solve poverty? How will you solve
| neglect?
|
| Until you offer suggestions for that, your comment strikes me
| as coming from someone who (at best) is sociopathic in a bad
| way and (possibly) someone who does not belong in
| civilization.
|
| > _It 's making sure there will be more problems._
|
| Perhaps.
|
| But you could also consider it as several different types of
| investments in the future.
|
| An investment, at the mere cost of one child's meal per day,
| is an investment whose return is in the form of that child's
| future taxes; the lack of investment is instead the death-by-
| starvation of that child and loss of that child's future
| income and/or business taxes.
|
| An investment, at the mere cost of one child's meal per day,
| is an investment in that child's care for their fellow
| person. Children who _have been there_ (in poverty and
| starving); who have literally had only one meal per day, are
| more likely to be more empathetic to the plights of the
| people (not just children) around them in similar situations.
| You should hope that, if you 're in such a situation, that
| you could find someone who would be willing to help you.
|
| An investment, at the mere cost of one child's meal per day,
| _does_ solve problems. Most parents are happy to be able to
| afford that investment themselves, but some parents --
| through pride or neglect or other reasons -- are unable to
| afford that much. Why do you think you shouldn 't help them?
| jccalhoun wrote:
| One of the best ways to reduce crime and drug addiction is
| education. Hungry kids don't learn well. Feeding kids so they
| can concentrate on learning prevents problems not creates
| them.
| gs17 wrote:
| > It's making people who didn't cause the problem subsidize
| the people who did cause the problem.
|
| Hate to turn into Helen Lovejoy here, but won't you please
| think of the children? The victims of the problem are the
| children. You're trying to punish the parents, and the kids
| get caught in the crossfire.
| delfinom wrote:
| I will blow your fucking mind.
|
| The entire economic future of you and all the taxpayers
| depends on those kids growing up.
|
| Our entire economic structure is a ponzi scheme at global
| scale. It depends on kids growing up and cashing into the
| stock market so people can cash out of their 401ks.
|
| So why not ensure those little gremlins and nice and plump
| when they grow up so we can retire more easily.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| That's your argument? I have to finance other people's kids
| because otherwise the ponzi scheme collapses?
|
| Let it fall. No more ponzi schemes.
| fritzo wrote:
| Honest question: are you a Malthusian? If so, what do you
| think is the ideal birth rate?
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| If you care so much, make some suggestions for solutions?
| searine wrote:
| Childhood nutrition and Lead exposure are the two highest impact
| issues that can be easily solved to improve life-time outcomes,
| and yet we don't fix it.
|
| It is mind boggling that we leave kids starving in america, and
| we are going to pay for it for decades.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Pretty depressing. I'm pretty right wing but kids should always
| be taken care of. I'll happily pay more in property tax to cover
| school lunches and kids medical.
| em-bee wrote:
| property taxes go to schools in your own area. would you also
| support that taxes be redistributed to other areas that don't
| have enough tax income and where people can't afford higher
| taxes? because as i see it, that is the real problem in the way
| schools in the US are funded. (i am hoping/assuming your answer
| is yes, but i think the distinction is important and needs to
| be pointed out)
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Honestly my answer is no. I want my property taxes to ensure
| that my kids get the best possible start.
|
| My money supports my kids and those kids that live in my
| area. I would say yes to paying more property tax to support
| my local schools to an even greater degree. I am in no way ok
| with my kids school funding getting reduced to fund other
| areas. I specifically moved to this area for the good
| schools.
|
| I would be ok with an additional penny of sales tax to fund a
| statewide program to ensure all kids have access to food.
| trelane wrote:
| You can always give your government (including schools)
| extra money if you think they need it more than you do, or
| if you think they can use it better than than you can.
|
| Taxes just force everyone else to give the government
| money.
| rpcope1 wrote:
| Surely it can't be that expensive to just provide every child
| living in our country that so desires/needs it three decent meals
| a day, regardless of their situation? That one has always
| confused me, if our country is actually prosperous and powerful,
| that something as simple as that seems like a given that would be
| embarrassing not to provide.
| bombcar wrote:
| Let's assume (bad assumption, but it should be good enough for
| the math) that a Happy Meal(tm)(r)(c) is a decent meal.
|
| It costs about $6 around here, so let's say without toy it's
| $5.
|
| https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp
| says there are 71 million kids.
|
| $466 billion a year.
|
| Ok, ok, that is maybe too high. Let's assume a wonderful world
| where you can produce a meal for a dollar (less than the local
| school district).
|
| $77 billion a year.
| frakt0x90 wrote:
| The price you pay at the kiosk is not the cost of production.
| bombcar wrote:
| Which is why I calculated an upper and lower bound. It's
| hard to argue it would be MORE expensive than McDonalds-
| for-all and hard to argue it would be much cheaper than a
| buck-o-meal.
| ryoshoe wrote:
| Based those calculations every child could be fed for less
| than 10% of the DoD's annual budget of $849.8 billion.
|
| https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/370341.
| ..
| bombcar wrote:
| Apparently in 2022 the school lunch portion of the federal
| budget was $29 billion.
| airforce1 wrote:
| Yeah but we currently have a $2T deficit. We could do all
| sorts of good for "less than 10% of the DoD's annual
| budget", but we are already spending far more money than we
| bring in. The DoD's budget needs to be reduced by like 50%
| (along with a lot of other departments/programs) to have
| even a hope of getting debt under control, let alone
| introducing new "think of the children" expenses
| vharuck wrote:
| If a school lunch is served for free, then parents who would
| have bought that lunch now get to keep the money. If we would
| raise taxes to fund these programs, it's possible the
| majority of people could actually save money.
| bombcar wrote:
| Nothing else changing, the families who were paying for
| lunch would come out ahead (they lose the expense, but
| taxes are over EVERYONE, and most people don't have school-
| aged children).
| Suppafly wrote:
| >It costs about $6 around here, so let's say without toy it's
| $5.
|
| Sure but half of that is profit, so it's a silly thing to
| even mention. If you are using bad faith exams intentionally,
| it's a good sign that your comment is being made in bad
| faith.
|
| >$77 billion a year.
|
| I'm not sure you how go to 77 billion from 71 million kids,
| but whatever, if that's what it costs we should do it.
| bombcar wrote:
| 71,000,000 * 3 * 365 = 7.775x1010
|
| 77,745,000,000
|
| A dollar a meal, three times a day, three sixty five days a
| year. Pretty simple.
| RankingMember wrote:
| > something as simple as that seems like a given that would be
| embarrassing not to provide.
|
| It's confusing (and embarrassing) because, in the grand scheme
| of government spending, it is something that could be (and
| _should_ be) easily provided without any strings attached. If
| literal 10-year-old Richie Rich is dropped off at school in a
| helicopter, he should still be able to get a free lunch: that
| 's how simple it should be. Adding means-testing of stuff like
| this is what cocks the whole thing up and makes it doubly
| expensive.
| neilv wrote:
| Where I went to grade school, I don't recall a peanut butter
| sandwich option. If you didn't bring a bagged lunch, and you
| wanted to eat lunch, you had to spend your recess time washing
| trays. Which I did sometimes.
|
| Sometimes, adults want children to go through the same "character
| building" rituals that they did. For example, working some kind
| of job, to supposedly teach values about hard work and
| responsibility.
|
| Other times, adults don't want to subject kids to "character
| building" that they went through. For example, enduring bullying.
| Or working a crappy job, while their schoolmates played sports,
| socialized, did extracurriculars, or got a decent night's sleep.
|
| On this one, my opinion is: Just feed the children already. Stop
| stomping them harder with class inequality, and conditioning them
| to accept that as normal, from a young age. I'd rather have
| children be raised to reject class inequality -- as unfair,
| greedy, cruel, and dumb. And more immediately, I want children to
| be fed, and to get other basic care.
| hshdhdhj4444 wrote:
| > It's larger in that the entire structure of how we feed
| children at school is a tangle of federal programs, income
| thresholds, paperwork requirements, and local policies
|
| If DOGE was anything other than an attempt to entrench executive
| control and execute performative cruelty, this is the stuff it
| would be tackling.
|
| There are so many arbitrary conflicting policies that each only
| make things slightly less inefficient to the point where it
| doesn't make sense to spend the energy fixing them, but put
| together they really add up to tangible and significant
| experiences in people's lives.
|
| An "all of the above" concentrated effort that looks at
| everything together, and then makes a list of suggestions to
| consolidate and harmonize policies that Congress can then pick
| through for the ones they agree upon on both sides of the aisle
| and pass quickly and unanimously would make a massive difference.
|
| Sure, it may take a year instead of a few months to achieve this,
| but the changes would be beneficial, non destructive, and
| lasting, none of which can be said of even a generous perspective
| of what was actually done.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| One thing I don't like about the free lunch but never mentioned
| is that it is by necessity very cheap food, and that means
| carbage.
|
| Try getting a kid to eat vegetables when processed bread products
| are being handed out at school. Healthy eating pretty much
| stopped that year. Which is a shame because it's not expensive.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I love stories like this one. It reminds me of my college years
| when I partook in a non-profit that was started by my aunt /
| uncle where we fed the homeless. I learned then that anyone can
| just step in and do something right in society, you don't have to
| waste hours, days, months, and years waiting for daddy government
| to do it.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Yes and no.
|
| The _scale_ at which governments can organise, and (despite
| much protestation to the opposite) the _efficiency_ with which
| it can do so, really is unmatched.
|
| Even the word's wealthiest individuals and families (save a few
| which function as states, e.g., the House of Saud, or some
| royal families) pale next to the level at which large advanced
| national governments can operate. The Gates Foundation, one of
| the largest philanthropic organisations in the world, is
| "rattled" by the present US administrations threat to its
| mission:
|
| <https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/gates-
| foundation-i...>
|
| The NGO / non-profit space _does_ do a great deal of good work,
| and as it 's decentralised it's difficult to disable all of it
| all at once. Though curtailments of major benefactors,
| ironically national governments in the present moment, or
| should I more accurately specify _one specific government_ ,
| can wreak havok at international scale.
|
| But NGOs are inefficient, often work at cross-purposes, suffer
| from corruption, and often have staggering administrative and
| overhead ratios, with only a _minority_ of raised funds
| reaching active operations. The Tiny Spark podcast has been
| discontinued but has an excellent back-catalogue detailing many
| of the problems with philanthropic charities and welfare
| projects:
|
| <https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tiny-spark/id505053432>
|
| So, yes, you can strike out on your own, and I'd really hate to
| discourage anyone from doing so. But you can do far more if you
| link up with others. And governance is really the technical art
| of linking up with others.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| When you target local issues, and don't wait for the behemoth
| to get to it, I think you'll agree, that you can be
| drastically more effective. Now if we could get people to do
| this at scale as discrete orgs, maybe that would prevent some
| of the churn and issues we see when orgs get too big.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| These stories about acts of kindness like a recent one where a
| senior citizen was given a speeding ticket while taking his
| adult handicapped son to the doctor are really just stories
| about how the society in which they take is broken. If the
| system wasn't broken then we wouldn't need strangers to pay off
| student lunch debt and the senior citizen father would have
| someone to take his son to the doctor.
|
| When Breaking Bad was on there was a comic strip about how in
| any other developed country Walter White would have went to the
| doctor, gotten the cancer treated, and went on with his life.
|
| Edited to add: I knew there was a term for this but I couldn't
| think of it.: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/orphan-crushing-
| machine
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > When Breaking Bad was on there was a comic strip about how
| in any other developed country Walter White would have went
| to the doctor, gotten the cancer treated, and went on with
| his life.
|
| As the saying goes, "Healthcare is such a complex problem
| that only 32 of the 33 developed countries in the world have
| solved it."
|
| I don't get where the "33" number comes from and don't
| inherently agree, but the point? Yes. As someone who is or
| has been a citizen of the UK, EU, Australia and the US.
| freehorse wrote:
| I feel like this has already been discussed before one million
| times more than the simplicity of the issue should require.
|
| Any income etc based coupon system is inefficient and
| automatically excludes a big portion of children that such
| measures are supposed to be for, eg because a lot of them come
| from families that are too dysfunctional to apply for those,
| ignorant of them due to language and other barriers, or because
| of (perceived or not) social stigma. And while adults are
| considered responsible for their own lives, it is a total moral
| bankruptcy for a society to have their children starve for their
| parents dysfunction. At the same time, providing free lunch to
| children at school solves/eases _a lot_ of social, health and
| other issues all at once, for a cost that is basically peanuts
| compared to how impactful it can be.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "it is a total moral bankruptcy for a society to have their
| children starve for their parents dysfunction."
|
| Sounds like child services should take those children then? If
| they can't apply for the lunches, then surely they aren't
| getting food at home, nor the proper medical care.
| anttihaapala wrote:
| Yes, and while waiting for the child services to intervene
| then those children would still be starving.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I think you underestimate how quickly they can get involved
| (not always a good thing).
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > Sounds like child services should take those children then?
|
| This is a HUGE, dangerous leap.
|
| > If they can't apply for the lunches, then surely they
| aren't getting food at home, nor the proper medical care.
|
| Plenty of parents (and plenty of people generally) just
| aren't aware of social services but are quite aware that
| they're supposed to feed and care for their children. Plenty
| more forget to fill out paperwork and return phone calls.
| Many states' governments actively make applying for welfare
| and support difficult or inconvenient - plenty of parents
| can't take the time to return paperwork in person, make phone
| calls during the workday, etc. Needing support - either
| welfare or just kindness and assistance - is not a moral
| failure and not a sign of a bad parent.
|
| Beyond that, CPS wouldn't necessarily provide a great life
| for the child. There is a lot of difference between an
| imperfect parent and a danger to a child. Oh, and of course,
| CPS is a lot more expensive to run than a few meals. Giving
| out free meals at school is a lot easier if we want kids to
| be fed.
|
| As an anecdote, I was laid off from my job once, and someone
| asked me if I applied for unemployment within my state. I
| didn't know it existed, nor that I was eligible until months
| later when a barista told me during small talk. The whole
| time I managed to remember to feed myself (and my family). I
| sure hope no internet commenter would look at that and decide
| to take my children away!
| giantg2 wrote:
| "This is a HUGE, dangerous leap."
|
| If you're telling me they are "starving" then it isn't.
| Supermancho wrote:
| My wife was one of these kids. She knew then (and I know
| now) how and why she tried desperately to get into a
| state program and away from her drug addict parents.
| Living in the desert, in a broken trailer, 2 adults and 2
| children, only a water tank (reuse that bath water),
| miles of flat hard (or wet slick) brown dirt in 120
| degree heat in every direction. No money, no radio,
| sometimes TV rabbit ears.
|
| Begging for food from grocery store clerks as her parents
| bought beer and toilet paper inside, drugs outside. She
| grew up thinking they were derelict because of the drugs.
| As they got older and had to quit the drugs or die, she
| found they were just unfit people.
|
| Lots of people in the world are unfit to care for the
| children, but the children often persevere and society
| absorbs the damaged alongside the deaths.
|
| This colors my views of the world, as much as anything I
| experienced.
| thr0waway39290 wrote:
| It's disappointing that there is such an automatic
| response to cover up for the parents who starve their
| children that people automatically dismissed your
| argument.
|
| I have a problem with government stepping in to remove
| children from their parents but parents should definitely
| be blamed for their own child starving. I think all
| empathy should go to the child who is starving and
| significantly less to the parent who caused it (even if
| they are starving too, they are an adult and they have
| significantly more choices then a starving child)
| gopher_space wrote:
| It's a reductive one-liner from someone obviously
| unfamiliar with and disinterested in the problem space,
| and it's the kind of statement people familiar with and
| interested in the problem space hear so frequently that
| it sounds intentionally ignorant.
|
| When you're reasoning outside of your own domain it's
| easy to get stuck in a "yeah, but why male models?" loop
| unless you listen to feedback.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I got reduced price lunch for a significant part of my
| childhood.
|
| My parents weren't bad. My mom was just impoverished. Our
| society does not pay people what they deserve. Our
| society pays people as little as possible. That leads to
| good, well meaning, and talented people who are
| nevertheless poor.
| jagger27 wrote:
| Lose your job, lose your children. Great policy ideas from
| the thoughtful HN crowd, as always.
| giantg2 wrote:
| That's not a real argument. There are plenty of assistance
| programs, including free school lunches.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| How many assistance programs have you applied for?
| Frankly, if you haven't applied for any, your opinion is
| uninformed. Even people who are told how difficult it is,
| underestimate how difficult it is to apply for many
| programs.
|
| I've helped a bunch of homeless folks apply to assistance
| programs (not for school lunches, but for a lot of other
| aid) and almost universally, applying for aid is
| extremely difficult. I've walked at least 30 people
| through the process of applying for housing aid and I'm
| pretty sure exactly none of them have actually received
| aid. The only program's I've seen people actually
| successfully apply for were medicaid and SNAP. It is the
| norm for it to take over a month to receive medicaid, and
| it's the norm for it to take over 6 months to receive
| SNAP. Meanwhile people are dying of medical conditions
| and starving.
|
| Now add in all the reasons people are in this position in
| the first place--these people are struggling. It's hard
| to apply for these programs, and it's _harder_ when
| everything else in your life is going poorly as well.
|
| And after all that, you might discover that you don't
| qualify even though you clearly have need. In the OP the
| author notes that many families with lunch debt were
| right above the income line for receiving aid.
|
| Some political forces are concerned that people will take
| advantage of these programs who shouldn't, and others
| simply don't want these programs to work so that they can
| have an excuse to cut them, and as a result there are
| numerous hurdles set up before you can obtain any sort of
| aid.
| freehorse wrote:
| That's also in the heart of the issue, having arbitrary
| thresholds and obscure bureaucracy here makes it easier
| also to restrict or even close down such a subsidised
| program, which can be harder when a permanent program of
| free school lunches has been established.
| giantg2 wrote:
| The NSLP has been around for more than 50 years. It
| doesn't seem to be going anywhere. It serves about 4.5
| billion lunches annually with 70% of them being free or
| reduced. It seems there isn't a problem here.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yes, I'm familiar with medicaid and some other stuff.
| Your complaint about SNAP ignores foodbanks. They usually
| don't check anything and it starts immediately. This can
| cover the gap. Medicaid may take months to recieve but it
| can cover costs incurred since applying retroactively
| once it is approved. Most hospitals even have case
| workers that will help patients apply.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Applying for school lunches is pretty simple compared to
| most any other programs. The schools in general really
| want as many as possible on free lunches, not only does
| it give students free lunch, but it is used to calculate
| all sorts of grants.
|
| Applying for medicaid and SNAP is quite a bit more
| difficult, especially for a homeless person. But school
| lunches is really as simple as it could be, excepting
| just making it free for everyone.
| squigz wrote:
| Wait a second, didn't you say such programs are false
| solutions a comment or two above?
| freehorse wrote:
| The world is not black or white, there are many reasons that
| parents may not apply for that, and deciding how child
| services should intervene in each case is much harder and
| time consuming problem than just providing free lunch to
| kids. It makes no sense to not solve the easy problem first.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Except that's a false solution. That does nothing to fix
| the neglect at home, especially over weekends and summers.
| framapotari wrote:
| "Sorry Timmy, I know you're hungry but giving you a
| school lunch portion would actually be a false solution.
| It would do nothing to fix the neglect you experience at
| home, especially over weekends and summers."
| beart wrote:
| What do you propose to do with these children, once they have
| been taken away from their families?
| veunes wrote:
| We can't keep pretending that punishing kids for their parents'
| circumstances is anything but cruel
| mistyvales wrote:
| Depressing
| brundolf wrote:
| Many people, especially in our subculture, tend to feel like if
| they can't solve an entire problem forever, if they can't Change
| The World, what they're doing is futile and pointless
|
| But most people can't change the world. Most individuals _shouldn
| 't_ have the power to change the world. What we _can_ do is be a
| force for good in the lives that are proximal to us. If we can
| make a few people 's lives better, we should rest easy knowing
| that we've done our part.
|
| If we can do more than that, then great. But never let the
| overwhelming hugeness of the entire world cripple your ability to
| make your little dent. Most people only get the chance to make a
| little dent - if that - and there's nothing wrong with that.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_Thrower
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| One of my favorite quotes:
|
| _> "I was in the Air Force a while, and they had what they
| call 'policing the area,' and I think that's a pretty good
| thing to go by. If everyone just takes care of their own area,
| then we won't have any problems. Be here. Be present. Wherever
| you are, be there. And look around you, and see what needs to
| be changed."
|
| -Willie Nelson_
| elcritch wrote:
| Reminds me of another one:
|
| > To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in
| order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the
| family in order; to put the family in order; we must first
| cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts
| right.
|
| Confucius, The Great Learning
| socalgal2 wrote:
| Isn't this also the tragedy of the commons problem though? It
| only takes a few bad actors to not take care of their own
| area and over time, those that are doing extra to make up for
| them eventually feel like they're being taken advantage of.
|
| I feel like in Japan it works because the culture adds enough
| social pressure that those not doing their part fall in line
| - or something. I don't think most western culture has that
| social pressure any more nor do I expect it can by added back
| titzer wrote:
| The only thing that changes behavior is consequences. Thus
| fines and a functioning justice system are born. Somehow
| shame doesn't work anymore.
| ziml77 wrote:
| I think shame fails to work when people can broadcast
| online a version of events that makes them look like the
| victim and get tons of people backing them up.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> Somehow shame doesn 't work anymore._
|
| We don't need to wonder. Shame as a mechanism only works
| in social contexts that feature a high degree of social
| dependency. In olden days, if all your neighbors hated
| you to the point of dissociating with you, that could be
| tantamount to a death sentence (who's going to share food
| with you when your harvest fails or take care of you when
| your household falls ill?); that's a society with high
| social dependency. For better or worse, modern society is
| built on abstracting away this dependency. (It's the same
| thing that explains declining church attendance: a church
| is a social organization, but nowadays if you need to
| find a spouse you ask a dating app instead of your
| congregation, and then when you need marriage counseling
| you ask a professional marriage counselor instead of your
| priest, etc. Economic transactions have replaced social
| dependency.)
| Suppafly wrote:
| >Economic transactions have replaced social dependency.
|
| The flipside of this is that a lot of situations have
| improved. You can divorce your abusive spouse now instead
| of your priest telling you to just accept the abuse
| because god wills it. Everyone whining about the downfall
| of society seems to forget that it didn't actually work
| for everyone before.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> Everyone whining about the downfall of society seems
| to forget that it didn 't actually work for everyone
| before._
|
| I'm not presenting this as either a good thing or a bad
| thing, only pointing out that the mechanisms by which
| people ensure social adherence have changed. And yes,
| that's "changed", and not "gone away". For all the things
| the cryptobros got wrong, they did accurately identify
| that, in a transactional society, the only thing required
| to exclude someone from society is to take away their
| ability to perform financial transactions.
| em-bee wrote:
| it's not that bad. japan may be the one extreme and the US
| the other, europe is somewhere in the middle on a sliding
| scale towards the US. the broken windows theory fits here.
| to use the analogy, if a window is broken in japan someone
| would go fix it unprompted. europe mostly manages to keep
| broken windows in check. and in the US broken windows have
| gotten out of hand.
|
| the better alternative to social pressure is building
| community. social pressure means that you are forced to
| conform because everyone you interact with expects you to.
| community means that everyone you interact with is your
| friend.
| xeonmc wrote:
| "It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but
| to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we
| are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so
| that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What
| weather they shall have is not ours to rule."
|
| -- Gandalf
| jaggederest wrote:
| I find it really challenging to get people to notice these
| things, let alone actively take even small actions for positive
| change.
|
| I'm interested in what the community thinks are some of the
| methods I could use to improve these things, and why people
| quickly become inured to these kinds of problems.
|
| I'm thinking, specifically, about peeling paint, litter, dirty
| signs, the kind of thing that even a passing effort, a hammer
| and a nail, or a bit of soap and water can fix for a
| surprisingly long time (~months, certainly).
|
| It's one of the things I think is an interesting contrast
| between "first world" countries and many of the places I've
| been that are poorer - less wealthy places seem to put a
| significant effort into basic maintenance, because replacing
| things are so expensive compared to the cost of living.
| verisimi wrote:
| If you pay government 40-50% of your income to government to
| manage common areas, you think you have already paid for
| this. You would feel foolish to spend even more of your
| resources on this. It is someone else's job, not yours.
|
| In places where there is not such a strong governance
| structure, what you see is people doing more of what comes
| naturally to everyone. The communal idea arises naturally for
| things that people want to do. Sure, it's messier without
| town planning officers, etc, but the governance structure
| doesn't stop things getting done.
|
| You say they are poorer but gdp, salary or whatever is not
| the only metric one can use to measure meaning in life. Time
| is the real money.
| taxedrollik wrote:
| Part of the reason people don't do those kinds of things
| where I live is that the municipalities specifically prohibit
| any kind of alterations, including repair, on municipal
| property. If something is broken, they will tell you that you
| must wait until the municipality feels like fixing it
| squigz wrote:
| I think it's that people are tired. Tired of paying large
| amounts of money to taxes that don't seem to fix anything in
| their day-to-day lives. Tired of companies screwing them over
| at every possible turn.
|
| I recognize things won't easily change while people think
| that, that it's a tricky, vicious cycle. I wish I knew how to
| fix it, other than - as another commenter points out - doing
| the 'little' things and pushing ever so slowly for the change
| we need.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >I think it's that people are tired. Tired of paying large
| amounts of money to taxes that don't seem to fix anything
| in their day-to-day lives. Tired of companies screwing them
| over at every possible turn.
|
| Tired of hearing these endless debates. Tired of seeing
| people peddle policy based o11n one set of principals out
| of one side of their mouth and a different policy based on
| different principals out of the other.
|
| >doing the 'little' things and pushing ever so slowly for
| the change we need.
|
| Sometimes improving things, sometimes creating yet more
| layers of spaghetti that prevent future change....
| squigz wrote:
| > Sometimes improving things, sometimes creating yet more
| layers of spaghetti that prevent future change....
|
| I'm talking about, say, engaging in discussions about
| politics, trying to understand each other, trying to
| compromise.
|
| I assume you're referring to, for example, enacting more
| government programs.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >I assume you're referring to, for example, enacting more
| government programs.
|
| Or saddling existing ones with poorly thought out
| requirements and revisions and whatnot.
|
| These programs always seem to start decent and go to crap
| with time as the "older" bits of government sink their
| teeth in with subsequent revisions because there's no
| political will to constantly fight the fight you need to
| to keep it from becoming co-opted or at the very least
| degraded by other interests.
|
| At some point people start noticing the pattern, get
| tired of it and just saying no to the initial request
| even if it has merit. It's probably just yet another
| symptom of how bankrupt our institutions are. <sighs>
| sokoloff wrote:
| Fixing peeling paint correctly is a really substantial
| undertaking, especially as compared to picking up litter.
|
| Removing the loose paint, figuring out if there's a moisture
| problem, rot/rust, or other physical repairs needed, buying
| appropriate paint (maybe matching the color), then sanding,
| cleaning, priming, sanding, cleaning, and painting.
|
| Slapping a bit of new paint over a problem is not the answer
| unless you want to make a recurring problem out of it.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| On the other hand, people pushing for incremental improvements
| on narrow issues while maintaining motivated ignorance of 2nd
| and 3rd order consequences multiplied by scale is exactly how
| we get the perverse systems we have.
| jebarker wrote:
| > Most individuals shouldn't have the power to change the
| world.
|
| This is a great insight. I have a tendency to think grandiose
| thoughts about the impact I should be having on the world, but
| there's really no reason that any of us should be able to make
| an outsized impact.
| irrational wrote:
| I'm thankful I live in a state that uses my tax money to make all
| school breakfast and lunches free. I wonder what percentage of
| state taxes is actually required to pay for all school breakfast
| and lunches? Making sure kids aren't inhibited from learning
| because of empty stomachs seems like a no brainer.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| The other important part of this policy is that it normalizes
| kids not paying for lunch. This is important because they
| realized many kids who couldn't afford lunch were still
| skipping their free lunch because they were embarrassed to get
| a free lunch. When everyone gets a free lunch then nobody is
| embarrassed.
| timewizard wrote:
| I've heard of some schools going out of their way to make it
| obvious which kids were receiving free lunch and which
| weren't; however, that wasn't universal to all programs.
|
| Our school just had "lunch tickets." There was a register on
| a different floor from the lunch room where you could go buy
| them, pick them up if your parents bought them by check, or
| pick them up if you were on the assistance list. Once you had
| them they were all the same. Only the person at the register
| would know your status.
|
| None of my friends who got that ever were embarrassed in any
| way about using them as they were the only ones to know.
| riffraff wrote:
| It seems it should be trivial to solve the differentiation
| problem too.
|
| When I was a kid in Italy in the '90s we paid for lunch in
| middle school, but this was done through "lunch tickets".
|
| You'd get those from the town hall, some of us paid for them,
| some got them for free, but you would not know about it when
| getting lunch.
|
| (Still, free lunch for all kids should obviously be the
| default)
| mylesp wrote:
| As an Australian, I find it crazy that getting food from a
| cafeteria at school is the norm in the US.
|
| In Australia you bring food from home 90% of the time. On special
| occasions or every now and then you order lunch from the canteen.
|
| It seems almost against American individualism to have a communal
| meal where everyone is served up the same food and sit indoors in
| a dining hall. Maybe it is just strange to me but I can't be the
| only person to think this.
| gedy wrote:
| It seems to have changed in past decades. When I was in school
| in 70s/80s, everyone brought their lunch. And we weren't in a
| well-off area or anything.
| Brybry wrote:
| As a sibling comment noted, the National School Lunch Program
| started in 1946. [1]
|
| The School Breakfast Program started in the 1960s/70s. [2]
|
| More recently, in 2010, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act was
| passed which enabled the Community Eligibility Provision
| which lets low income area schools offer free food to all
| kids without individual application/qualification. [3][4]
|
| Various schools I went to in the 90s/00s had some kids
| bringing their lunch, some kids paying the school for lunch,
| and some getting free lunch (because they were poor enough to
| qualify).
|
| [1] https://www.fns.usda.gov/nslp
|
| [2] https://www.fns.usda.gov/sbp/factsheet
|
| [3] https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-
| releases/2014/05/...
|
| [4] https://www.fns.usda.gov/cn/cep
| crooked-v wrote:
| School-provided lunches in the US started in the first place in
| the 1930s and 40s because the sheer number of malnourished
| teenagers was making military planners nervous. The US is much
| wealthier now, but there's still about 20 million children who
| get free lunch for financial reasons.
| _AzMoo wrote:
| In Australia this is actually an issue for low-
| income/underprivileged children in schools. Some parents don't
| give their kids breakfast or lunch, because they can't afford
| it or they just don't care.
|
| Some schools run a "breakfast club" that everybody's welcome to
| attend, where they provide things like toast or cereal to kids
| that don't get breakfast at home, and it's couched in shame-
| softening language, though most kids know that if you go to
| breakfast club it's probably because you can't actually afford
| breakfast.
|
| Schools will often have some bread and spreads available in the
| office for kids who are sent to school without lunch. I'm not
| sure how widespread it is, but I know that in some schools this
| is just funded voluntarily by some of the staff who will pick
| up more bread or whatever when it's required, because they
| don't want to see kids go hungry.
|
| I think the idea of having lunch provided as part of your
| school fees is actually a good one. No kid should go hungry, or
| be subject to humiliation and shame, because their parents
| can't afford or can't be bothered to provide them lunch.
| trollbridge wrote:
| Back in the 80s, everyone packed a lunch when I was growing up
| in Australia. One of my brother's classmates was of Malay
| background, and we were fascinated by the lunches he'd bring
| in, including a thermos containing fried rice which would still
| be hot when he'd eat it at lunch.
|
| America is a place where we don't like the idea of people going
| hungry. The government provides a great deal of food
| assistance; 13% of the country receives food stamps. Government
| policy is that every American should be getting at least $291
| of food; if providing yourself that would be more than 30% of
| your income after expenses like rent, the government makes up
| the difference. Groceries are cheap, relatively speaking -
| they're sure cheaper than what they cost in Australia. We have
| extra programs for pregnant/nursing moms which provide food
| like milk, eggs, beans, and fresh produce, or if they can't or
| don't want to nurse, we provide infant formula for them.
| (Income based, but about half of new moms qualify, although in
| turn only around half of those new moms bother to take
| advantage of it.) We have excellent food banks that (at least
| in my area) are well-stocked. They currently have "expanded
| eligibility" (meaning they don't screen you when you come in)
| because they aren't running out of food.
|
| We don't like the idea of kids at school going hungry either,
| so first we had school lunches, and now we have school
| breakfasts in places. We also have "summer" food programs. My
| state decided to use the federal funding for this for "summer
| EBT", which means food stamp amounts go up by what would be the
| cost of providing school lunches. (Americans skip out of school
| for 3+ months in the summer.) The general trend is towards free
| lunches for everyone, instead of making it income eligible.
|
| Whether any of this is a good idea is another question. We
| don't seem to be a terribly healthy nation, and we eat way too
| much ultra-processed food which does not seem to be good for
| us. Big Food and Big Ag have an incredibly strong grip on
| government. The amount of money involved is big money. To give
| you an idea of the dollars we're talking, the amount of food
| stamps spent in America on soda was around $10 billion. You can
| go ahead and guess which corporation lobbied to expand soda to
| be eligible for purchase with food stamps.
| protocolture wrote:
| Same. Really seems like a yank thing.
|
| I remember the horse trading at lunch as we rotated sambos to
| align better with taste.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I've had the same experience here in the Netherlands. Except
| there often was no real cafeteria to order from if you forgot
| your lunch or if something special was going on.
|
| This mechanism does cause troubles for the poorest kids,
| though. Poor families send their kids to school without lunch,
| or with very unhealthy food (because that's cheapest).
|
| I'm in favour of schools offering lunch. Parents pay for the
| sandwiches or whatever they hand out to their kids anyway,
| might as well get the benefits of economies of scale to reduce
| costs, while helping poor kids through the day. I doubt the
| taxes necessary to make this happen would be close to the price
| parents pay for food (and the time they spend preparing meals
| for their young kids).
| chasd00 wrote:
| DISD ( Dallas Independent School District ) has had free lunch
| for as long as i can remember. Free breakfast too. On school
| holidays you can still goto school and get a meal. I want to say
| they do this on weekends too. Granted, MREs from an Army surplus
| store are better than school lunch but it is free. I don't think
| my kids have ever eaten a school lunch.
|
| During COVID my wife and I got a EBT (food stamps) card in the
| mail from the school district with like $2,000 on it for food. It
| was basically the dollars spent on school lunch for the time the
| kids were not in school.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| Wow that's amazing. I'm glad to hear they're doing it at least
| somewhat right somewhere.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > I don't think my kids have ever eaten a school lunch.
|
| I am confused why it was important to include this sentence in
| your post. Overall: Excellent. This sentence: Not required. Is
| this a flex?
| imp0cat wrote:
| It's just a way to indirectly say that the school food was
| not awesome.
| chasd00 wrote:
| funny thing, i actually thought about that sentence a lot. I
| added it in after writing the rest of the post because i felt
| bad implying I subject my kids to school food. I wasn't
| intending that as a "flex" but just that the food is really
| bad. On the other hand, i understand not all families have
| that option so maybe it is a flex in an unintended way.
| deadbabe wrote:
| If I knew there was a debt like this for less than $1000 at a
| school nearby I'd probably pay it off. But the information just
| doesn't seem to be out there.
| iandanforth wrote:
| On the off chance you're interested in school lunches I highly
| recommend watching videos of Japanese school lunches on YouTube.
| There's a bunch out there now and if you were raised in the
| American system it will probably blow your mind. The idea that
| lunches can be freshly made, on site, out of healthy ingredients
| and children are active participants in serving and cleaning up
| is just crazy. When I encountered it for the first time I felt
| like a big part of my childhood had been sold to the lowest
| bidder.
| staplers wrote:
| I felt like a big part of my childhood had been sold to the
| lowest bidder.
|
| It was. Most local procurement laws enforce this.
| delfinom wrote:
| It wasn't just sold to the lowest bidder, the subsidized
| lunch program is specifically not to subsidize the kids, but
| to bail out farmers growing crap nobody wants.
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| when your tax money helps hungry children that's socialism
| and that's evil. when it helps agricultural conglomerates,
| otoh...
| gregw134 wrote:
| In our case, sold to the bidder who gave kickbacks to the
| district supervisor.
| Suppafly wrote:
| we had pepsi machines in my middle school because the pepsi
| distributor in town "donated" a new score board.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Selling to the lowest bidder isn't necessarily bad if the
| requirements are set correctly.
| e_i_pi_2 wrote:
| Even worse - it's sold to the lowest bidder so they can sell
| it back to you for profit. This is a perfect example of why
| GDP isn't a good measure for how well a country is doing - if
| the kids do it themselves they may learn a bunch and enjoy it
| and make their lives better, but it doesn't create jobs or
| profit, so the incentives are against it.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| > The idea that lunches can be freshly made, on site, out of
| healthy ingredients and children
|
| Excellent garden path sentence.
| xarope wrote:
| A friend who's a pre-school teacher has this excellent
| t-shirt (I LMAO the first time I saw it):
|
| let's eat, kids.
|
| let's eat kids.
|
| punctuation saves lives.
|
| https://m.media-
| amazon.com/images/I/B1pppR4gVKL._CLa%7C2140%...
| throw3436 wrote:
| made my day! thanks for sharing =D
| ksp-atlas wrote:
| Shows up as a plain black shirt on my end
| westurner wrote:
| "Eats, Shoots & Leaves"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eats,_Shoots_%26_Leaves
| x-complexity wrote:
| > The idea that lunches can be freshly made, on site, out of
| healthy ingredients and children are active participants in
| serving and cleaning up is just crazy.
|
| > When I encountered it for the first time I felt like a big
| part of my childhood had been sold to the lowest bidder.
|
| ....I share the sentiment, but I also see the chasm between the
| requirements to get to what's desired, & what's actually given
| to meet those requirements (which is almost nothing).
|
| To have this program exist requires children that can be
| trusted to not waste the food that they're given, to behave, &
| to learn about preparing their own meals.
|
| It's a bootstrapping problem, trust problem, & expectations
| problem, all at once.
|
| Japan was able to do this by pressuring its citizens & youth to
| pay the cultural toll needed to get there, and it was a toll
| that *everyone* had to pay into. No exceptions.
|
| Whilst there can be pockets of local communities that can do
| this, the probability that the same thing can happen
| *everywhere* in the US is close to zero, given the cultural
| emphasis placed on individualism.
|
| It is also from this emphasis of individual exceptionalism
| where there can be no guarantees that *everyone* will pay the
| cultural toll. It must be *everyone*, or this proposal won't
| work: It'll just be another form of subsidization by another
| name.
|
| ------
|
| Note: This doesn't mean that it can't happen, just that the
| amount of effort needed to get there is monumental, and that
| certain axioms have to be relaxed significantly to do so.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Kids don't go to all schools: they go to their school.
|
| So by fixing things in one school, any school, you're really
| fixing things for all the kids that go there.
| pnutjam wrote:
| This is why the wealthy should be required to use public
| schools.
| Aurornis wrote:
| People who send kids to private schools pay taxes (which
| fund schools) but don't take resources from public
| schools.
|
| Forcing them to _use_ the public schools would further
| divide the tax funding across more kids, reducing the
| funds available per kid.
|
| This suggestion is reminiscent of California trying to
| reduce educational inequality by eliminating advanced
| math classes and putting everyone together. It was a
| terrible idea, but it made sense to someone looking for
| what they thought was an easy solution.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| The idea is around the wealthy having the incentive to
| financially support public schools.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Public schools are funded by taxes. Wealthy people
| already pay those taxes.
|
| If you force everyone to use the public schools, you're
| just dividing the tax money across more students.
|
| In the context of school lunch, they would just send
| their kids to school with a packed lunch.
|
| The whole concept of forbidding people from taking
| advantage of other educational opportunities is half-
| baked class warfare fodder. It doesn't make sense if you
| think about the numbers, but it appeals to people who are
| more interested in punishing wealthy people than fixing
| the situation.
| dagw wrote:
| Full disclosure, am a parent who sends their kid to a
| charter school and strong advocate for parents to be
| allowed to choose where to send their schools.
|
| That being said, the strong version of the argument being
| made is that if all schools are funded nationally (so
| that schools in more affluent areas don't automatically
| get more money) and rich people and people of influence
| were forced to send their kids to the same public schools
| as every body else, then those people would be more
| inclined to use their influence to try to make public
| schools better and would be less inclined to fight
| against raising taxes to improve public education. Of
| course this would go against those peoples narrow self
| interest (since many of their kids would probably end up
| getting a worse education) so it is unlikely to happen
| Aurornis wrote:
| I understand the argument, but I'm trying to point out
| that similar claims were made about eliminating advanced
| math classes in California and it did not work at all.
|
| I think the claim appeals to some people because they're
| bought in to the idea that a small fraction of wealthy
| people control everything from school budgets to taxes,
| and therefore if you force them into your space and
| restrict their rights to other options they will use that
| extreme influence to improve the situation for everyone.
|
| Yet in practice it doesn't work, and we've seen it play
| out. In California the parents who cared about their
| kids' math scores just gave up on school math classes and
| hired tutors or did their own at-home tutoring (at great
| sacrifice, especially for the non-wealthy). With school
| lunches you would just see parents with means sending
| their kids to school with good prepared lunches. I
| suppose the next logical extension is to ban wealthy
| parents from sending their kids in with lunches and hope
| that it will set off the chain of events that's supposed
| to make them fix the problem for everyone.
|
| Where I live our school budgets and funding are partially
| up for vote on the ballot every election cycle. It's not
| for the wealthy to decide, it's just a public vote. And
| things still aren't passing easily. I think people reach
| for the wealthy as an easy excuse for who to blame, but
| whenever I look at the ballot results it's impossible to
| ignore the fact that the general public is averse to
| increasing school budgets right now.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _the idea that a small fraction of wealthy people
| control everything from school budgets to taxes_
|
| It's not control.
|
| It's simply that there exists a (relatively-speaking)
| small fraction of wealthy people. To wit, income
| inequality.
|
| If we had less income inequality in the US, there
| wouldn't need to be nudges to align wealthy people's
| interests with everyone else.
|
| If we're fine with large amounts of income inequality,
| then we're going to need to put in some utilitarian
| guardrails, given that $ = political power and political
| power controls school funding.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| The wealthy have much more influence on the politicians
| that write the funding bills than poor people do. Surely
| you realize this.
| erikerikson wrote:
| I get your math and appreciate the insight within it.
|
| At the same time, PTAs accept cash which when not being
| spent on private school is available. The challenge is
| getting those parents to allocate it when it will be
| spread across the entire student body. Far more impactful
| is the factor of alignment of incentives that given
| wealthy families' generally greater proximity to power
| can deliver funding.
|
| I liked this: it's not private school vs public school,
| it is private school vs public school plus a tuition's
| worth of enrichment.
|
| Your other comment does get at why my kid is in private
| school: you can't ignore special education needs.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > At the same time, PTAs accept cash which when not being
| spent on private school is available.
|
| I think this is magical thinking underlying the concept:
| That wealthy parents will step up to provide money to
| privately fund the public schools for everyone.
|
| We have plenty of evidence that the is just isn't the
| case, though. People spend that money on things like
| sending their kids to school with their own lunches and
| hiring private tutors.
|
| When parents have lost faith in a school's ability to
| provide good education (or lunches, or activities, etc)
| they don't think the best course of action is to send the
| school a lot of money and hope for the best. They take
| matters into their own hands, outside of school.
|
| The entire concept is built on layers of wishful thinking
| that just aren't supported.
| erikerikson wrote:
| We are wealthy parents who stepped up and gave
| substantial amounts to the PTA
|
| We made our decision (noted before) when the school spent
| its energy to manage us rather than fix problems and
| serve our student. To be fair, there were ties they had
| no control over but they definitely failed in ways they
| could have done better too. When things that matter to us
| are out of our power we put them back under our power to
| the extent we can.
|
| The problem with defection is the large scale/long term
| reduced prosperity trajectory.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > People who send kids to private schools pay taxes
| (which fund schools) but don't take resources from public
| schools.
|
| They're working very hard to change that.
| https://apnews.com/article/texas-school-vouchers-
| ec901398f7f...
|
| "Texas will implement a $1 billion school voucher
| program, one of the largest in the country, that uses
| public dollars to fund private school tuition under a
| bill Gov. Greg Abbott signed Saturday, capping off a
| yearslong effort by Republicans... Texas joins more than
| 30 other states that have implemented a similar program,
| of which about a dozen have launched or expanded their
| programs in recent years to make most students eligible."
| idrios wrote:
| The wealthy do use public schools. They pay huge amounts
| to live in upper class neighborhoods with wealthy peers,
| where a lot of tax money goes into the schooling system
| so the kids can take all sorts of extracurriculars and AP
| classes. It gets the same results as private school but
| the cost comes from living in that neighborhood rather
| than paying the school directly
| mystraline wrote:
| The underlying issue too is "Sorry Timmy, cause we're not
| rich and live in a poorer district, your schooling is
| worse and you have access to less choice."
|
| And that goes back to how taxes for public schools are
| driven. The problem seems too engrained and too massive
| to fix. And since schools are state controlled, you'd
| need 50 solutions, not 1.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| California actually has a pretty solid school tax-
| redistribition system that more or less solves this
| problem (of course districts still can and do fundraise
| for direct donations to the PTA/music fund and bond
| measures to upgrade facilities, but it's still vastly
| more fair).
|
| In a completely unrelated phenomenon, private schools are
| incredibly popular among Californians of means.
| nothercastle wrote:
| I assume you forgot /s on the unrelated part
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Most wealthy people in CA don't send their kid to private
| school. That's a rarity even among the wealthy.
|
| There are plenty of good public schools in CA. There are
| only a handful of good private ones.
| treis wrote:
| This really isn't true anywhere in the US. The highest
| spending per pupil will be the city school district. The
| people who live there may be relatively poor but there's
| a lot more commercial real estate to tax.
| atoav wrote:
| > _To have this program exist requires children that can be
| trusted to not waste the food that they 're given, to behave,
| & to learn about preparing their own meals._ > > _It 's a
| bootstrapping problem, trust problem, & expectations problem,
| all at once._
|
| In Austrian civil service I worked with kids who had special
| needs and were predominantly from poor social backgrounds. I
| made homework with them, drove them to school and back from
| day care in a bus, and I prepared food with them, had them
| deal with the dirty dishes, etc.
|
| Most of the kids totally crazy behavior immidiately made
| sense once you met the parents. In fact there were only two
| kids where this wasn't the case and the first had PTSD of a
| life-changing magnitude (fled the Syrian war) and the other
| had good parents but a mental condition (I suspect severe
| ADHD).
|
| Most of those kids would have been classified by the general
| public as hopeless cases.
|
| I cooked with them, did the dishes, baked, regularily. Even
| kids that get beaten at home or were riddled with war trauma
| are surprisingly reliable if you just give them a task they
| understand. And turns out tasks they do every day are easy to
| understand after a week.
|
| If those kids could make it, I am not the least worried about
| kids in better circumstances. Will it always be 100% perfect
| when kids do it? Will every kid be at it with full effort
| every day? Will a new kid grok it instantly? No. But that is
| okay. What is the worst that can happen? They go without food
| as a consequence? Other Kids show them how?
|
| You're making it sound as if preparing food together is some
| unnatural herculian challenge while preparing food together
| was probably the most common act humanity has ever shared
| doing throughout its history.
|
| No it must not be everyone. Prepare food? Get food. Pretty
| simple. Waste food? That was yours. And the other kids also
| don't like to see that.
|
| The rason for having a society is to deal with those kind of
| differences. If you teach kids how to get structure into
| their lives and how to eat healthy the wasted food will
| _easily_ be saved in future costs in the health and social
| systems.
|
| Also: my kids could do this, US kids can't. What does thst
| mean for the US economy 4 decades down the line in
| comparison? You really think the US can afford to "educate"
| kids that way?
| gosub100 wrote:
| > the cultural emphasis placed on individualism.
|
| That's just a roundabout way to spell diversity, isn't it?
| tomsmeding wrote:
| It's not, they are different things. Diversity refers to
| people of various biological backgrounds, mental makeups
| and opinions, financial powers, etc. Individualism refers
| to the idea that everyone lives for their own benefit
| primarily, and for "the group" (town, country, club, etc.)
| secondarily. (In Japan, one lives for the group primarily
| -- barring exceptions, of course. Just like you have
| exceptions to individualism in the West.)
|
| You could have a society that's diverse but not individual,
| or a non-diverse one that's individual. Though there is a
| correlation.
| lurking_swe wrote:
| Individualism is a concept that emphasizes prioritizing
| oneself above all else, including family, friends, and your
| local community. What does that have to do with race or
| country of birth, or your gender?
| godshatter wrote:
| People who follow individualism, from what I've seen and
| experienced, are simply the ones who are not joining the
| tribe that has managed to get them hating the other
| tribes the most. They actually have at least one belief
| they could agree on with each tribe, but also have one or
| more beliefs that would get them attacked or banished by
| each tribe. The latter always wins, so all tribes hate
| the individualist for not hating the other tribes enough.
|
| Tribes that talk about individualism as being a great
| strength and then punishing you for not conforming are
| not really that individualistic, in my opinion.
|
| It's not the individualists who are the problem. They are
| the ones getting ostracized by all for daring to have a
| set of beliefs that don't conform precisely with any of
| the tribes warring with each other. They would prefer
| that the tribes disbanded and everyone was free to
| believe what they wanted without fear of pissing off
| people they have never met. Most people, as far as I've
| seen, just want to live their lives believing what they
| like without getting attacked out of the blue one day. I
| remember when you didn't know what others believed and
| could spend a lot of time with your favorite drink in
| hand finding out, arguing, agreeing, and leaving in
| peace. Well, at least most of the time.
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| Imagine paying the kids a small amount for their work.
|
| Outliers will be everywhere, you only have to select the
| right ones, and not fix an entire suburbs culture, and ofc
| the obligatory: tax the rich.
| presentation wrote:
| Part of the point of the Japanese way is to communicate
| that keeping public spaces clean is everyone's
| responsibility. Paying kids for it communicates the
| opposite.
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| You have pushing (social pressure) and pulling (payment)
| motivators and there are small didactive tasks to teach
| children the worthyness of effort up to large societal
| goals, taught with them. Your comparison is weird.
|
| Expecting payment does not make you a self centeted
| capitalist. Children could become one if they seen the
| normalization of exploitation all around, when payment is
| more then just fair compensation but someone elses dire
| expense and you cant have nice things otherwise.
| nothercastle wrote:
| Yeah the op doesn't get that. If you pay the kids then
| kids from wealthy families will think it's not worth
| doing
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| This "cultural toll" you talk of, is just another form of
| conformist behaviour that all societies have in different
| forms. Some countries have class/caste strata, others have a
| laissez-faire attitude to expectations in general, others
| have a rigid societal code, others appear to be less so but
| the moment you go near guns, abortion or taxation the
| societal codes and hierarchy spring into action and snap shut
| around the ankle of the idiot who went near them.
|
| Japan may look different to the society you are used to or
| grew up in, but it's no less or more conformist, it's just
| different.
|
| As a very simple example, in the US, people work for tips and
| often struggle to make ends meet in minimum wage jobs: that's
| a form of cultural toll. In Japan, nobody needs to work for
| tips (you may be followed out of the restaurant to have your
| tip returned to you), most people can make ends meet more
| easily, but there are other expectations around work and
| family: that's cultural toll too.
|
| What's interesting to me is that you seem to think that the
| status quo in the US is rightly defensible. Looking in from
| afar with limited skin in the game I'd argue it looks really,
| really dumb. This "individualism" (but where the courts get
| to tell people who they are and what they can believe when it
| comes to certain issues that have religious or historical
| undertones), seems to be leading to a fractured partisan
| nation where everyone hates anyone who even slightly
| disagrees with them. Not a great way to bring kids up...
| perhaps y'all could try something else for a while, hmm?
| erikerikson wrote:
| I upvoted this but it could really do without the last
| paragraph. Courts aren't telling us who we are or what we
| can believe. Trying to summarize our mess in so few words
| isn't something I'd attempt. Finally: many of us live
| differently and are doing our best to shift things more
| broadly.
| lucideng wrote:
| "...seems to be leading to a fractured partisan nation
| where everyone hates anyone who even slightly disagrees
| with them."
|
| This, 100x times over. The cultural toll of 'conformity'
| sounds bad until you realize it's a construct enabling
| everyone to 'play nice' in the general sense and work
| towards a greater good, collectively. We are losing that
| conformity. The average US citizen person is socially
| crippled by their outrage. Nothing else matters. If you
| have doubt in yourself, get back in that echo chamber that
| probably made you into what you are and reassure yourself.
| It used to be ok to disagree, have intelligent debate, vote
| on it, and lose.
|
| In today's US, if you want to be heard, it's more about how
| emotionally outraged you are, not how good your ideas
| actually are. The more dire you can make the outrage, the
| better. Come up with a sound bite for your movement,
| catchier the better. Misrepresent anything your oppositions
| says, retire objective and reasonable critical thinking to
| 'dinosaur thinking'. Then, convince people your
| group/movement/lifestyle has been marginalized. Then, if
| your subject agrees with you, make sure they're at least as
| outraged as you. Use any guilt that they have to steer them
| current or future causes. Next, if they won't comply,
| publicly shame and label opposition so that you can
| associate them with bad things/people/events. When you dont
| get what you want, attack the process, call them bigots,
| etc. Rinse and repeat until you get what you want.
|
| As our "cultural tolls" are avoided or erode, the more
| divided we become as a people. The more divided we are, the
| more we are seen as individuals. Everyone becomes
| marginalized when everyone is an individual. The more
| divided we are, the less we hold open doors and the more we
| slam that door in their face, because you know... they're a
| bigot or whatever, so you dont have to feel guilty for
| hurting that evil person.
| em-bee wrote:
| _To have this program exist requires children that can be
| trusted_
|
| you got that completely wrong. it requires adults that teach
| children how to behave.
|
| _Japan was able to do this by pressuring its citizens &
| youth to pay the cultural toll needed to get there, and it
| was a toll that *everyone* had to pay into_
|
| now that is just offensive.
|
| this is how japanese culture developed. there was no toll to
| achieve it. (there are some downsides, but they are mostly in
| the behavior of men towards women, which is a global
| problem). this is how most asian cultures work. and african
| too. children learn to do these things, and they learn how to
| behave properly.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| Every other part of the school operates on the assumption
| that kids can behave, learn things, and do stuff.
|
| There is no need to paint it as some kind of cultural/racial
| narrative. American children could, in fact, have more
| civilized lunch behavior if it was desired by the adults in
| charge.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Maybe this wasn't all over the US, but in the 90s I helped
| serve and clean up our elementary school lunches. There was a
| rotation through all of the older classrooms.
| iandanforth wrote:
| Mind sharing which school?
| RandallBrown wrote:
| It was a public elementary school in Bay City Michigan.
| Aurornis wrote:
| On the internet it's easy to forget that the US education
| system is extremely heterogeneous. There isn't one set of
| practices or laws that are shared across the country. It's
| very local.
|
| For me, I can barely remember school provided lunches
| existing as something that a small handful of students got.
| The majority of students brought a lunchbox from home that
| our parents prepared.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Yup, we had "hot lunch" available or you could bring your
| own. Some kids had meal cards that got them free lunch (or
| maybe just reduced lunch? I was like 8 years old so I don't
| remember.)
| saltcured wrote:
| I can remember similar from public elementary school in the
| early 80s in the suburban SF Bay Area.
|
| In kindergarten, we had a rotating chore to take the
| collective milk money for the class, exchange it for a crate
| of milk at the cafeteria, and return it to the kindergarten
| room. I can imagine social norms have changed since then
| about this de facto mandatory financial exercise.
|
| In later grades, we had some rotating lunch duties including,
| at least, rinsing the lunch trays and loading the big
| dishwasher. I can't remember if we ever helped serve food,
| but I do remember being told to be careful with the very hot
| water spray nozzle in the washing basin. I can imagine this
| having changed due to shifting safety and liability norms.
| thevillagechief wrote:
| I went to a boarding high school in Kenya (most high schools
| are boarding there) and we were responsible for cleaning the
| hostels and the bathrooms, which we had to do every morning
| before class. The flowerbeds outside our hostels were also
| our responsibility.
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| I also did this to get lunch for free in high school from
| 2008-2010. I don't remember how many hours a week it was (it
| was definitely less than 10). The shifts were prep work in
| the morning, serving lunch, or doing dishes. Each shift was
| at most an hour. It was pretty fun since it was with my
| friends at school.
| veunes wrote:
| I remember stumbling across one of those videos and just
| sitting there like, wait... this is real?
| indrora wrote:
| A Japanese friend of mine visited an American middle school
| as part of a science class. He was invited to eat lunch with
| the students or go out with the staff. He chose (after not
| having ever been in an American school cafeteria) to sit with
| the students he had talked to as a matter of respect.
|
| He sent me a picture of what he was served -- cold pizza slab
| with a cup of fruit. His comment was simply "How are you to
| learn when your soul hungers? Is this really how American
| schools prepare the minds of the youngest?" I responded with
| "Oh you're lucky, you got the fancy meal."
|
| That a cheese slice between two slices of bread with some
| mayo would be served to a child as their only food of the day
| was spiritually disgusting to him in a way he did not have
| words for.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >children are active participants in serving and cleaning up is
| just crazy
|
| They also clean the classrooms and hallways.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| > When I encountered it for the first time I felt like a big
| part of my childhood had been sold to the lowest bidder.
|
| Not to be a total downer but I often feel like this is true of
| every aspect of life in America.
| aetherspawn wrote:
| I might be misunderstanding the problem but in Australia the
| parents send the kids to school with packed lunches proportional
| to the household income... fancy lunches for rich kids, and rice
| or bread for poor kids.
| tc43 wrote:
| Or proportional to the household eating habits. I'm definitely
| in the upper income bracket of my son's state primary school
| and he brings a sandwich and a piece of fruit like every other
| kid because it's a sensible amount of food for a small child.
| em-bee wrote:
| when does your son come home and when (and what) is his next
| meal?
|
| a sandwich is enough for a mid morning snack, but not for a
| midday meal unless the kids get another meal right when they
| come home. traditional wisdom has it that you should have a
| good breakfast and lunch, and a smaller meal for dinner.
| that's possible when the kids come home no later than 2pm but
| if they usually come home at 3-4pm or later then a sandwich
| is not enough to get them through the day.
| casey2 wrote:
| There is a cafeteria at the school where students can purchase
| lunch, if they want to purchase a lunch but don't have any cash
| on hand they can use credit, if they hit their cap and want to
| purchase lunch on yet more credit they are given alternative
| meals or nothing. There is no "free lunch".
|
| ~75% of k-12 students bring lunch from home. If you are on
| assistance then your lunch is prepaid. Generally the food is so
| hilariously bad that most won't pay for it, but there are good
| schools here and there. 9-12 students generally are allowed to
| leave campus during lunch hours.
|
| There may also be an additional "a la carte" system where you
| can buy single items either if you have extra money in your
| account or have cash on hand, but not on credit. Like a
| canteen.
| protocolture wrote:
| Yeah I have never understood this one.
|
| I took a packed lunch to school almost every day. Later on I
| packed it myself. If I wanted the canteen had hot meals.
| Sometimes if you forgot your lunch they would give you 1 meal
| on credit.
|
| IIRC there's a program in the absolute poorest aboriginal
| communities to provide free hot lunches at school, because it
| nearly guarantees attendance and works towards defeating
| malnutrition. I dont think yanks are that hard up yet but who
| knows.
|
| Somehow the yanks are constantly demanding free lunches like
| there's no alternative or workaround?
| camdenreslink wrote:
| New York State just passed universal free lunch and breakfast for
| public school students. Of all the things that we spend our tax
| dollars on, this feels like a no brainer. Making sure children
| are fed should be at the top of the list.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| Stuff like this seems like such a dividing line to me. Like, in
| theory when people believe things that are morally wrong, I
| want to reach out to them with compassion and respect and try
| to gently persuade them to my side because we're all, in
| theory, on the same side. But if you don't want kids to be fed,
| I really am not sure we're actually on the same side any more
| and I really am not sure what to do with that.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| People generally don't want the Federal government involved,
| thats where the consensus has been lacking.
|
| this is exhibit A of showing that these country sized states
| are fully capable of handling their own affairs and universal
| access to things, the same as the 21st century developed
| nations that do the same thing
|
| You and the other parties actually agree that it isn't
| controversial, there are many funding sources if its deemed
| important, keep the federal government out of it
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Except none of that is actually true. Unconvinced? Go look
| at a heat map of poverty in the US and then check out which
| states get bulk of federal assistance dollars. Note none of
| those states is running a massive budget surplus. While I
| have you I'd like to also point out that "hrrr federal
| government bad" is not only tautological, as an ideology
| it's deeply stupid . States frequently encounter problems
| that require a bigger budget than they can muster to solve
| (see also: disaster recovery).
| yieldcrv wrote:
| "hrrr federal government bad" is not my argument. I don't
| think the federal government is bad. I think its budget
| is not balanced and its funding has strings attached that
| undermines the sovereignty of independent institutions.
|
| Disaster recovery is also not the topic nor does it
| provide any introspective ability on this topic.
|
| yes, I agree if something is not within the budget, and
| there is also no consensus, then it won't happen. I'm not
| sure that even needed to be said, but I am familiar with
| people that would try to make programs happen in those
| situations too. I would vote no on those proposals in
| those cases.
| nickff wrote:
| Please don't respond with a fake quote; double quotation
| marks are for direct quotes (which are assumed to be from
| the parent unless otherwise attributed). If you're going
| to make something up, please use single quotes, and make
| it clear that the parent didn't actually say that.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| This is simply not true. Multiple states have tried and
| failed to pass state funding for universal free lunches -
| because in each state there are groups who argue giving
| free lunches to all kids is bad. It's not an argument about
| where the money comes from.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Edit: look here is one now
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43900957
| yieldcrv wrote:
| and NY State is an example of where it is true.
|
| I'm not sure how the observation that other places also
| lacked consensus at the state level discredits anything.
|
| Some people dislike it on the federal level, and are fine
| with it at the state level, as they are two different
| organizations. My comment was only about them.
| hiddencost wrote:
| Naw. Not true.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| It's not that I don't want kids fed. It's that I know deep in
| my soul that $100 will be spent per child, with $99 extracted
| along the way by various politicians / consultants / unions,
| and $1 of disgusting food will (sometimes) be provided to a
| child.
|
| Guess how I know?
|
| And what I like about leftists is their sympathy. What I
| dislike is their lack of real-world knowledge
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > It's not that I don't want kids fed. It's that I know
| deep in my soul that $100 will be spent per child, with $99
| extracted along the way by various politicians /
| consultants / unions, and $1 of disgusting food will
| (sometimes) be provided to a child.
|
| If you oppose any actual steps to feed kids, then you don't
| want the kids fed. The rest of this is just you justifying
| why you don't want the kids fed.
|
| If you want the program to feed the kids to be efficient:
| guess what, the left wants that too, and we're really happy
| to work to make that happen.
|
| But the fact is, the right is happy to simply throw out the
| program and let the kids starve rather than tolerate any
| inefficiency. And notably, that inefficiency is often
| created by right-wing policies which attempt to prevent
| anyone perceived as not deserving aid from receiving aid.
|
| If you vote Republican because you want the government to
| be more efficient, you're piling on even more bullshit. The
| national debt consistently increases more under Republican
| presidents than Democratic ones[1]--the perceived austerity
| of conservative government is entirely nonexistent. This
| problem is only worse under Trump: DOGE has made things
| _less_ efficient by firing and rehiring half of the workers
| in government without even a basic understanding of how the
| programs work and or could be improved[2].
|
| > And what I like about leftists is their sympathy. What I
| dislike is their lack of real-world knowledge
|
| I'm well aware these programs are inefficient, though
| they're certainly not 1% efficient as in your made up
| numbers. It's just that I'm not willing to stop helping
| people because it's inefficient. I'd like to make it more
| efficient, but it's pretty hard to make programs more
| efficient when people like you are constantly trying to get
| rid of them and defund them.
|
| [1] https://www.investopedia.com/democrats-vs-republicans-
| who-ha...
|
| [2]
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/03/21/doge-
| gove...
| pnutjam wrote:
| The arguments are so facetious and facile. India has more
| corruption then the US and they can handle a free lunch
| program for all kids. Why can't America?
| 91bananas wrote:
| Because many of the people that need it the most keep
| voting against their own interests. Because education is
| terrible in all the the states that vote red.
| kbelder wrote:
| >If you oppose any actual steps to feed kids, then you
| don't want the kids fed. The rest of this is just you
| justifying why you don't want the kids fed.
|
| Don't be ridiculous. It won't win you any arguments.
| watwut wrote:
| > And what I like about leftists is their sympathy. What I
| dislike is their lack of real-world knowledge
|
| The problem is that leftists have more real life knowledge
| then far right, maga and Trump.
|
| It was not leftists who voted for administrations that blow
| up deficits the most while complaining about deficits. It
| was leftists who were 100% correct about what conservatives
| plan and do. And it is not the left who pointificates about
| health and education ... while actively making them worst
| and actively slashing ways to measure how they are
| performing.
| framapotari wrote:
| "It's not that I don't want kids fed, I would just rather
| that kids go hungry than feeding them with the inefficient
| and corrupt system that I imagined."
| inerte wrote:
| A few of you will die of hunger, but these are taxes I am
| not willing to pay.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| Declining to solve a problem because the solution doesn't
| meet abstract criteria like "the right amount of
| efficiency?"
|
| Sounds like virtue signaling to me
| verisimi wrote:
| I'll play devil's advocate, and you tell me the immorality of
| the position.
|
| Say you have no children. Is it an acceptable position to
| hold that 'those people who have children should also be the
| ones to look after them'? Shouldn't you have considered these
| sorts of expenses and being able to meet them, rather than
| expecting to receive handouts?
| yojo wrote:
| You are not denying food to the parents, you are denying
| food to the children. They did not choose to be born, and
| they certainly didn't choose the fiscal responsibility of
| their parents.
|
| Maybe there is room in there to shame the parents or give
| them a slap on the wrist, but the kids are blameless and
| denying them food makes you probably a monster.
| verisimi wrote:
| I would not deny food to a starving child, but, as an
| emergency, that's an entirely different proposition from
| whether everyone (even the childless) should be on the
| hook for all children's lunches.
|
| And then, why stop at lunches? Why not give all children
| breakfast and dinner too, and buy them good clothes to
| wear?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > And then, why stop at lunches? Why not give all
| children breakfast and dinner too, and buy them good
| clothes to wear?
|
| Indeed: Why not? Certainly a better investment than yet
| another round of tax cuts for billionaires.
| verisimi wrote:
| How about this: we give _all_ people all meals, clothes,
| housing, heating (all essentials) _and_ spending money so
| that they can explore their interests, travel, etc?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| That's how most of Europe actually works: we assist those
| who for whatever reason are unable to support themselves.
|
| Granted, our systems aren't perfect either. People fall
| through the cracks sometimes or have to deal with inane
| bureaucracy. But you generally won't see large
| encampments of homeless citizens openly defecating on the
| sidewalks or school children being shamed for their
| parents not having lunch money.
| verisimi wrote:
| 'Most of Europe'? Really? Does everyone you know gets
| free meals, free housing, heating, etc and spending
| money? You're dreaming!
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Does everyone you know gets free meals, free housing,
| heating, etc and spending money?
|
| Read again what I wrote, and read precisely this time:
| _we assist those who for whatever reason are unable to
| support themselves_.
| hofrogs wrote:
| This is what humanity must aim for.
| verisimi wrote:
| Humanity can't 'aim', 'think' or 'know'. 'Humanity' is
| merely a collective noun, a linguistic shortcut.
|
| Individuals people can aim, individuals have autonomy.
| You can try to discuss and convince others (or, more
| likely, force them). Not all individuals will have the
| same answer - people will develop different solutions to
| problems.
|
| Some individuals see a behemoth governance system as a
| problem in its own right, and don't think increasing it
| even more is part of the solution. Is that an
| unacceptable or immoral position?
|
| Of course, everyone is entitled to their own views,
| right? It's not necessary that each individual has it as
| a creed that 'children should get free lunches', or
| adhere to whatever other 'good idea' is currently
| favoured, right?
|
| The moral question here in reverse is, is it ok to force
| people to pay for stuff that they don't want to? If I
| don't want to pay for lunches, should I have my wealth
| forcibly extracted to do so anyway?
|
| Of course, the circumstances make this something of a
| moot question - government already forcibly extracts
| wealth from most people and spends it on whatever they
| like, such as increased salary and pension contributions
| on those that decrease school lunch budgets.
| eesmith wrote:
| > is it ok to force people to pay for stuff that they
| don't want to?
|
| Yes. Happens all the time. Money doesn't exist unless
| people are forced to use it to pay for something they
| don't want to. (read Graber's "Debt: The First 5,000
| Years.")
|
| I don't want to pay for nuclear weapons. Why am I forced
| to pay for it through my taxes? Because if I don't, the
| state will use its power to punish me.
|
| Pacifists can't direct their tax monies to avoid military
| expenditures.
|
| Adherents to one faith can't say their taxes can't be
| used on apostates.
|
| You sound like this is a surprise. Like you don't
| understand why people have to pay taxes for schools even
| if they don't have children, don't understand why people
| who don't drive still have to pay taxes for roads, don't
| understand why people who don't swim still have to pay
| taxes for public pools, .. the list is very long.
|
| Your comments sound very much like 1980s Thatcherism -
| "There is no such thing [as society]! There are
| individual men and women and there are families and no
| government can do anything except through people and
| people look to themselves first."
|
| The last 40+ years of neoliberal thought hasn't turned
| out so well, as those who have money no longer feel
| pressure or obligation to distribute it, resulting in a
| return to Gilded Age power concentrations.
|
| That's what you want, it seems.
|
| > such as increased salary and pension contributions
|
| Such as tax cuts for the rich. Make Gates "only" a
| billionaire and we can use the remaining $100 billion to
| pay off school lunch debt (works out the math) ...
| forever.
|
| $2.8 million debt for Utah with a population of 3 million
| people. US population 340 million. Call it $300 million
| in school lunch debt. Probably within an order of
| magnitude. That's less than the interest on $100 billion.
|
| Yes, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would have an
| actual positive impact on education if, instead of
| funding projects that trained educators knew would fail -
| and eventually did fail - they has simply put their $10+
| billion into funding school meals.
|
| Instead, rich people get to fund "non-profits" that they
| control - reducing their taxes while not relinquishing
| the power and influence tied to their money. Gates'
| wealth gives him a very undemocratic and malignant
| influence over US education policy.
|
| And you want to blather on about supporting student lunch
| debt?!
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| i say this genuinely, with as much love as i can muster
| for a stranger on the internet: this line of thought is
| annoying to most people who understand that living
| collectively requires sacrifice and accepting imperfect
| solutions in the pursuit of good. individualism is a
| weird personality myth that 99.9999999% of people will
| never realize. kids are hungry and we can feed them. one
| thing cannot be concretely addressed and the other thing
| can.
|
| > should I have my wealth forcibly extracted to do so
| anyway?
|
| if you have amassed anywhere near what most people would
| consider "wealth", then yes, you should.
| scotty79 wrote:
| If you prefer ...
|
| Somebody should individualistically autonomously amass
| enough tanks so that they can point them at individuals
| who think like you so they can make their autonomic
| individualistic decision that they'd rather feed children
| than be shot at by a tank.
|
| We know that's how humanity does collective action nearly
| 100% of the time, but it doesn't apply some linguistic
| shortcuts fro the sake of moving the discussion along.
|
| Morality is written by the guys who had the most tanks
| last time.
| framapotari wrote:
| If we're doing this, let's look at the other extreme as
| well: We give all people, including children, nothing as
| they are expected to take responsibility for themselves.
| No education, no services, no law enforcement, no roads,
| nothing at all.
|
| These are both obviously silly examples. The 'Where do we
| draw the line?!' answer can in this case be answered with
| 'On the side that feeds hungry children'.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > If we're doing this, let's look at the other extreme as
| well: We give all people, including children, nothing as
| they are expected to take responsibility for themselves.
| No education, no services, no law enforcement, no roads,
| nothing at all.
|
| In that case, people will _always_ self-organise such
| structures anyway. Even amongst the most failed of the
| failed states, eventually you will end up with at least
| someone claiming to be the chief law enforcer (of
| whatever kind), someone to look after the kids (i.e.
| education) while the rest works to provide for food, and
| some sort of fire brigade.
|
| It will just be many orders of magnitude more inefficient
| than what a large government that governs more than a few
| dozen to hundred people can establish.
| em-bee wrote:
| that's called universal basic income, and it is seriously
| being discussed.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >How about this: we give all people all meals, clothes,
| housing, heating (all essentials) and spending money so
| that they can explore their interests, travel, etc?
|
| Now you're talking, let's do it. UBI FTW.
| Symbiote wrote:
| > Why not give all children breakfast and dinner too, and
| buy them good clothes to wear?
|
| You can see the rates for this in Europe, Australia,
| Canada and South Korea here:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_benefit
| 0xffany wrote:
| In the wake of a demographic collapse, you're arguing
| _against_ helping feed children - future tax
| contributors, caretakers, social workers, healthcare
| personnel...? Who will pay taxes for you when you won 't
| be of working age anymore? Who will be your caretakers?
|
| Contributing to the next generation's upbringing is the
| least we can do, even if some won't have kids of their
| own they would still (directly) indirectly benefit from
| this.
| jjulius wrote:
| Are we really slippery-sloping school lunches? Wow.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| We might fall so far as to _ensure the children in the
| richest society in world history are actually clothed!_
|
| The horror!
| umbra07 wrote:
| But it's the logical continuation of the argument. It's
| not like we're going from "something something unlimited
| free speech -> something something more bullying
| something something more suicides" - which is a slippery
| slope fallacy if you don't show the logic or proof that
| one leads to the other. The argument for free school
| lunches is exactly the same as the argument for free
| school breakfasts, free dinners, and free clothes.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >And then, why stop at lunches? Why not give all children
| breakfast and dinner too, and buy them good clothes to
| wear?
|
| I'm in favor of all of that. We're trying to have a
| society here, not sure what your problem is.
| bluecheese452 wrote:
| And the next thing you know we will demand they have
| access to clean water.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| > And then, why stop at lunches? Why not give all
| children breakfast and dinner too, and buy them good
| clothes to wear?
|
| You tell me.
| lurkshark wrote:
| Even with no children of your own, you still reap benefits
| from living in a society where children are fed.
| rienbdj wrote:
| An adult can either be a net tax contributor or a net tax
| burden over their lifespan. The probability of them being a
| net contributor is much higher if they are well educated
| and not malnourished. The effect is stronger at younger
| ages. It's good ROI for the tax payer.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Yes. That's an acceptable position to hold. It's
| unacceptable and inhumane to think that children should
| starve.
|
| The devil doesn't need an advocate here.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| The relevanr polities already factor children in when
| computing taxes. All you need to do is adjust the amount.
| scotty79 wrote:
| You don't really "have" a child. A child is new separate
| human that will eventually grow into free separate adult
| human. The question is, do you want there to be more humans
| in the future or are you fine with the ones that are
| already here until they die. And should they be starved or
| dumb?
| lurking_swe wrote:
| many problems with your argument. I will enumerate just a
| few off the top of my head.
|
| - if a child was born with poor planning from the parents,
| it's too late and unhelpful to say "i told you so". Feeding
| a disadvantaged child raises their chances of doing well in
| school and reduces their chance of being a much larger
| burden on your tax dollars down the line. Are you saying we
| should save $5 on this child now so we can spend $100 in
| the future (subsidizing their social security payments,
| maybe jail time, maybe homeless, etc)? Sounds like a smart
| business move! (sarcasm) Feeding kids is good ROI.
|
| - it's possible to get pregnant even when being
| responsible. No protection is 100% except for abstinence
| your entire life.
|
| - you can "plan" for these expenses all you want. Sometimes
| a spouse dies. Sometimes a person needs to spend money to
| support their aging parents, AFTER their child is born. Or
| a divorce ruins one's finances. Or someone loses their good
| job due to layoffs. Life is not a simple path, not sure
| what gave you that illusion.
|
| - congrats you don't have children. Guess what? When you're
| old and need a diaper change in a nursing home, who do you
| think will be wiping your ass? One of the nurses... one of
| those kids that is not yours. Who will be delivering food
| to the grocery store? That's right, one of those other
| kids. Who will be your doctor? Right again! One of those
| other kids.
|
| - it's easy to be smug until you're unlucky in life. What
| if tomorrow you're hit by a drunk driver and you go
| bankrupt trying to pay for major medical bills. Suddenly
| it's not so fun saying nobody deserves a handout. At the
| end of the day, this mindset is an empathy problem.
|
| It seems like _most_ of my fellow americans have an empathy
| problem. Are you all dead inside? Anyway...it's useful to
| invest in our society. Not everything is about me me me.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| You can want kids to be fed and fully believe that the
| government giving out free meal to all kids will eventually
| lead to kids not being feed. I can think of lots of arguments
|
| Budgets might be cut directly, so can not feed some percent,
| budgets might be cut indirectly (less tax revenue). Giving
| out free food might make people feel entitled and less likely
| to learn to be self sufficient. The "give a man a fish he
| eats for day, teach him to fish he eats for a lifetime", type
| of thinking. Some people might believe it encourages parents
| to be irresponsible. Back to budgets, it might remove money
| from other school needs. I guess the thinking would be,
| schools should teach, food is not their responsibility. If it
| comes their responsibility then they'll do less teaching
| which is back to not helping make their students able to
| ultimately fend for themselves but instead makes them
| dependent.
|
| I'm not saying I buy those arguments but I can see them as
| valid arguments.
|
| Helping directly is not always helpful. There's plenty of
| examples of that. Whether that's true in this case I don't
| know.
| overfeed wrote:
| > Giving out free food might make people feel entitled and
| less likely to learn to be self sufficient
|
| To be clear, the subject is still children, right? Refusing
| to feed _children_ to "teach" them self-sufficiency is,
| IMO, right up there with a non-ironic "the children yearn
| for the mines". What could a self-sufficient 6th-grader
| even do for money? Steal baby food and small electronics
| from Target for fencing?
| walthamstow wrote:
| Well, I learnt a new Americanism today. Fence, verb,
| meaning to shift stolen goods.
|
| Upon first read I thought they would be sword fighting
| with stolen bluetooth speakers.
| em-bee wrote:
| an accelerometer and a speaker are needed for those
| lightsaber sounds
| Suppafly wrote:
| >Fence, verb, meaning to shift stolen goods.
|
| Does it not also have that meaning in commonwealth
| countries?
| walthamstow wrote:
| I'd never heard it before, from googling it seems to be
| antiquated language in Britain.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I (British) am familiar with the term, especially as a
| verb like "fencing stolen goods". You can find British
| newspapers reporting this in the last decade.
|
| The legal term since 1968 seems to be "Handling Stolen
| Goods", which might have made the word "fencing" less
| common: https://mcgeemcgeeagarlaw.co.uk/criminal-
| defence/handling-st...
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Must have never played an elder scrolls game huh
| lurkshark wrote:
| I think the rebuttal to the majority of these arguments is
| "So you want children to go hungry to prove a point?"
| boneitis wrote:
| I feel it on those concerns, though after all, I think the
| point of some people's stances is that everybody should be
| able to take free (and dignified) student lunches for
| granted, as sensible as the fish-vs-how-to-fish adage is in
| general.
|
| I think the concern about entitlement better applies when
| looking out for vultures taking advantage of these
| campaigners' goodwill by trying to wedge themselves into
| the middle of any cashflow for as-optimizably-marginal-as-
| possible contribution to those pipelines. Of course, I'm
| thinking of this more in some context of if there was a
| sort of centralized campaign to scale up efforts, say,
| statewide or nationwide (pardon my U.S-centric
| perspective), to solicit donations to pay off a bunch of
| schools' lunch debts in a region.
| wredcoll wrote:
| > I think the concern about entitlement better applies
| when looking out for vultures taking advantage of these
| campaigners' goodwill by trying to wedge themselves into
| the middle of any cashflow for as-optimizably-marginal-
| as-possible contribution to those pipelines. Of course,
| I'm thinking of this more in some context of if there was
| a sort of centralized campaign to scale up efforts, say,
| statewide or nationwide (pardon my U.S-centric
| perspective), to solicit donations to pay off a bunch of
| schools' lunch debts in a region.
|
| What on earth does this paragraph have to do with the
| position that school children should receive free lunch?
| rienbdj wrote:
| In the specific case of free school meals:
|
| - economies of scale in feeding an entire school
|
| - recipients of the benefit (children) and delivery
| mechanism (kitchens) are already at the right place and
| time
|
| - can guarantee money is spent on food rather than (for
| example) a parents gambling addiction
|
| - reduces stigma for poor children to have universality
|
| - can (in theory) deliver better food using school cooking
| facilities
|
| - saves time even for parents who can afford to feed
| children
|
| - teaching a hungry child is an uphill battle
| qmr wrote:
| Yes those little shit free loading five year olds.
|
| Whining about lunch when they should be in the mines.
| vel0city wrote:
| Need to start charging my toddler market rate rent. No
| more free rides, I ain't raising woke communist kids!
| walthamstow wrote:
| Even outside of morality it's a straightforward issue.
| Investments in children benefit the whole economy and
| society, for decades. If a person can't see that then they
| could be immoral but they might just be stupid.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Plenty of human beings genuinely and earnestly believe that
| investing in the "wrong kinds" of people would be harmful
| to society as a whole. This is not limited to regressives
| or conservatives either, with plenty of savants on tumbler
| and reddit reinventing eugenics "against rich people this
| time".
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Opinions like yours are exactly the problem. Instead of
| understanding why people's knee jerk response to "the
| government out to..." is a reflective "no" you just write
| them off as immoral because that's easier than the answer to
| this specific question is yes or fixing the general problem.
|
| The other comment thread reply to you is a great example.
| Instead of saying "well how can we craft the program so
| everyone can be assured it will work well" it's just a bunch
| of people straw-manning and making false equivalencies.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Minnesota did so in 2023, it's working great.
|
| And importantly emphasizing "universal", we're not spending a
| bunch of money on the bureaucracy of figuring out who gets it
| and who qualifies and hearing people complain about fraud.
| They're kids, everybody gets it, nobody set up a test as to
| which gets get free food.
|
| I pay both MN and NY taxes and couldn't be happier about this
| expenditure.
| indrora wrote:
| If I recall correctly, the MN movement started with St. Paul
| Public Schools doing it and their test scores (as a result)
| shooting through the roof.
|
| I know that free breakfast is another thing that Minnesota
| did, apparently?
| colechristensen wrote:
| It's both breakfast and lunch.
|
| It built upon programs during covid that provided food for
| kids when schools were closed.
| fluorinerocket wrote:
| It always was crazy that kids have to go to school by law but the
| meals aren't free. Seems to defy common sense
| yongjik wrote:
| South Korea started dabbling in free school lunches around 2001 -
| when a few schools started it. It gained momentum, and then it
| became a huge debate in 2011, when Seoul's mayor somehow decided
| he hated free lunches so much that he arranged a referendum, and
| said he would quit if people didn't agree with him on the matter.
| He did quit.
|
| Fast forward to 2025, and now free school lunches are nearly
| ubiquitous. Once people experience it, few want to go back.
| Because it's a much more efficient and hassle-free system.
|
| Yes, of course the money is coming from tax: in other words, if
| you're a middle-class parent, nothing changed. You're still
| paying for your kids' lunch one way or the other. But you don't
| have to pay for a gratuitous system of bureaucracy that keeps
| track of which kids' parents are making how much money, and
| whether each kid is "eligible" to eat lunch today, so your money
| is actually being used more efficiently with less overhead.
| roughly wrote:
| > Seoul's mayor somehow decided he hated free lunches so much
| that he arranged a referendum, and said he would quit if people
| didn't agree with him on the matter. He did quit.
|
| It's nice when things work out.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >But you don't have to pay for a gratuitous system of
| bureaucracy
|
| This is what's frustrating about America. There is so much
| bureaucracy that exists only to pay for itself, and I suppose,
| provide a few jobs, but you're an unreasonable socialist if you
| point out that it'd be cheaper just to not keep track of who
| needs to pay and give food to everyone for free instead.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > This is what's frustrating about America. There is so much
| bureaucracy that exists only to pay for itself, and I
| suppose, provide a few jobs,
|
| No, it exists _to prevent people from receiving public
| services_ , both by its direct operation and indirectly by
| making the service more painful to use so people who would be
| entitled to use it nevertheless avoid it.
| noworriesnate wrote:
| For the first part, that will always be necessary. The
| people are supposed to decide through indirect democracy
| who is qualified to receive welfare.
|
| But your second point is very true. It can be very painful
| to interact with the bureaucracy, something people
| shouldn't have to deal with when they're at the bottom of
| the barrel.
| umeshunni wrote:
| And yet when someone tries to cut down bureaucracy, it's
| called fascism and people start burning cars.
| Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe wrote:
| The concept of cutting costs of things is totally
| orthogonal to political opinions. Fascism and bureaucracy
| are not really related, it's just that there are fascist
| ways to do things.
| nothercastle wrote:
| In America even if we enacted this the kids would get meals
| that are terrible like 10$ chicken strips, hotdogs and fake
| pizza
| umeshunni wrote:
| Huh? We have free lunch in all schools in California and they
| serve everything from pizza to burritos to hamburgers.
| Tarsul wrote:
| Ummm... that's not quite the retort you think it is.
| nothercastle wrote:
| We had a 2 tier system in cali. The poor people ate state
| provided slop and the slightly less poor people ate fast
| food. We had Pizza Hut, chick fillet, chipotle. Both were
| unhealthy options tough and option 2 was quite expensive
| even back 20 years ago it was 10$ or so.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| In America this has been the case since at least the 90s.
| School lunch budgets/prices did not keep up with inflation
| since the 70s, and increases in the costs of lunch cook labor
| means the same money does not provide like it used to.
| Schools have nearly universally converted to reheating the
| cheapest frozen foodstuffs from whichever supplier provided
| the best kickback to the board.
|
| Meanwhile kids themselves have participated in the problem.
| It's common to have several different choices for lunch, with
| a daily rotating menu "hot" item/meal, or choices of cheap
| staples like chicken burgers, peanut butter and jelly
| sandwiches, and the worst quality "pizza" you can imagine,
| think if Domino's found a way to cut their supply costs in
| half. A shocking amount of children will insist on eating
| that god awful pizza every single day. I couldn't understand
| it when I was a kid, and I was super picky at the time!
|
| Michelle Obama wanted to improve this, but she was called a
| communist and a man and a monkey, and now conservatives all
| belief this poor quality school lunch problem is her fault?
| It doesn't actually make any sense.
| roughly wrote:
| > "That's stupid," she said with 7-year-old clarity. "Why don't
| they just let them eat?"
|
| We'll spend the rest of that child's life convincing them that
| the answer to that is complicated.
| lmz wrote:
| I think she'll learn the answer after she gets a job and needs
| to pay for food.
| Spivak wrote:
| Yes, as an adult she will learn that it's _extra_ stupid
| because as a child she had no means or autonomy to work for
| and pay for her own food.
|
| I mean I've heard tell that children yearn for the mines but
| when it's the responsibility of adults to provide for the
| material needs of children any adult who actively
| participates in a system which seeks to deny a child those
| needs is at the top of my shitlist. There is no universe
| where I wouldn't just give food to a child who is hungry in
| my proximity.
| zoom6628 wrote:
| One word for this - heroic.
| crummy wrote:
| A political party in New Zealand just considered rolling back
| school lunches to only those in need, rather than every kid at a
| lower decile school. This article is a great response to why that
| is a bad idea.
| etchalon wrote:
| Orphan-Crushing Machine
| ThomW wrote:
| It absolutely floors me that children are forced by law to attend
| school and they don't automatically get a hot meal. That's
| irresponsible.
| analog31 wrote:
| A weird aspect of my childhood: I brought a sandwich to lunch
| every day when I was in school. At first, my mom made it, but
| very quickly it became my own job, not that it was particularly
| difficult.
|
| The school had subsidized lunches and milk. I always brought a
| nickel for milk. The teacher collected everybody's lunch money
| at the start of the day. That way, it was utterly opaque who
| was getting it for free. A simple system, appropriate for the
| times.
|
| But I remember that my lunch was always better than the grim
| school lunch, and I always wondered: _Why can 't they ditch the
| hot lunch, and just give everybody a nice sandwich, and a piece
| of fruit, which is better?_
|
| I'm sure there are good arguments for the hot lunch, but still
| it's counterintuitive to me. And 55 years later, I still bring
| a sandwich, or leftovers, for lunch, and skip the hot meal at
| the company cafeteria.
| ViscountPenguin wrote:
| Here in Australia packed lunches are the standard, but
| something like a Japanese or Russian school lunch seems
| obviously superior in my mind.
|
| At the very least I wish my school had let kids use the
| microwave, cold leftovers get a bit disappointing over time.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| Paying off the debt doesn't solve anything. They'll get to buy
| one meal, go back into debt because their parent doesn't top up
| the account, and get banned again.
| trelane wrote:
| exactly my thought. (But also, the kid isn't banned, they are
| just restricted to the cold lunch for some reason. This is not
| universal. And most (all?) places let you bring your lunch)
|
| Seems like the author is almost at a solution: partner with
| schools to pay for the kids' lunches on an ongoing basis.
| guywithahat wrote:
| This whole fight feels nonsensical. This isn't a money issue,
| it's just a convenience issue. It was the same way with my
| parents when I was in school; they made plenty of money, but it
| was a pain trying to fill a lunch card or give my cash to buy
| lunches.
|
| There are a million programs for kids who are legitimately too
| poor to pay for lunches, not to mention bringing a lunch which is
| significantly cheaper and probably better for the kid. This guy
| just paid for lazy parents
| Cockbrand wrote:
| In case you aren't allow to read the article b/c of your
| adblocker: https://archive.ph/LZiES
| gigatexal wrote:
| Bravo to this guy. I'm donating. I hope he continues to help kids
| but then helps get the legislation changed such that school
| lunches are free. It's an investment in the kids. With food in
| their bellies they can better focus on learning.
|
| Why the f should a child have to pay for their food at school the
| purpose is to learn not be faced with the realization their
| families are poor every single day.
| subarctic wrote:
| This article doesn't seem to really explain how this whole debt
| thing works. What I'm guessing happens is some kids go to the
| cafeteria and get food, and then their parents are supposed to
| pay the bill later, and they can't afford it so they don't (and
| maybe their parents told them they can't afford and they're
| supposed to bring a lunch to school but they didn't listen, or
| their parents didn't tell them). So then the lunchlady has to act
| like a debt collector and go take their food away and replace it
| with something cheaper (not sure why they just don't decline them
| the hot lunch food in the first place).
|
| Does this sound right?
| osiriskang wrote:
| I can only speak for my own schools in the USA, but this is not
| quite right. As a student, you were expected to pay for lunch
| at lunchtime. If you were privileged enough to afford it,
| generally your parents would give you enough money to fill your
| lunch account for 1-2 weeks.
|
| If you did not have enough money in your account to cover the
| meal, which was a set price for staples with extras (i.e.,
| extra side dishes, snacks, drinks aside from water/milk) adding
| to the price, you would be required to have no more than a ham
| sandwich and milk, or if the cashier was feeling nice allow you
| to accrue debt/take the lunch for free. From what I have heard,
| this is how it was generally when I was in school.
|
| The movie stereotype of the bully "coming for your lunch money"
| while fairly anachronistic in my school years was not a
| completely unheard of scenario.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >So then the lunchlady has to act like a debt collector and go
| take their food away and replace it with something cheaper (not
| sure why they just don't decline them the hot lunch food in the
| first place).
|
| I'm sure it works 1000 different ways in 1000 different
| schools, but generally you pick up the tray at the beginning of
| the line and pay at the end of the line, so kids that are broke
| get to the end of the line and can't pay and then have the tray
| taken away and are handed a brown bag with a sandwich in it
| instead. Since most of these systems are tied to a lunch card
| or their student id, they don't know that they don't have any
| money left to pay until they get to the register and are told
| they don't. Likely they are allowed to "overdraft" by a week or
| two worth before they get to that point, but I'm sure some
| schools probably cut them off immediately. The overdraft is
| what the author in the OP is paying off, so now those kids are
| back zero and get to overdraft another week or two until they
| are cut off again. Or theoretically their parents that couldn't
| pay the overdraft off might be in a position to at least pay
| going forward.
| ziofill wrote:
| I don't know exactly why but I so much appreciated the 'average
| guy-ness' and humility of the author. Good job, man. I wish there
| were more good people like you, starting with me...
| danans wrote:
| For anyone from places in the US or abroad who can't understand
| why a society would subject children to this sort of situation,
| here are some of the attitudes that give rise to it:
|
| "I shouldn't have to pay to feed other people's kids"
|
| "If you don't shame the kids, the parents will never take
| responsibility for them"
|
| "A lot of those [poor] kids are overweight anyways"
|
| I've heard all of these said in some form.
| mtnGoat wrote:
| As someone who experienced this first hand growing up. I consider
| how someone feels about free school lunch, a basic test of their
| humanity.
|
| If you think kids should go hungry or be embarrassed at school
| because of their parents finances... we can't be friends, nor
| acquaintances. IMHO, you are subhuman at that point and not worth
| my time.
|
| My dad believed that because he paid taxes he shouldn't have to
| pay the school to feed me. I begged, borrowed, and stole spare
| change to pay. He'd chip in once in a while, but once you are so
| far in debt they won't feed you anymore (at least they didn't at
| the time). I remember going to the lost and found every day to
| check the pockets of the clothes in there. I learned how to pick
| the locks on the gym lockers and would steal money from other
| kids pockets. I sometimes left school so I could go steal lunch
| from a grocery store near by. I got caught once, but after the
| lady knew what was up, she conveniently was always looking away
| from me during mid day of I came in. From the bottom of my heart
| I hope she receives every possible blessing in this life.
|
| No child should have to do that. Ever! Happy to pay taxes to and
| live in a state that has solved this problem!
| oulipo wrote:
| "My dad believed that because he paid taxes he shouldn't have
| to pay the school to feed me."
|
| I understand this is not what is meant here... but in a sense
| he's right. In a normal society where everyone pay taxes and
| they are well spent, it should be indeed the Government that's
| in charge of feeding kids at school
| mtnGoat wrote:
| Absolutely, and more states are starting to realize this.
| Covering basic needs for the most vulnerable is a cornerstone
| of community and a sign of success.
| baq wrote:
| He's right but if everyone around you tells you you're wrong,
| you're also in a very bad spot.
|
| If your kids are hurting because you stand on the moral high
| ground... you get your cigs stolen from, by your children no
| less. All for the psychological comfort of being right.
|
| You could say he was right, just early: this is also known as
| _very wrong_ in e.g. financial markets.
| exitb wrote:
| Taxes aren't magic, you pay some money and receive some
| services. It's obviously possible to fund meals with tax
| money, but would he accept a higher tax rate to cover for it?
| redwall_hp wrote:
| I would accept one fewer aircraft carrier to fund school
| lunches for the foreseeable future.
|
| Also, food cost is effectively artificial. We literally pay
| farmers not to farm to keep prices viable for market games.
| Instead of doing that, the government could buy a fraction
| of athe excess for school systems.
|
| And yes, I'd accept taxes on par with non-trashfire
| countries if they resulted in the society and services of
| those countries.
| mlyle wrote:
| I don't know what the correct answer is.
|
| The tricky thing is, if you let anyone just choose not to pay,
| there will be plenty of people who are capable of paying who
| don't bother. In your case, it sounds like your dad was maybe
| capable of paying but wanted to freeload.
|
| So as long as you're going to charge for lunches, you need to
| have _some_ kind of enforcement mechanism. Embarrassing the kid
| ideally would not be part of it.
|
| California pays for it all, but California is a pretty rich
| state. And if you're a poorer state, you have the choice
| between eliminating this problem, or addressing many other
| types of educational need.
| mtnGoat wrote:
| Just roll it into property taxes and call it a day. This is
| not a political issue in my mind, but a basic humanity issue.
| A child with hunger pangs isn't focused on learning, if you
| can't cover the basic need, the rest is a waste. The haves,
| selfishly don't want to help subsidize the have nots. Which I
| get, BUT these are kids, we as adults should leave them out
| of it, sack up, and deal with it.
|
| You are correct, my dad was a civil engineer, he very much
| could afford it. I guess he thought high end alcohol and golf
| were better expenditures. I found it interesting that the
| article mentions a lot of the debt isn't from the lowest
| income brackets.
| gopalv wrote:
| > Just roll it into property taxes and call it a day.
|
| It's what my district does and the benefits are obvious -
| there's no "gimme your lunch money" kids who have it hard
| at home & trying to supplement their diets.
|
| The school even hands out a free breakfast, which serves as
| monitored childcare for the parents who need to drop their
| kids off before 8 AM, to get to work. The highschool also
| gives out double servings for kids who come off the morning
| sports practice sessions.
|
| The cynic in me says the biggest beneficiary will be the US
| Army, who can reliably look for a stream of well fed kids
| from families which aren't doing well enough to pay for
| college.
| hiddencost wrote:
| This is why we have taxes. Because we can assess how much
| each person can afford to pay, and then make collective
| decisions that can't be made by inefficient free market
| mechanisms.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > The tricky thing is, if you let anyone just choose not to
| pay, there will be plenty of people who are capable of paying
| who don't bother.
|
| I quite frankly don't care about that type of arguments
| anymore. If someone wants to be a bad person they are free to
| do so. I don't care, it should not stop the 95%, or more,
| that want to do the right thing.
|
| We continuously make more and more convoluted rules, which
| are a nightmare for decent people to navigate, but which are
| just ignored by the assholes. I don't care about fighting the
| assholes for what is minor amounts, if it means overburdening
| good people with rules which weren't meant for them anyway.
|
| Moving it to taxes essentially does the same thing. The
| assholes weasel their way out of paying their fair share,
| while those who want the best for society and everyone is
| stuck paying the full amount.
| mulmen wrote:
| > I don't know what the correct answer is.
|
| I do.
|
| > The tricky thing is, if you let anyone just choose not to
| pay, there will be plenty of people who are capable of paying
| who don't bother.
|
| It isn't tricky. It's taxes.
|
| There's not nuance here. There's only hate and spite for
| those less fortunate.
| nucleardog wrote:
| > The tricky thing is, if you let anyone just choose not to
| pay, there will be plenty of people who are capable of paying
| who don't bother. In your case, it sounds like your dad was
| maybe capable of paying but wanted to freeload.
|
| I say this as an IT worker making what most would consider an
| absurd amount of money and pays 0.55*absurd money in taxes, a
| dad, a human, etc... what the fuck does any of this matter.
|
| If a child is hungry, the only concern is feeding that child.
| A child is, pretty much by definition, incapable of fully
| caring for themselves. If their parents fail to care for
| them, we have various mechanisms for the state to step in in
| their stead up to and including taking them away and giving
| them to someone else.
|
| "Sorry, Johnny, your dad has the money to pay for lunch but
| chose not to so we're punishing you with going hungry until
| he wises up."
|
| Full stop no.
|
| If a child is hungry, they get fed. Politics can dictate that
| adults who are less valuable deserve to starve to death.
| Politics can dictate that adults who can afford to feed their
| child but choose not to need to be punished, taxed more, or
| anything else.
|
| But we, as a society, have the means to ensure that no child
| ever has to go hungry. Every decision that leads to hungry
| children is offensive, and anyone choosing to punish adults
| by starving their children is a monster.
|
| Downvote, flag, or come fight me. I'll die on this hill:
| Neglecting children is bad and anyone who could help and
| doesn't is at fault.
| graemep wrote:
| I agree the child should be fed, but we also need to think
| about the other wide of this.
|
| It sounds as though the dad in this case was able to pay
| but refused to pay. What sort of person puts their own
| child through this to make a point? It is neglectful or
| abusive.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Yeah, it is abuse. But feed the child if the parents
| won't or can't.
| pertymcpert wrote:
| You know there are countless parents that abuse their
| kids, physically, emotionally, sexually. They rape their
| kids and strangle them until they pass out. They hit them
| in places where bruises aren't visible. They break bones
| and threaten the kids with death if they dare tell anyone
| or show their injury or pain.
|
| Why do we suddenly need to especially think about the
| other side of this because tax money is involved? Now we
| need to care?
| graemep wrote:
| No, we should care in all cases.
|
| The point is that the problem is not necessarily fixed by
| providing lunch. What else is going on if someone is
| deliberately not feeding a child?
| mulmen wrote:
| Why would providing food preclude support for victims of
| or intervention in other types of abuse?
| framapotari wrote:
| All the more reason for using schools to feed children
| who may be abused and starved at home.
| graemep wrote:
| Yes, but is that all you do? One meal a day does not
| solve the problems of an abused child.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| That really is someone else's problem. The best the
| school can do is feed and support the child and report
| the abuse to the relevant authorities.
| acdha wrote:
| You know, we say "don't let perfection be the enemy of
| the good" a lot for technical problems but it's far more
| critical here. A child from a failing home has a lot of
| problems and it often takes a long time to solve them,
| but we can for a trivial amount of money ensure that
| child isn't malnourished because they get breakfast,
| lunch, and in many Title 1 schools, dinner. Many of the
| other problems of poverty, neglect, or abuse are much
| harder to solve - e.g. sending a child to foster care
| might be the solution for abuse but it's slow and has
| plenty of risks of its own - but this one is easy and
| cheap to fix while we work on the hard problems.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| > What sort of person puts their own child through this
| to make a point? It is neglectful or abusive.
|
| So... your point is that not feeding the child is
| neglectful or abusive?
|
| That's basically the position that proponents of free
| school meals have.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >A child is, pretty much by definition, incapable of fully
| caring for themselves.
|
| This is disrespectful to the intelligence of children.
|
| >we're punishing you with going hungry until he wises up
|
| Not giving people free things is not a punishment.
|
| >as a society, have the means to ensure that no child ever
| has to go hungry.
|
| Giving away free food is not the only way to achieve that.
|
| >Every decision that leads to hungry children is offensive
|
| I disagree as there may be times where it is fine. This
| statement to me is equivalent to saying that we shouldn't
| make children feel sadness or pain. These are just parts of
| living. People will naturally experience them and later
| move on.
|
| >punish adults by starving their children
|
| Schools do not starve children. While yes schools prohihit
| people from leaving, school only last for a part of the day
| before they are released, and parents can pickup a child at
| any time. In order to starve someone you need to block
| access to food for a very long period of time.
| decimalenough wrote:
| I'm not sure where to even begin with this, but a large
| part of why free school lunches exist is that there are
| many kids in abusive or simply desperately poor families
| who do _not_ get fed properly, meaning that the school
| lunch may be the _only_ decent meal they get.
|
| > Not giving people free things is not a punishment.
|
| This is absurd. Kids don't have money to purchase what
| they need, so parents have a duty to feed, clothe, house
| etc them. Intentionally not providing children what they
| _need_ , like food, is abuse, period.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >meaning that the school lunch may be the only decent
| meal they get
|
| "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a
| man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime."
|
| By giving away food you are getting people stuck in a bad
| situation. Preventing a reconfiguration of people's
| lives. A kid could have figured out how to get 3 proper
| meals a day if they had to figure out how to get food
| themselves instead of sustaining themselves on a single
| daily handout.
|
| >Kids don't have money to purchase what they need
|
| Again you are underestimating the abilities of kids. They
| are capable of providing value to others and consequently
| receiving money or goods that they need.
|
| >parents have a duty to feed, clothe, house etc them.
|
| But this duty is not because their children don't have
| money. The duty is because they are family. I wouldn't
| expect a patent to take in every homeless person to their
| household because they don't have money to purchase what
| they need.
|
| >Intentionally not providing children what they need,
| like food, is abuse, period.
|
| I think it's more complex. Parents have power over
| children and using that power they can restrict what they
| do and make it impossible for them to acquire what they
| need. To me this restriction is what is abusive and it
| would apply to anyone else. If you locked anyone in a
| room and denied them water, that would be abuse.
| jdbernard wrote:
| > >parents have a duty to feed, clothe, house etc them.
|
| > But this duty is not because their children don't have
| money. The duty is because they are family.
|
| I'd like to live in a society where we extend this duty
| to the society. It is the parent's duty foremost, but we
| as a society should see this as our duty as well, at the
| very least for our children (and let's think of it that
| way, _we_ are in this together, at least when it comes to
| _our_ children).
|
| > A kid could have figured out how to get 3 proper meals
| a day if they had to figure out how to get food
| themselves instead of sustaining themselves on a single
| daily handout.
|
| I'm with you as far as the principle of personal
| responsibility is concerned, we are all better when
| everyone contributes, and I agree that we should teach
| our children this principle. However, the whole reason
| that, even legally, we don't treat kids as adults is that
| they are _not_ adults, _cannot_ and _should not_ be held
| to the same standards. Withholding the basic necessities
| of life is not the way to teach this principle.
|
| It doesn't even work consistently. I'd argue that many of
| the people that _are_ fraudulently taking advantage of
| welfare programs are doing so because they were taught,
| _as kids_ , that society doesn't care about them. So why
| should they care about us? Why shouldn't they take
| advantage of whatever they can? I'm not justifying this
| position, or even saying it is logically sound, but _kids
| are not adults_. If withholding school lunches is your
| method for "teaching responsibility" it is really
| ineffective.
|
| Just feed the kids. We're not giving them free Xboxes.
| We're keeping them healthy and alive so that they can
| learn.
| mulmen wrote:
| > Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a
| man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.
|
| It's a lot easier to teach someone when they aren't
| starving.
|
| Teaching someone to fish almost certainly requires giving
| them a fish.
|
| That's how teaching works. First you do it for them, then
| you ask them to try and you help them when they falter.
| wredcoll wrote:
| > By giving away food you are getting people stuck in a
| bad situation. Preventing a reconfiguration of people's
| lives. A kid could have figured out how to get 3 proper
| meals a day if they had to figure out how to get food
| themselves instead of sustaining themselves on a single
| daily handout.
|
| You realize this is a completely invented statement of
| faith, right? It has no data or research supporting it.
| em-bee wrote:
| exactly. if you want to play hardball, then send a bill to
| the parents. send a debt collector if you believe that they
| have the money. but don't withhold food from the children.
| i mean we might as well bar children from school if their
| parents don't pay taxes. it's really the same thing.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| > anyone choosing to punish adults by starving their
| children is a monster.
|
| Well said!
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The tricky thing is, if you let anyone just choose not to
| pay, there will be plenty of people who are capable of paying
| who don't bother.
|
| So what? Assuming you have a progressive tax system in the
| first place, the people that are capable of paying are, in
| fact, _actually paying for the service_ in any case. Why
| charge them _again_?
|
| > So as long as you're going to charge for lunches, you need
| to have some kind of enforcement mechanism.
|
| Yes, and one of the reasons for free universal public
| programs paid for by progressive taxes are often better than
| means-tested programs is that enforcement isn't free (and
| neither, in the case of school lunches, is handling money for
| payment for the people that your means-tested free lunch
| program now means are required to pay for the service) so you
| end up spending a whole lot more between payment processing
| and eligibility verification and enforcement than you save by
| excluding _the people actually paying for the service by
| higher taxes_ from receiving the service.
| camgunz wrote:
| There are no moral hazards when it comes to social welfare
| programs. People _really_ think there are, but every time we
| look we find practically no freeloaders. This idea that we
| have to threaten people with literal starvation to get them
| to be productive members of society is ironically deeply
| impoverished.
|
| And if we really think that's true, why do we let people
| accrue wealth at all? Why do we then think that the most
| productive people in our society are also the richest?
| Shouldn't it be the opposite? I struggle to see the pillars
| of this moral structure in any other way than "poor people
| are a different breed and need stricter rules to keep them in
| line". Which again is super wrong! TFA cites research that
| shows that these kids' parents work, but their wages/bills
| are too low/high. Does anyone want to guess how bad those
| parents' jobs are? Do we need to detail the struggles working
| people go through (lack of health care, wildly inconsistent
| hours, sexual harassment and assault, etc)? The nicest thing
| you can say about this kind of thinking is that it's out of
| date.
|
| And what is "freeloading" anyway? Kids of all backgrounds and
| parenting situations get to _eat_? Bring on the freeloading
| then. Who do I make the check out to?
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| >People really think there are, but every time we look we
| find practically no freeloaders.
|
| I don't believe that is true. You didn't provide any
| support for your claim at all either. Let's just consider a
| single example:
|
| >In the past three decades, the number of Americans who are
| on disability has skyrocketed. The rise has come even as
| medical advances have allowed many more people to remain on
| the job, and new laws have banned workplace discrimination
| against the disabled. Every month, 14 million people now
| get a disability check from the government.
|
| >...
|
| >I talked to lots of people in Hale County who were on
| disability. Sometimes, the disability seemed unambiguous.
|
| >...
|
| >As far as the federal government is concerned, you're
| disabled if you have a medical condition that makes it
| impossible to work. In practice, it's a judgment call made
| in doctors' offices and courtrooms around the country. The
| health problems where there is most latitude for judgment
| -- back pain, mental illness -- are among the fastest
| growing causes of disability.
|
| This is from NPR of all places: https://apps.npr.org/unfit-
| for-work/
|
| Why are these health problems growing so fast? The obvious
| explanation is that the stigma against faking disability is
| evaporating in places like Hale County. That's how they got
| to the point where 1 in 4 working-age adults is on
| disability there.
|
| Another example: mtnGoat stated that their father was
| perfectly capable of paying for lunch but did not do so. If
| there was a need-based lunch program, mtnGoat would
| presumably be a "freeloader".
|
| Arguably, the real problem in mtnGoat's case is they had an
| abusive parent. The relevant state tool would be child-
| protective services, not a cafeteria lunch lady.
|
| I'm in favor of free school lunches for kids. But I'm very
| annoyed with the strawmanning in this thread. For example,
| it seems like a strawman to say that people who are against
| free school lunches "want kids to go hungry". Maybe they
| just believe that parents should be responsible rather than
| the state.
| taurath wrote:
| If you've ever considered going on disability, or needed
| to, you'd be very quickly enlightened. It's hard. You
| have to have documentation, you will get denied. Even
| then the benefits are pretty shit. It's not a thing that
| you can just accidently get. There's a lot of people who
| are just disabled.
|
| What happens if the parents who should be responsible,
| aren't?
| lukan wrote:
| "What happens if the parents who should be responsible,
| aren't?"
|
| Normally, child protection service?
|
| (But what I know, they don't always improve things)
| vidarh wrote:
| Which do you think is cheaper: Involving social services
| because someone isn't paying for school lunch, which
| would involve the state either paying foster parents or
| providing other costly monitoring, possible court cases,
| and/or support, or simply covering the cost of school
| lunches?
| lukan wrote:
| Simply covering school lunches, if this would be the
| decusion here.
|
| But that wouldn't solve the problem of negligent parents,
| only ease things a little bit for children.
| vidarh wrote:
| But "negligent" isn't a binary, and it's not just parents
| who don't want to, but parents who can't afford to. For a
| lot of children, easing things a little bit might be all
| that is needed. For others it might ease things enough
| that it can be part of a set of relatively light
| interventions.
|
| For those who genuinely need more heavy handed
| interventions, it's not a solution, but it's also not in
| any way detrimental.
| lukan wrote:
| Yeah, but in this concrete case we are talking about
| someone whose parents could have afford it, but didn't to
| teach the state a lesson or something, but all they(or
| he) did was made life hell for their son. That is a
| serious parent fault and someone acting like this here,
| would likely also act weird with other things.
|
| But like I stated, I am not a fan of child protection
| service, they can make things worse.
|
| And if school is free, so should be lunch for the
| students. Apparently people assumed I opposed that here?
| switch007 wrote:
| For every story about it being difficult to claim, there
| are plenty about people who haven't worked for 20 years
| who have received over PS400,000 in welfare, who could
| have worked, because they learnt the game. The two sides
| have to move beyond these talking points if any useful
| discussion is to be had.
| camgunz wrote:
| > For every story about it being difficult to claim,
| there are plenty about people who haven't worked for 20
| years who have received over PS400,000 in welfare
|
| This is perfectly accurate: the _stories you hear_ make
| these issues out to be equal, when in fact they 're
| anything but. Study after study shows that work
| requirements (the policy you're implicitly advocating for
| here) do not work:
|
| https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-
| inequality/expandi...
|
| https://www.cbpp.org/blog/work-requirements-dont-work
|
| https://www.cbpp.org/blog/more-evidence-that-work-
| requiremen...
|
| https://www.cbpp.org/research/tanf-studies-show-work-
| require...
|
| https://www.epi.org/publication/snap-medicaid-work-
| requireme...
|
| More to the point, millions of people are eligible for
| TANF benefits but don't receive them. Which is to say,
| even if there are some people scamming the system,
| there's tons of people who could legitimately receive
| benefits but don't.
|
| ---
|
| The overall point here is that if we let criminals and a
| very small number of freeloaders sour us on these
| programs, we literally let kids go hungry; we literally
| let them die of preventable illnesses; etc. etc. It is
| absolutely bonkers to me that we are making this
| tradeoff.
| switch007 wrote:
| FWIW I do more than "hear" about these "stories". My
| figures weren't just made up. Personal experience but I'm
| not saying more than that
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| so, you anecdotally know enough people who are somehow
| receiving benefits you don't think they deserve to tip
| the scale by a statistically relevant amount?
| framapotari wrote:
| > I'm in favor of free school lunches for kids. But I'm
| very annoyed with the strawmanning in this thread. For
| example, it seems like a strawman to say that people who
| are against free school lunches "want kids to go hungry".
| Maybe they just believe that parents should be
| responsible rather than the state.
|
| If parents are responsible then the children of the
| parents who can't or won't provide will go hungry. That
| is a fact. You may not _want_ children to go hungry but
| if you advocate for that system then you are absolutely
| okay with a number of children going hungry.
| BoingBoomTschak wrote:
| Look into the expression "perverse incentive". Maybe he
| doesn't want people so thoughtless they'd make children
| without being able to feed them to do so?
|
| Also, too many Americans blindly praising socialism
| without knowing its consequences in the deep end. It's
| not all rainbows and butterflies.
| framapotari wrote:
| I find it such a weird take to call feeding children at
| school socialism with grave consequences but taxpayer
| funded mandatory education isn't.
| BoingBoomTschak wrote:
| 1) Only a very few people are expected to be able (time
| and competency) to give a general education to their
| children, unlike feeding/housing.
|
| 2) Let's be real, it's not just socialism/charity, one of
| the major reasons for compulsory education is shaping
| malleable young minds (for good or bad, mind you).
| rwmj wrote:
| And presumably you want them shaped in the best possible
| way, which is hardly possible if children are hungry or
| undernourished.
| framapotari wrote:
| 1) If they don't have time or competency then surely they
| can pay for the services of someone who can. Most people
| don't have the time or competency to grow their own food
| but we still expect them to purchase their food from
| someone who can.
|
| 2) The state taking money from people by force in order
| to mandate the shaping of malleable young minds sounds
| like exactly the kind of grave consequences of socialism
| you fear.
| jdbernard wrote:
| This is the thing to me. I'm sympathetic to the concern
| of people taking advantage of others, but if the
| government is forcing children to be there (which we
| are), and already having to bear the cost of funding
| these schools generally, we really should include the
| cost of basic nutrition for all students as an operating
| cost, just like the electric bill and teacher's salaries.
| thrance wrote:
| Yeah, I'm a socialist: I believe children shouldn't be
| hungry in the richest country the Earth has ever seen.
| Sue me. Your slippery slope fallacy is no excuse for you
| willingness to let children starve.
|
| Your country is falling into fasicsm and there are still
| people like you going "feeding kids is _literally
| communism_ ". No wonder this country is going down, its
| citizens are incapable of the most basic compassion
| toward one another.
| vidarh wrote:
| Pray tell what horrible consequences you expect from
| feeding children to ensure they don't go hungry.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| i don't think you understand what socialism is.
| government assistance programs are not socialism.
| oefrha wrote:
| When I was in school we paid for (very fairly priced)
| school meals while the poor students were subsidized. It
| was handled pretty discreetly as well, I don't think any
| kid was shamed for it, plus kids have a million ways to
| find out who's poor anyway if they're into bullying. So
| pretending the solution is binary is ridiculous.
|
| Hell, my college education from Stanford, including room
| and board and a very modest allowance, was entirely
| covered by a university fund, no strings attached, while
| the rich kids paid in full. If $65k a year can be
| selectively waived (from a very rich institution, yes I'm
| aware, but I'm talking about the model), no way you can't
| do that for a small portion of school lunches.
| b2w wrote:
| The kid is starving and child protective services isn't a
| free lunch program. Is the effort of potentially
| displacing the kid to foster care really solving the
| immediate problem?
| vidarh wrote:
| Foster parents are also _paid_ most places. Even purely
| in financial terms, for each child in foster care over
| something like this you could feed a _lot_ of children
| instead, and avoiding the harmful effects of unnecessary
| interventions.
| camgunz wrote:
| > Why are these health problems growing so fast? The
| obvious explanation is that the stigma against faking
| disability is evaporating in places like Hale County.
|
| You can just look at what Social Security says about this
| [0]. TL;DR:
|
| - Baby boomers getting old
|
| - Economic conditions (you can see this in the data [1],
| where there's a suspicious huge leap in claims right
| around Trump monkeying around w/ the economy)
|
| - Absent/inadequate health care
|
| More directly, this doesn't seem to have anything to do
| with culture. The average disability application age is
| ~50 [2]. If this were a cultural issue you'd see that
| number declining.
|
| > Maybe they just believe that parents should be
| responsible rather than the state.
|
| What policy are you advocating here? So far all you've
| talked about is the non-existent freeloader problem.
|
| [0]: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/briefing-
| papers/bp2019-01.ht...
|
| [1]: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/dibStat.html
|
| [2]: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/di_asr/202
| 3/sect03...
| gred wrote:
| > There are no moral hazards when it comes to social
| welfare programs.
|
| This is a wild statement. _Of course_ people take advantage
| of welfare programs. _Of course_ welfare programs have
| unintended consequences and sometimes encourage immoral or
| anti-social behavior. That doesn 't mean they're all bad or
| that they need to be completely eliminated, but leading
| with this obvious falsehood made it very hard to read the
| rest of your comment.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/covid-19-fraud-
| enfor...
| camgunz wrote:
| This is exactly why I stake out such a strong position,
| so that positions like this poke their heads up.
| Individuals getting benefits when they're ineligible
| accounts for tiny amounts of the total fraud in these
| programs. Time after time we discover at least one of two
| things:
|
| - The effort/cost required to reduce fraud usually
| overshadows the cost of the fraud itself and also
| dramatically reduces the benefits of the program. There
| were 640,000 SNAP fraud investigations in 2014 [0]. If
| they cost $1,000 each that's $640m, and I bet they cost
| more!
|
| - The vast majority of fraud is either criminal,
| retailer, or both [1]
|
| The "moral hazard" angle of these programs is _wildly_
| overplayed. You don 't hear _anything_ about:
|
| - criminal trafficking
|
| - retailer fraud
|
| - program benefits
|
| There's political reasons for this, but it doesn't
| matter. Our brainrot on social programs is intense.
|
| > https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/covid-19-fraud-
| enfor...
|
| Looking at the fact sheet linked from that release [2],
| that stat that jumps out to me is 3,500 individuals
| charged totaling $1.4b in stolen CARES Act funds (this
| isn't a direct stat, but the numbers only get worse if we
| presume even more money from this and other programs was
| stolen), which is $400k/individual charged. It doesn't
| really seem possible for a person or household to have
| bilked the government for $400k under the individual
| benefits of the CARES Act [3]. We're looking at white
| collar fraud here, again a thing you never hear anything
| about.
|
| Finally, we should view some levels of fraud as
| indicative of broader social ills. For example the number
| of blue collar jobs has greatly diminished just in a
| single lifetime [4]. Could that be responsible for the
| dramatic increase in Social Security Disability claims
| (yes)?
|
| [0]: https://www.cbpp.org/snap-combating-fraud-and-
| improving-prog...
|
| [1]: https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R45147.html
|
| [2]: https://www.justice.gov/coronavirus/media/1347156/dl
| ?inline
|
| [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARES_Act#Relief_to_in
| dividual...
|
| [4]: https://cepr.net/publications/the-decline-of-blue-
| collar-job...
| hgomersall wrote:
| As the lauded private sector are well aware, the optimal
| amount of fraud is non zero:
|
| https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-
| fra...
| ggandv wrote:
| I wonder if optimizing for votes, as is the day to day
| business of most policy makers, gets you to the same
| place as optimizing for profits like in the private
| sector? If not, studying that could be one way to improve
| the public sector output. Not that shareholders vote, on
| average, but you get the idea.
| mech9879876 wrote:
| You swept the issue of fraudulent social security
| disability claims under the rug. It seems apparent to me
| that your attitude toward individual level accountability
| is one that denies agency of the individual and ascribes
| their moral failures as a result of societal-level
| problems. After all, there is no moral hazard when
| individuals have no moral agency to begin with.
| camgunz wrote:
| I posted about it in a different little branch:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43903848
|
| TL;DR: the average disability recipient age has hovered
| ~50 (stddev 1.54 years) since 1960. The theory of "baby
| boomers are a huge generation, they got old and US health
| care sucks ass" is far more parsimonious than your theory
| of individual accountability, which has to explain why
| every generation suddenly becomes
| fraudulent/immoral/unaccountable at the exact same point
| in their lives.
| mech9879876 wrote:
| Aggregating statistics regarding age has very little
| explanatory value in regards to fraud and is a non
| sequitir. I would not be surprised if the average age of
| a convicted insurance fraudster has remained relatively
| constant over time either.
|
| The example in linked materials of 1 in 4 adults in Hale
| County receiving disability payments is a clear example
| of a situation where individuals and healthcare providers
| have both contributed to widescale fraud. This is an
| obvious case where moral hazard is present and you
| continue to deny it.
| camgunz wrote:
| This is my claim: the narrative that these programs
| incentivize and facilitate freeloading is false. Let's
| use your example: NPR's exploration of Hale County [0],
| which I'm not sure you've read/listened to.
|
| The first interview [1] is exactly what I've written:
| baby boomers got older and more disabled, and economic
| conditions pushed people into disability. Quote:
| "consider this: Since the economy began its slow, slow
| recovery in late 2009, we've been averaging about 150,000
| new jobs created per month. But in that same period,
| almost 250,000 people have been applying for disability
| every month." What do you want these people to do,
| manifest new jobs?
|
| The second interview [2] outlines how the definition of
| disability has expanded over the years and the way the
| legal profession has exploited that to increase the
| number and success rate of disability claims. Again, not
| freeloading.
|
| The third interview [3] describes how welfare-to-work
| legislation put a higher burden of the welfare onto
| states, so it's actually in their financial benefit to
| move people off of welfare and onto Social Security
| disability--so much so in fact that they pay people to do
| it. Quote: "PCG estimates it'll save Missouri about $80
| million with all the people that will be getting onto
| disability and off of welfare".
|
| Interviews 4 [4] and 5 [5] describe how people and
| families get trapped in these systems where if they do
| too well they'll experience extreme financial hardship.
| Quote: "a lot of the letters that we got from people
| responding to the stories were people saying, I'm one of
| those 14 million people on disability and I want to work.
| But I get health insurance on disability and what job am
| I going to find that accommodates my disability, it also
| gives me health insurance."
|
| If your model of this problem is "there's a bunch of
| people too lazy to work who are freeloading on the public
| dole" you will be unsuccessful at solving it, because
| your model is wrong.
|
| [0]: https://www.npr.org/series/196621208/unfit-for-work-
| the-star...
|
| [1]: https://www.npr.org/2013/03/22/175072446/millions-
| of-america...
|
| [2]: https://www.npr.org/2013/03/26/175396983/expanded-
| definition...
|
| [3]: https://www.npr.org/2013/03/27/175502085/moving-
| people-from-...
|
| [4]: https://www.npr.org/2013/03/28/175619112/kids-may-
| stay-on-di...
|
| [5]: https://www.npr.org/2013/03/29/175722025/americans-
| on-disabi...
| mech9879876 wrote:
| Your method of argument relies on lumping all persons
| into one category. The annoying detail about designing
| public policy is that policy changes happen on the
| margin, and it is the marginal cases where moral hazard
| presents itself first. If you continue to boundlessly
| extend your empathy for everyone that walks into their
| doctor's office to anybody that says they have back pain,
| you will clearly have fraud. And Hale County is clearly a
| case where this fraud is broadly present. You have
| presented your argument in the best way to try to lump
| the fraudsters in with the rest of the empathy-deserving
| recipients.
|
| When Hale County has 1 in 4 adults on disability, it is
| beyond evident that the system is not working as
| intended. Yes, it is distinctly clear that some of those
| adults should be getting jobs. Your question "What do you
| want these people to do, manifest new jobs?" implies that
| this must be some unthinkably cruel thing to believe.
|
| >If your model of this problem is "there's a bunch of
| people too lazy to work who are freeloading on the public
| dole" you will be unsuccessful at solving it, because
| your model is wrong.
|
| Even if freeloading is unsolvable, the moral hazard
| exists. My primary claim prior to this comment has been
| limited to the fact that the moral hazard is present.
| Your argumentative strategy to claim that because the
| problem isn't solvable, it must not exist, strikes me as
| dishonest.
| camgunz wrote:
| I'm gonna do the point by point thing here, not because I
| think you really deserve it, but because I want you to
| really think about the arguments you're making. Will it
| work? I don't know. Do I know of a better way to do it? I
| wish I did. OK here we go.
|
| > Your method of argument relies on lumping all persons
| into one category.
|
| I literally broke people up into different generations,
| people who can work, people who can't, children, people
| who are lawyers, policymakers, government workers or
| contractors moving people from welfare to disability. I
| really think you not only didn't read the NPR stuff, you
| didn't read what I wrote either.
|
| > The annoying detail about designing public policy is
| that policy changes happen on the margin, and it is the
| marginal cases where moral hazard presents itself first.
|
| You've no evidence for this. It's also not true; see for
| example the financial collapse of 2008. Also people who
| cry "moral hazard!" (this is you) don't think this,
| because their chief villains are subsidies and bailouts
| which explicitly create moral hazard. Also people who cry
| "social programs create moral hazard!" (this is also you)
| don't think this, because they see this as the
| fundamental dynamic of aid programs.
|
| > If you continue to boundlessly extend your empathy for
| everyone that walks into their doctor's office to anybody
| that says they have back pain, you will clearly have
| fraud.
|
| You've also no evidence for this. There's counter
| evidence though. Did you know a small fraction of
| disability claims are approved? You do now! Turns out
| we're not "extending [our] empathy for everyone that
| walks into their doctor's office".
|
| > And Hale County is clearly a case where this fraud is
| broadly present.
|
| This isn't my claim. My claim is (again): the narrative
| that these programs incentivize and facilitate
| freeloading is false. If there's no job literally in
| America that you can have, I don't think going on Social
| Security Disability is freeloading. I'd love to engage on
| the quote I posted ("Since the economy began its slow,
| slow recovery in late 2009, we've been averaging about
| 150,000 new jobs created per month. But in that same
| period, almost 250,000 people have been applying for
| disability every month.") but you've not responded to it
| at all, probably because it's devastating to your
| argument.
|
| > You have presented your argument in the best way to try
| to lump the fraudsters in with the rest of the empathy-
| deserving recipients.
|
| I do think these people (like all people) deserve
| empathy, but again that's not my claim. I'm making the
| claim I am because if you disagree with it, you'll
| ratfuck (or shutdown entirely) these programs such that
| they don't actually help people. When I talk about all
| the dynamics around aid programs, it's because I want
| people to understand the dynamics around aid programs,
| not to sneak freeloaders in through the back door.
| Elsewhere I posted "The overall point here is that if we
| let criminals and a very small number of freeloaders sour
| us on these programs, we literally let kids go hungry; we
| literally let them die of preventable illnesses; etc.
| etc. It is absolutely bonkers to me that we are making
| this tradeoff." Do you disagree? It's hard for me to
| imagine a rational person disagreeing.
|
| > When Hale County has 1 in 4 adults on disability, it is
| beyond evident that the system is not working as
| intended.
|
| Agree! The whole NPR series explains it. You should read
| it!
|
| > Yes, it is distinctly clear that some of those adults
| should be getting jobs.
|
| Again:
|
| - For most of those people there aren't jobs
|
| - There might be jobs but they're shit jobs that don't
| cover their bills or health insurance
|
| - They actually in many cases _do have jobs_
|
| Again, you should definitely read the NPR series you're
| citing over and over again (lol).
|
| > Even if freeloading is unsolvable, the moral hazard
| exists.
|
| Correct. Now:
|
| - design an aid program without moral hazard or
|
| - decide moral hazard is OK or
|
| - decide it's OK for kids to literally die entirely of
| preventable causes
| madeofpalk wrote:
| The correct answer is to feed children. It's not difficult.
| You're making this way more complicated than it needs to be.
|
| > _there will be plenty of people who are capable of paying
| who don 't bother_
|
| I'm past pretending this argument is made in good faith. It
| only comes from hate and selfishness.
| sparsely wrote:
| If you don't provide lunches for the children then their
| parents need to pay for them anyway. Just tax more if you
| don't already have a budget, this isn't a case where there
| would be radically different spending patterns without
| government intervention.
| Faaak wrote:
| I'm sorry but I lived in France and this didn't happen. We
| had to pay for the food (~3EUR), and if you didn't had the
| money (basically because of low resources), then it was free.
| People that could pay payed, and people that couldn't didn't.
| viraptor wrote:
| > it sounds like your dad was maybe capable of paying but
| wanted to freeload.
|
| But it went a step further. He didn't want to pay either way,
| so the poster was in exactly the same situation as the poor
| kids.
|
| If we're scared to help people who need help, because there's
| a small chance that someone else may benefit as well, we've
| lost as a society. Just raise the taxes and give it to every
| kid.
| smeeger wrote:
| his dad did pay... he paid the schools entire budget. you
| cant just throw the whole system into chaos where people are
| expected to pay in several different ways and then they turn
| the tablet around and aggressively ask for a tip. without a
| clear, simple and singular source of funding it just becomes
| an excuse for corruption. and here we are, being told that we
| are inhuman monsters for not subsidizing a bloated tumor of
| administrators. how about the administrators downsize and
| take 100k home instead of multiple hundreds of thousands? why
| arent they subject to any of this scrutiny?
| IanCal wrote:
| There are fundamentally two different things going on here.
|
| One is whether kids should get fed.
|
| The other is how this is paid for.
|
| The approach of "the child is charged like anyone else buying
| a thing and hopefully their parents have given them money" is
| _easy_ but has obvious problems that we 're talking about.
|
| However we can split these problems up, one is saying that we
| will just feed the kids as a flat statement. Then the problem
| is how to pay for it.
|
| You could have state level taxes, but that's not the only
| option. On the other end of the spectrum you could send a
| bill to the parents - this is at its core the same as
| charging the kids in the best case but avoids issues where
| people don't give the kids the money. You could do that but
| have programs to only charge the more fortunate. You could do
| it by taxes on income, you could do it by income but only if
| you have kids. You could do it with property taxes.
|
| All have various benefits and drawbacks, as what's "fair" is
| arguable.
|
| However that is all distinct from whether the kids get fed.
| brianmcc wrote:
| Treat it as the common good and societal investment it
| actually is, and fund it from central taxation like plenty of
| other countries do. Problem solved!
| aembleton wrote:
| Couldn't you have taken a packed lunch in? Make a sandwich and
| take it with you.
| mtnGoat wrote:
| I could have, and did on occasion, but that would have
| required my dad to go buy lunch food and keep it on hand. But
| he didn't need to do that... the school needed to feed us!
|
| I did learn around 7th grade that I could steal his
| cigarettes and sell them. I guess he did pay for more lunches
| than I realized, now that I wrote this.
| pertymcpert wrote:
| The fact that you think this is a seriously practical
| suggestion shows that, very fortunately for you, you have no
| idea what goes in a household like this. I say this with
| sincerity, it's a _good_ thing that you don 't realize the
| problem with this suggestion.
| ljf wrote:
| Agree - if my 10yo son was in charge of getting his own
| food for school from our well stocked fridge, I know he'd
| struggle to get any kind of balance.
|
| I know from friends in education who see kids come to
| school who have had to try to find food to bring in. I live
| in a relatively well off area but kids still come to school
| with stuff like just dry bread or a single cereal bar as
| there just isn't anything to hand for them to bring in for
| school - looking after their kids welfare isn't a given for
| a sad and sizeable minority.
| Zanfa wrote:
| So let them eat cake?
| askonomm wrote:
| This is wild to me. In Estonia school lunches are free for
| everyone, paid by the taxpayer. Doesn't matter if you are poor
| or wealthy, everybody gets the same food.
| mettamage wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| In the Netherlands we packed our lunches or we cycled home to
| eat lunch with our parents and then cycled back to school.
| Lunch was one of the most favorite times of my day. A break
| from school during school hours. What a treat!
| bgnn wrote:
| Yeah, dry bread and cheese..
| mettamage wrote:
| Read the HN guidelines. I didn't downvote you, as I am
| giving you the benefit of the doubt, but it reads as a
| sarcastic snarky comment [1].
|
| It's bread, butter and cheese. Not dry bread and cheese.
| I didn't eat that as a kid though, I hated cheese when I
| was young.
|
| The quality of the bread varies, depending on the views
| of the household. The way I grew up everyone favored
| white bread but me. I always ate brown bread.
|
| Nowadays, I come to the US quite often and it frustrates
| me that there's almost no supermarket that sells a good
| loaf of bread. A lot of bread has added sugar and I don't
| even want to know what other stuff they add to it. I'm
| not a fan of the bakeries either as the bread they make
| tastes alright, but not for $8. So whenever I'm in the
| US, I make my own bread, because even after a first try,
| it was better [2] (by an American baker. It's not that
| they can't - it's just that affordable nice bread is not
| a pervasive thing in the US).
|
| And if you genuinely think it's dry bread and cheese.
| You're wrong, I _know_ what dry bread tastes like. Done
| well, it 's called toast.
|
| My school lunch was bread with butter and a fried egg.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdoP33KPYtY&ab_channe
| l=Brian...
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Brown bread is the superior one; white bread just feels
| like a snack, it doesn't last. Just not the whole grain,
| seedy, or extra dark ones, plain brown is fine.
| bgnn wrote:
| Absolutely! I love rye bread too.
| bgnn wrote:
| Hey, I'm Dutch and that was indeed a snarky comment
| coming from my own experience. Sorry that it's a big deal
| for you, or others it seems. That wasn't the intention.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| The self-hating American is all too common here, so I
| appreciate a self-hating Dutch to punctuate the monotony.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Add butter and make sure it's in a good container, but
| granted, cheese on its own is kinda boring.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Meanwhile, in Texas (~2005), we weren't even allowed to
| leave the building to eat on the patio outside in high
| school.
|
| Something I thought a lot about when I moved to Mexico and
| saw kids leaving school at lunch to wander out and eat
| lunch together in the surrounding part of the city.
|
| Too much dangerous liability to allow going outside during
| lunch hours in a wealthy part of Texas, but not in
| Guadalajara, Mexico and nor of the world. Sigh.
| mettamage wrote:
| > Meanwhile, in Texas (~2005), we weren't even allowed to
| leave the building to eat on the patio outside in high
| school.
|
| > Too much dangerous liability to allow going outside
| during lunch hours in a wealthy part of Texas, but not in
| Guadalajara, Mexico and nor of the world. Sigh.
|
| Do you think it actually was or is the US just really
| strict about this?
| jdbernard wrote:
| Their experience is not universal as I also went to High
| School in Texas in the early 2000's and not only were we
| allowed to eat on school grounds, if you were old enough
| to have a license you could drive off campus for lunch as
| long as you were back before the next period.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I think there's just liability creep in the US that over
| time leads to zero-tolerance policies that win over, say,
| adult discretion.
|
| For example, in the same high school, I had an unopened
| beer can on the floor of my car from the weekend, and one
| of our golf cart parking lot cops saw it while doing her
| window snooping. And I got sent to reassignment school
| for a month and a minor in possession charge even though
| various people in the faculty thought it was unfair that
| I couldn't just dispose of it and go on my way since I
| was a good student who clearly wasn't intending to drink
| at school.
|
| Meanwhile my dad said just decades earlier he kept his BB
| rifle in the bed of his truck when he drove to high
| school in Houston. Something that would probably get SWAT
| called on you if they found it in your truck by the time
| I went to high school.
| mbreese wrote:
| In Indiana (mid 90s), we had an open lunch policy in high
| school. This meant we could all leave campus, so long as
| we were back by the start of the next class. It was great
| and we had many choices for quick lunch nearby. I
| remember picking up something fast, but eating lunch at a
| park with friends often. The small amount of freedom (and
| trust) was very nice.
|
| Sadly, I think they stopped allowing that the year after
| I graduated.
| acdha wrote:
| I had that in Southern California. It lasted until two
| years after I graduated, when a student brought a gun to
| school and started shooting. The school administration
| which had ignored multiple warning signs with that
| student decided open lunch was a security risk.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Yeah this is the part I don't understand; if a family can't
| afford a school lunch, can they afford a packed lunch at
| least? The concept of a school even having the facilities
| for a full lunch only became a thing in tertiary education
| for me, before that it was at best a hot snack or some
| soup. But this is Dutch 90's privilege to a point,
| elementary school was in cycling range, we had an hour and
| a half of lunch break, and I had a stay at home parent.
| Secondary school was only a few hundred meters further away
| than elementary school. Tertiary was in the next town over,
| 20 minute bike ride.
|
| Either way, it made no economic sense to pay for lunch, so
| for most of it I had some sandwiches, this was the norm for
| most people. I'm nearly 40 now and still (should) bring a
| packed lunch to the office, because going out for lunch
| costs EUR10,- easily. If I went to the office every day
| like in the Before Times, that'd be around EUR200,- a month
| or EUR2400 a year, which is A Lot.
| acdha wrote:
| > if a family can't afford a school lunch, can they
| afford a packed lunch at least?
|
| More can, but American poverty is harsh for people who
| haven't seen it. There are kids who don't have stable
| living conditions (my wife has had students who rarely
| sleep under the same roof two nights in a row, one school
| in the district had a homelessness rate around 40%), or
| who might not have access to a refrigerator or rodent-
| proof storage, or who have abusive/mentally ill parents
| who don't give them enough food, withhold it as a
| punishment, or think that enough Jesus will cure an
| allergy or other medical condition which means they can't
| eat some things, etc. Social services may eventually
| catch up to this at some point but they're chronically
| underfunded even in blue states and that can take a good
| chunk of someone's childhood.
|
| At this point, we have over a century of studies
| concluding that one of the easiest ways to improve
| education is to make sure kids aren't hungry and the cost
| of doing so is cheaper than almost anything else (free
| glasses probably win there) so, like OP, I basically
| treat this as a litmus test for human decency.
| subscribed wrote:
| By the most metric Estonia is the creme de la creme of the
| decent democracy of the compassionate people.
|
| Yeah, this is wild.
| veunes wrote:
| Feed all the kids, no shame, no paperwork, no bureaucratic
| gatekeeping - just... lunch
| renewiltord wrote:
| It is classically American to say "I pay taxes. They should use
| that to solve the problem" while paying so few taxes that it
| could not possibly solve the problem.
| LandR wrote:
| Even if you want to look at it from a purely selfish point of
| view... if you want to live in a good, prosperous society, this
| starts with childrens education. A well fed, happy, well slept
| child is an ideal here to get them the best education they can.
|
| Not wanting each child to get the best possible start in life
| makes absolutely no sense to me.
|
| But yes, no child should go hungry at school.
| lukan wrote:
| "Not wanting each child to get the best possible start in
| life makes absolutely no sense to me."
|
| Maybe to lower the chances of other children against your own
| (wealthy) offspring? So from a very selfish individualistic
| perspective there is sense? I suspect that might be the base
| motivation, even though you likely won't find many openly
| stating that or even are aware of it.
| pmg101 wrote:
| It could do but only for the kids that would be competing
| closely with your own children, so of a similar
| socioeconomic status.
|
| For children from much poorer backgrounds it's more likely
| that making their prospects even worse will just create
| later negative impacts on society, such as crime, drug
| addiction, prostitution, gang violence and so on.
| mistersquid wrote:
| > "Not wanting each child to get the best possible start in
| life makes absolutely no sense to me."
|
| > Maybe to lower the chances of other children against your
| own (wealthy) offspring?
|
| Some may think and behave along these lines. Their problem
| is that they conceive economic activity as zero-sum, which
| it is not.
|
| Good educational outcomes generate wealth for everyone.
| brainzap wrote:
| This. It also creates peace
| mobtrain wrote:
| While I wholeheartedly agree that no child should ever go
| hungry and school lunches should be free (from a EU country,
| this isn't even a thing here), if you call people subhuman, we
| can't be friends, nor acquaintances.
| RS-232 wrote:
| _Subhuman_ is a rather severe (and incredibly reductionist)
| judgement. Sure, being anti-free lunch for children is
| morally objectionable... but they've failed to probe that
| line of reasoning. They've encountered a bug, but instead of
| debugging it, they've closed their IDE and walked away.
|
| Sometimes an honest conversation--with carefully placed,
| introspective questions--can be revealing to all parties.
| When we use our tongues to learn about others and build them
| up rather than tear them down, we're actively making the
| world a better place. When we resist the tendency to judge
| others, we're actively bettering ourselves.
| notnaut wrote:
| This, and there's something all-too human about ignoring or
| even basking in the suffering of others, including
| children. Pretending it's somehow less than human to be on
| that side of things feels a bit head-in-sand.
| sneak wrote:
| A certain amount of ignoring human suffering is
| positively required to exist in the modern world,
| otherwise it would be an impossible-to-defend-against
| exploit to walk up to happy people in the first world and
| say "ten thousand children die every day from lack of
| access to clean water", because then you would
| permanently alter or ruin their life.
|
| FWIW this is true on Earth today.
|
| It is required to turn a blind eye to slavery and
| oppression and hunger and thirst and preventable death
| and disease otherwise it would be impossible to have any
| semblance of a happy life in the good parts of the world,
| because the scale of preventable human suffering is both
| epic and, thus far, neverending.
| amelius wrote:
| Subhuman ... "if you think kids should go hungry or be
| embarrassed at school because of their parents finances"
|
| Sounds about right.
| osrec wrote:
| I agree. There is something less evolved about their sense
| of humility.
|
| One day it's someone else who can't afford lunch, another
| day it may well be you or your kids. In a rational society,
| where we all unanimously acknowledge the fragility of our
| respective positions, I believe even the most simple
| rational human would agree that the basic needs to live
| must be met for all.
|
| I feel those who take an opposing view are often blind to
| their own vulnerabilities and misunderstandings.
| permo-w wrote:
| this is ridiculous. I'm a socialist and I believe that
| people should have far more of life's necessities
| provided to them by the state; I think supermarkets
| should be nationalised; I think water and electricity
| should be free up to a limit. on the other hand, this
| "people disagree with me about something sensitive so
| they're unevolved and/or subhuman" lark is childish as
| fuck and completely hypocritical
|
| people think things for a reason, and it's rarely because
| they're sociopaths or they're unevolved or they're
| stupid, and assuming that it is lazy and uncritical
| mystraline wrote:
| No, there, at least in the USA, a large amount of very
| dumb people. They also tend to be quite sadistic as well,
| thinking 'those people' deserve the sadism and torment.
|
| This percolates through our whole society, one case of
| which is this scholastic food 'debt'.
|
| And also, during some of Biden's years, there was a few
| years of free school lunches. And was also summarily
| cancelled. Even democrats have this pervasive 'those
| people don't deserve X'.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/free-school-lunches-
| set...
| permo-w wrote:
| you're proving my point. people think these things
| because, as you say, they're instilled in the American
| national mentality. it makes sense to think that's wrong,
| it makes sense to think people should think for
| themselves and try to engage their empathy circuits for
| people not in their immediate family, but it's taking it
| a million steps too far to say they're subhuman or
| unevolved, and it's not helping anything anyway. perhaps
| it was too far to say that it's rarely because they're
| stupid though
| osrec wrote:
| A less evolved sense of humility (as I originally put it)
| does not equate to stupid. They are far from stupid -
| they are ruthless consumers of every scrap of advantage
| they can get, including the best education, food, clothes
| to name but a few things. They believe they deserve that
| advantage.
|
| In fact, they see the person who can't afford lunch as
| stupid - after all, an intelligent person should at least
| be able to get lunch - it's so easy! What they don't
| realise is how much each person is impacted by their own
| starting position in life (which, I believe to be
| random), and how that in turn impacts where they are now.
|
| Many "privileged" people lack empathy, because they
| believe the tables can never turn. They don't even want
| to entertain the thought. They believe their privilege is
| a birthright. In some cases, they are probably correct;
| they will enjoy privilege for their entire lives. But in
| exceptional circumstances, they will be caught out, and
| their opinion will undoubtedly change.
|
| So, it's not stupidity, it is willful ignorance. History
| is full of such examples, some more chilling and
| devastating than others.
| blueflow wrote:
| Are you aware of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untermensch
| ? Might be a cultural thing to not like that word.
| amelius wrote:
| I have deleted this comment because this discussion is
| going nowhere.
| homebrewer wrote:
| He's absolutely right. As someone whose society suffered
| very heavy losses from the Nazis, this is the first thing
| that came to my mind when I read the root comment. It's
| like posting swastikas online and then dismissing
| concerned replies because "it's a Buddhist sign, what are
| you on about?"
| amelius wrote:
| Except in this case the victims (the hungry children) are
| not the ones being labeled that. Also the word subhuman
| is in the dictionary (I checked Webster's) with zero
| reference to the war.
| blueflow wrote:
| And "n*gro" is the Spanish, non-slur word for "black" but
| yet we can't use it because US people dislike it. Slavery
| and such. Cultural sensitivity goes both ways.
| amelius wrote:
| > And "n*gro" is the Spanish, non-slur word for "black"
| but yet we can't use it because US people dislike it.
| Slavery and such. Cultural sensitivity goes both ways.
|
| Webster's dictionary:
|
| plural Negroes
|
| 1 dated, often offensive : a person of Black African
| ancestry
|
| 2 dated, often offensive : a member of a group of people
| formerly considered to constitute a race (see race entry
| 1 sense 1a) of humans having African ancestry and
| classified according to physical traits (such as dark
| skin pigmentation)
|
| Note the "offensive" warnings. Now let's see subhuman:
|
| : less than human: such as a: failing to attain the level
| (as of morality or intelligence) associated with normal
| human beings b: unsuitable to or unfit for human beings
| subhuman living conditions c: of or relating to a
| taxonomic group lower than that of humans; the subhuman
| primates
|
| In the case of subhuman, Webster's dictionary does not
| give any warning. And there is no reference to any wars.
|
| Don't try to make people say things they are not saying.
|
| In this case the intended meaning was clearly:
|
| "failing to attain the level (as of morality) associated
| with normal human beings"
| blueflow wrote:
| Like you, probably, I got a very systemizing brain and
| had trouble understanding this for decades. What the
| dictionaries say about the words does not matter - what
| is offensive to other people does not follow any system,
| but their feelings. And that means its arbitrary and you
| have probably no chance to know it ahead of time.
|
| I feel your pain, tho.
| amelius wrote:
| I hope you understand that by acting offended, you are
| offending other people, making them say things they are
| not saying.
| blueflow wrote:
| Yes. This is very exploitable.
| amelius wrote:
| It is better to stay away from it.
| mtnGoat wrote:
| I am the OP that used that word. I was unaware of this
| connection, my apologies. I will consider this if using
| the word in the future.
|
| I was aiming for the "not having basic human morals"
| usage of the word, nothing more.
| em500 wrote:
| > ... and school lunches should be free (from a EU country,
| this isn't even a thing here)
|
| I'm from another EU country (the Netherlands). Primary
| schools do not provide any lunch or other food whatsoever,
| secondary schools might have a canteen selling some snacks or
| low quality fast food. But everyone is basically expected to
| bring their own or go out/home for lunch.
| fakedang wrote:
| Yes, we had the same system when I went to school in a
| (relatively low-income) expat (Indian) school in the Middle
| East. But nowhere was a child expected to leave the break
| hungry - I saw firsthand a teacher ruthlessly scolded by
| the grade supervisor (who was a GOAT all-round) because she
| found a student still eating after she had arrived at the
| class, and sent him to stand outside as punishment.
|
| Another time, a teacher paid for a student's meal because
| he lost the change he was given by his parents to buy food
| from the canteen.
|
| And another time, the school canteen just giving away free
| food at the end of the day to whoever wanted it, because
| there was no point in them keeping it around.
|
| It's honestly unbelievable that a first world country would
| let its children go without lunch because even third world
| countries do not let that happen. I have seen schools in
| rural Africa that don't let their children starve - in
| fact, giving a midday meal (and some to take home
| afterwards) is a way to ensure school attendance.
| pergadad wrote:
| No one is starving in the netherlands. There's a
| difference between offering a canteen but charging for it
| with some able and some not able to pay, and a general
| expectation that all bring food from home. Many Dutch,
| German, etc companies will also not have canteens but
| rather people bring a sandwich or last night's leftovers
| from home. The standard warm meal is the evening meal.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > No one is starving in the netherlands.
|
| This is inaccurate, nearly half a million people struggle
| to eat enough:
| https://www.rodekruis.nl/persberichten/450000-mensen-in-
| verb.... There's food banks, but there's a lot of shame
| associated with using them; despite that, ~200.000 people
| a year make use of them:
| https://voedselbankennederland.nl/wp-
| content/uploads/2024/09....
|
| Also read the book "Superschool" about what was one of
| the worst schools in one of the poorest areas of the
| Netherlands, where there were loads of kids going to
| school hungry, dirty, and without basics like a coat.
|
| Sorry, your throwaway remark just rubbed me up the wrong
| way. The Netherlands is not the socialist utopia that
| some people make it out to be, we just have bike lanes,
| sorta-legal weed and superior bread / cheese.
| fakedang wrote:
| I wasn't talking about the Netherlands per se, but wanted
| to pinpoint that alternatives exist in places other than
| the US, which ensure that no kid starves. In fact, my
| comment was an add-on to yours, as we followed the same
| system as you guys do in NL.
| pif wrote:
| I mean, you are right.
|
| But your father was an a*, too!
|
| It was his responsibility to make sure you did not go hungry,
| and he chose to ignore it.
| mtnGoat wrote:
| Yes, he was an interesting guy. Not a good dad, which is why
| I can't help but feel the way I do about others that would do
| the same to a child.
| veunes wrote:
| It's honestly heartbreaking - not just what you went through,
| but how normalized it was. That kind of survival mode shouldn't
| be part of any kid's school experience
| mtnGoat wrote:
| It sticks with you for a while and creates interesting views
| on things throughout life.
| chronid wrote:
| In my country you pay for school lunches as a local tax (and
| assistance is available for low income families). Children are
| always fed. Parents are the ones with the debts and the
| garnished salaries.
| theoreticalmal wrote:
| One should not view others as subhuman because of the ideas
| they hold.
| pc86 wrote:
| I think every child should get a hot, nutritious breakfast and
| lunch at school at taxpayer expense. But I'm also [edit]
| s/smart/reasonable enough to know that people who disagree with
| that aren't "subhuman."
|
| There is no "basic test of humanity" and pretending their is is
| tribalistic bullshit so you can feel superior to other people
| who disagree with you.
|
| It's digusting.
| mtnGoat wrote:
| You are entitled to your opinion, despite throwing an insult
| in to point out an insult. lol, nice hypocrisy. ;)
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| >I consider how someone feels about free school lunch, a basic
| test of their humanity.
|
| I'll bite (pun alert).
|
| It isn't about free handout, it's about ROI. The valid
| counterpoint to free lunch for children is any program can
| become grossly mismanaged because of "think of the children".
| There are recent stories of unhealthy and expired food being
| served to children that made them sick. Moreover, what they are
| getting can be something that puts more bad-calories than good
| into them (processed, high in corn-syrup). While I agree that
| no child should go hungry, can you both understand and not
| disagree this isn't a fire and forget problem? Taxpayers need
| their hard-earned income _only_ going into high nutrition food;
| food that will not exacerbate the nationwide obesity problem!
|
| https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/expired-food-served-...
|
| https://wchsinsight.org/33581/opinion/school-food-causes-com...
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/childhood-obesity-facts/childhoo...
| smileysteve wrote:
| Your anecdote is a great example of how inequality leads to
| crime. And the systems that are in place to "punish" the
| "unequal"/"un-privileged", results in high effort ways that
| punish the "privileged".
|
| If we extend your anecdote to normalizing petty crime, and the
| likelihood to extend to adulthood -- not paying for school
| lunches now may be a great way to increase paying for school
| lunches when a person is sent to prison for vagrancy / petty
| crimes (repeatedly, and will never be able to dig out of the
| prison/debt hole)
| heresjohnny wrote:
| As someone from Europe, I had heard before about bankrupting
| ambulance rides, slavery in prisons, and food deserts. I did not
| expect to add "lunch money humiliation ritual" to that list. I'll
| think of this next time I complain about my 50% income tax.
| taxedrollik wrote:
| 50% sounds manageable still. Currently paying ~65% of whatever
| I bill, in taxes and that hurts quite a lot. Assuming no costs
| to deliver, I need to bill 10KEUR to net ~3,5KEUR. It makes
| exports uncompetitive with other lower taxed countries. Despite
| this, seeing a general practitioner can take months for issues
| that aren't-killing-you-right-now.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >Currently paying ~65% of whatever I bill, in taxes and that
| hurts quite a lot.
|
| A decent portion of that goes towards your retirement though
| right? It's not like it's just vague government services you
| don't benefit from.
| Symbiote wrote:
| To make a useful contribution to the discussion, at least say
| what country this applies to.
|
| You also seem to have added business taxes onto the income
| taxes.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Ahh but you can see a general practicioner! That puts you
| head an shoulders over the average urban californian saddled
| with being triaged into the stripmall based urgent care
| system for lack of regional hospitals and gps. Corporate
| healthcare solutions are no greener grass than your public
| option... wait until you find out what is considered a
| cosmetic procedure (like having teeth).
| scotty79 wrote:
| It really doesn't matter how much tax you pay. If everyone
| pays 65% it's the same as if everyone paid 0. Income tax
| doesn't come from the pocket of a worker. Employer needs to
| pay you enough so that you can live your life the way you
| want to. If he doesn't, you just don't work for him and he
| has no business. They will pay you as little as they can, but
| the amount they optimize is the amount after tax.
|
| Economic though is focused around employers and employees but
| it's the customer that covers the bill down the line. As long
| as the consumer is healthy you can set tax as high or as low
| as you want to.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| I still have vivid memories of getting the 'reduced cost' meal
| ticket for school lunch. They made all of us with the reduced
| tickets stand in line and wait for the other kids to get their
| food first, where all the other kids had to walk past and stare
| at us, and once everyone else was served, they'd put the food
| away that was given to the other kids, then hand out shitty
| plastic-wrapped sandwiches that were half the size of the
| barely-adequate meals the 'full' sized lunches got.
|
| It was all on purpose, too, to make us ashamed for not paying
| the full amount.
|
| The adults that chose this path were fucking evil ghouls, the
| lot of them. Of all the things I want my tax money to go to,
| ensuring that no one (and especially growing children) need to
| feel hunger pangs while trying to learn is close to top of the
| list.
| froindt wrote:
| That experience is ridiculous, I'm sorry you had to go
| through that. My cousin is a teacher and is trying to support
| one of her students who is very food insecure. She's
| currently putting a box of food into the kids backpack every
| day, so the kid doesn't feel different/shame bringing a bag
| of food home. The one consistent meal the kid gets per day is
| the school lunch.
|
| It wasn't that child's choice to be born. Some of the biggest
| lifetime ROI's out there are ensuring a childhood isn't
| filled with trauma, involves enough nutrition to help their
| bodies and brains develop, etc.
|
| I have no time for people who make an argument about "the
| government shouldn't be providing food because it creates a
| dependency or expectation they'll want for life". Their
| lifetime earnings and contributions to society will be vastly
| larger if they aren't hungry during the school day.
|
| It's tough to focus and learn when you're only eating a few
| hundred calories per day.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Switzerland spends like 30% of GDP and pretty low debt. So I
| don't think you need 50% of GDP to fix any of the issues
| mentioned.
| kashunstva wrote:
| Meanwhile, the proposed U.S. defence budget is ~ $1 trillion and
| the Department of Education is slated to not exist. This tells
| you much of what one needs to know about that country, and why
| having hungry children is perfectly ok.
|
| There should be a dialectic around individualism and
| communitarianism but with some number of citizens endorsing a
| polar position, including the solipsist-in-chief, it's hard to
| see a way forward on social issues that require thinking on a
| moral, noneconomic plane.
| yalok wrote:
| Did not realize it happened just so recently in California:
|
| > In the 2022-23 school year, California became the first state
| to provide free school meals to any child regardless of whether
| they were eligible for the free or reduced-price meals as defined
| by the federal government.
| j-a-a-p wrote:
| Am I missing something? My kids have to bring their own lunch to
| school. The school is for education and the parents' job is to
| feed them. And it gets even better: after 12/13 yo they grow self
| supporting capabilities, so as parent you only need to replenish
| the fridge.
| lo0dot0 wrote:
| Right, it's that simple, no morals involved nothing to see here
| please move along . How naive can you be?
| bArray wrote:
| I would expand on this - there are a surprising number of times
| where a relatively small amount of money would make a large
| difference to one or multiple people.
|
| Most people I know who have ended up in debt for example didn't
| not have the money to pay the debt entirely, they were just short
| for one month by a small amount. It's not long till it spirals
| completely out of control with interest, repayment penalties,
| etc, and that interest keeps adding up.
|
| A family member that is the sole income earner for a household
| had their car break down. They had no additional income to fix
| it, no additional income to get another car and failing to get to
| work would spiral out their financial situation. That day I gave
| them an old car and told them to keep it. They used it for a
| month, eventually got the other car fixed and sold the car I gave
| to them.
| titaphraz wrote:
| > The thing about witnessing a 7-year-old having their hot lunch
| tray yanked away and replaced with a cold sandwich
|
| It's bizarre that this happens in America.
| em500 wrote:
| Well in the Netherlands all kids are basically expected to
| bring their own cold sandwiches every day, so that isn't seen
| as a punishment. Primary schools don't even have separate
| tables for meals, let alone canteens: kids just eat their cold
| sandwiches day after day (and still grow into the tallest
| people in the world).
| titaphraz wrote:
| > in the Netherlands all kids are basically expected to bring
| their own cold sandwiches every day
|
| Nothing wrong with that. But there's a massive difference of
| everyone bringing their sandwiches vs. everyone getting a hot
| meal but little Johnny having his yanked away because his
| parents can't afford it.
| codelikeawolf wrote:
| When I first started high school, my parents worked a lot, so
| they left me to fend for myself and I was terrible about packing
| lunches, so lunchtime was always stressful. I ended up getting a
| job washing dishes in the school kitchen, which got me a ticket
| for a free lunch. We weren't rich, but we were definitely
| comfortably middle class. I'm sure there were a lot of kids like
| me. It would have been a lot better if the food was free.
|
| Edit: grammar
| choeger wrote:
| What I don't get about lunch in school is where this assumption
| comes from that it has to be a warm and complete meal, ideally
| with starter and dessert.
|
| I am really wondering about that. School is more like an office
| job than a construction site or other heavy work and thus would
| not a sandwich and a salad be more appropriate? It would be much
| easier to offer good quality this way, especially when it comes
| to fruits and vegetables. The stuff you get when cooking with a
| limited budget for hundreds of people is seldom good or healthy.
| thrwzzz wrote:
| I was bringing my own sandwitches when I was at primary school,
| sometimes I forgot to take them- that's the only time when I
| was hungry and that's what made me to make my sandwitch in the
| morning even if I was feeling lazy or if I did not like the
| smell of it (we were bringing our sandwitches in backpacks). I
| later learned some kids had hot meal in the cantine (that's
| also when I learned there was a cantine in my school), but
| somehow I never thought I need a hot meal at school myself. It
| was nice to be a kid :)
| em-bee wrote:
| because that is what a lunch looks like in our culture. you can
| get away with a something simple for a mid morning break if you
| come home early enough so that you can have a lunch at home.
|
| even at an office job i expect a warm meal for lunch.
|
| and i would also say that school for children is more hard work
| than an office job is for adults so the comparison is not fair.
| ta1243 wrote:
| > and eliminated lunch debt at 12 schools. That's 12 schools
| where kids don't get their trays taken away
|
| For a few weeks. Then presumably there will be debt again.
|
| If you get a major wound then applying a tourniquet can be a
| great move to stabilise the patient until the problem can be
| fixed. If you have a memory leak, killing the process and
| restarting it is a great move to get the system working again,
| but you need to tackle the root cause.
|
| The only solution I can see would be for the state to pay for
| everyone's meals
| em-bee wrote:
| yes, and that takes lobbying effort. and who is going to do
| that lobbying? this project introduces new people to the
| problem, and thus increases the amount of people motivated to
| lobby for a change.
| sebstefan wrote:
| It's a no brainer. Kids perform better at school if they're fed
| lunch. If it improves test scores those lunches pay for
| themselves in basic externalities when the kid grows up with
| better chances in life. I don't recall the numbers but the return
| on investment is worth it
|
| It's always more expensive in the long run to allow kids to go
| hungry
| veunes wrote:
| His daughter's question nails it: "Why don't they just let them
| eat?" The fact that we don't have a clear, defensible answer to
| that tells you everything
| yapyap wrote:
| Paying off lunch debt as individuals is very double.
|
| Of course it feels good cause you are helping people but at the
| same time you are helping the symptom not the cause.
|
| Just to keep paying the debts is like to just keep plugging the
| dyke while new holes keep opening up. You need a new system. What
| that means in this case is government intervention!
|
| 2.8 million is NOTHING to the U.S. government, in 2023 the US
| defense had 1.9 trillion dollars unaccounted for. TRILLION. [1]
|
| Some quick math gives: 2.8 million / 1.9 trillion * 100 =
| 0,00014736842 %
|
| If the government gave a fuck or was forced to give a fuck this
| lunch debt bullshit would not be a thing.
|
| 1. https://coloradonewsline.com/2023/12/06/pentagon-cant-
| pass-a...
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Something that cannot be ignored, but seems quite glossed over in
| this thread of 400 comments: elementary and middle school are
| typically the best and most important day-care service for
| working parents. Especially anyone who is blue-collar and does
| not choose their schedule, any single parent who cannot be home
| at all during the day, double-income parents who are likewise
| absent.
|
| It is one thing for comparatively comfortable white-collar
| homemaker moms to lovingly pack a little lunch for all their kids
| the night before. It's another thing entirely for them to send
| their kids packing and rely on the school itself to provide that
| nutrition.
|
| And personally I see this as a bit of a dilemma. Because
| parenting and homemaking skills are often honed by the practice
| of preparing lunches and providing for the children. If you, as a
| parent, are not accustomed to doing this, you're going to bond
| less with those children, you're going to rely on state
| assistance more, and your children are going to bond less with
| you, resulting in a more distant relationship than one forged
| through the common experience of acquiring, preparing, and
| consuming food.
|
| So free school lunch assistance is, in some ways, mandatory for a
| culture of working parents, and certainly if we're going to keep
| children out of the industrialized workforce, we need to keep
| them in school and well-fed. But at some point, children become
| quite dependent on the state and they are going to look to the
| state to provide other needs, as well, if the parents are not
| stepping up to that. So will children grow into full-fledged
| contributors who pull their own weight, or will they simply exist
| to expand the welfare state?
| gadders wrote:
| This doesn't really exist in the UK, I think. Most people get
| free school meals if they're on state benefits (as I did when I
| was younger). **
|
| However - what a great thing to do to just ring up a school and
| pay off their debt, and then start a charity to do that and
| advocate for policy change.
|
| I think people don't realise how much impact they can have when
| they just take action. You don't have to be anyone special.
|
| //edit//** Or rather, lunch debt does not exist. Free lunch
| shaming definitely does. A colleague that had free school meals
| told me that at her school, people with free school meals had to
| get their meals last.
| trelane wrote:
| Seems like the author has rediscovered charities.
| Meneth wrote:
| Upon seeing the term "school lunch debt", I was confused. My
| country has had free school lunches for all students since before
| I was born. Not a matter of economy or socialism, I thought, for
| everyone _can_ afford food, but just convenience.
|
| "7-year-old clarity" indeed.
| turtlebits wrote:
| I read a recent comment that changed my mind about school lunches
| (free for all, not just those that need it).
|
| Essentially, if you're legally required to be somewhere, meals
| should be provided.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Tell that to the dmv line. I'll be happy with starting with
| bathrooms.
| kbelder wrote:
| I think that this is perhaps the most important point in this
| whole discussion.
| pascoej wrote:
| It's definitely an experience to see the food you got thrown away
| and be given an apple and some bread instead.
|
| Many kids would opt to bring in a pack of ramen, crush it up, add
| the seasoning and eat it dry instead. Many (myself included) just
| wouldn't eat to avoid the humiliation.
|
| But, hey, at least we had that most expensive high school
| football stadium in the world for a time!
| smileysteve wrote:
| When I read the first paragraph, my immediate question is, is the
| PB&J alternative meal actually healthier and more reflective of
| the nutritional needs (and desires ) of a student than the more
| expensive normal meals (my thoughts turn to chicken tenders,
| pizza, corn dogs)
|
| I personally reflect back to realize that I started requesting
| parents / personally making sandwiches ~3rd grade because I was
| tired of flavorless and relatively unhealthy and repeated
| cafeteria style food at high price. (and also coming to a similar
| conclusion regarding the Cafeteria when at University).
| Symbiote wrote:
| "Cafeteria style" doesn't have to mean chicken tenders and
| pizza.
|
| Today at work in Denmark, the cafeteria served vegetable
| stroganoff with mushrooms and roast potatoes, chili con carne
| with rice, and/or turkey with mushroom sauce, pearl barley and
| roast root vegetables.
|
| The salads were a potato salad with red onions, chives, mustard
| and radish; pearl barley with apricot, soya beans and peppers;
| lentils, beetroot and feta cheese.
|
| Schools/universities here have similar options.
| kubatyszko wrote:
| What really baffles me is that as a society we allow say a 7 year
| old to take on debt!
| badlibrarian wrote:
| Interesting reading in the linked article beyond the quote.
|
| "In the Reagan administration's attempt to slash $1.5 billion
| from children's nutrition funding, school lunch program
| requirements were worded (whether deliberately or not) so as to
| conceivably allow for designating ketchup as a vegetable..."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketchup_as_a_vegetable
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