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Three free meals available daily for any New Yorker

schools.nyc.gov

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Re: Three free meals available daily for any New Yorker

#171

Post by [deleted] »

alexgodin wrote: post #118
jsonne wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As of 2018 40 million Americans received more than 57 billion dollars in SNAP. It seems like largely the US has been and will continue to keep people fed. Note also that this is just 1 Federal program and doesn't mention the multitude of other state level and city level programs that exist as well as private charities, religious organizations, etc. Please note I am not saying the system is perfect, shouldn't be expan…

The average SNAP recipient receives about $4 a day and sees their balance run out after just 17 days. This is not enough.

[deleted]

Re: Three free meals available daily for any New Yorker

#172

Post by ikeboy »

cs702 wrote: post #9

This is wonderful to see and badly necessary, particularly in a country like the US, where most people do not have ability to cover a $500 surprise bill in normal times: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/most-americans-cant-handle-a-50... -- and we are definitely not in normal times. Kudos to the NYC administration for putting this together so quickly.

The data shows the median net worth is around 100k. I'm very suspicious of claims about what the average American can afford based on surveys. Often they ask people how they would pay for something, and if the answer is "credit cards" they interpret it as that they can't afford it, which is plainly nonsense.

Edit: took a look at your source.

>“The survey shows that a very significant minority of American households apparently don’t have the resources to pay for an unexpected expense of around $1,000,” says Stephen Brobeck, executive director of the Consumer Federation of America.

Interesting how this morphed into the claim that a majority of Americans can't afford a $500 expense.

Re: Three free meals available daily for any New Yorker

#173

Post by jakearmitage »

alexgodin wrote: post #118
jsonne wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As of 2018 40 million Americans received more than 57 billion dollars in SNAP. It seems like largely the US has been and will continue to keep people fed. Note also that this is just 1 Federal program and doesn't mention the multitude of other state level and city level programs that exist as well as private charities, religious organizations, etc. Please note I am not saying the system is perfect, shouldn't be expan…

The average SNAP recipient receives about $4 a day and sees their balance run out after just 17 days. This is not enough.

Source?

Re: Three free meals available daily for any New Yorker

#174

Post by dsfyu404ed »

alexgodin wrote: post #118
jsonne wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As of 2018 40 million Americans received more than 57 billion dollars in SNAP. It seems like largely the US has been and will continue to keep people fed. Note also that this is just 1 Federal program and doesn't mention the multitude of other state level and city level programs that exist as well as private charities, religious organizations, etc. Please note I am not saying the system is perfect, shouldn't be expan…

The average SNAP recipient receives about $4 a day and sees their balance run out after just 17 days. This is not enough.

SNAP is not intended to cover the cost of a recipient's entire food needs. The S stands for "supplemental".

You can argue that is should cover a recipient's entire food needs but it seems a little misguided to criticize the program for failing to meet an objective it doesn't have. Furthermore, federal programs have to be careful not to do things outside their mandate less they run into territory where they don't have political support and lose funding. SNAP probably couldn't get away with providing the full cost of food even if they were able to.

Re: Three free meals available daily for any New Yorker

#175

Post by jshevek »

Zenst wrote: post #159
jshevek wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

Agreed - however in light of the sudden downvote withoutcomment, you kinda feel that people should not be allowed to downvote without comment and avoid turning this into reddit. I raised a fair and valid observation and yet, well, hard to ignore such things and I'm not going to debate why as politics is bad. Thank you for your concerns and not blindly dismissing the point as many have and did do. I'm going for a walk…

>in light of the sudden downvote withoutcomment, you kinda feel

I have felt similarly in the past, in similar situations. Play it through though, in a variety of cases, and we see why it's not just allowed, but a good thing.

Re: Three free meals available daily for any New Yorker

#176

Post by xienze »

pjc50 wrote: post #153
jsonne wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As of 2018 40 million Americans received more than 57 billion dollars in SNAP. It seems like largely the US has been and will continue to keep people fed. Note also that this is just 1 Federal program and doesn't mention the multitude of other state level and city level programs that exist as well as private charities, religious organizations, etc. Please note I am not saying the system is perfect, shouldn't be expan…

> 40 million Americans received more than 57 billion dollars in SNAP. 57bn / 40m = $1425 $1425 / 365 = $3.90 While that's doable, it's really not a lot.

SNAP is a SUPPLEMENTAL program. It's not intended to pay 100% of your food bill.

Re: Three free meals available daily for any New Yorker

#177

Post by gruez »

bosie wrote: post #43
nvahalik wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without universal basic income, we are totally f@cked UBI isn't a savior. UBI still requires that people, you know, pay taxes. If 30-40% of people have no income and are completely dependent upon the government, then you have slavery 2.0 (3.0?) and you will end up creating a worse, classed society than you had before: the ones receiving vs. those who pay for what everyone else gets. Or the government just prints mo…

Regarding your first paragraph: At least in a lot of european countries, income tax isn't even the most lucrative tax for the government. Additionally quite a few working people aren't paying income tax. When you can deduct 13k from your income each year, not many people working for a supermarket are paying income taxes for example. Example, Amazon and VW are creating high revenue in Austria and Germany yet their tax…

>At least in a lot of european countries, income tax isn't even the most lucrative tax for the government.

Can you provide a few examples? What other revenue streams do those governments have?

Re: Three free meals available daily for any New Yorker

#178

Post by b34r »

ping_pong wrote: post #120
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #27

The logistics behind this must be formidable. They would need hundreds of food preparers, all of them tested daily for COVID-19 and of course practicing strict hygiene in prep and packaging. Still it's probably easier to control than thousands of separate restaurants and food markets, which is undoubtedly their thinking: centralize food distribution to minimize risky contact. This is a sobering reminder of how depend…

Testing daily is science fiction right now. My assumption is that they check the temperature and that's about it.

It’s possible with the 5 minute Abbott machines that are starting to be distributed

Re: Three free meals available daily for any New Yorker

#179

Post by [deleted] »

tren-hard wrote: post #18

One of those things I wish could out last this virus. We'd be so much better off as a society if we could at least keep our people fed. The comments in here seem a little negative currently but this is great news. Think of all the people in NYC who didn't have access to clean and regular food before the virus.

[deleted]

Re: Three free meals available daily for any New Yorker

#180

Post by jefftk »

dickjocke wrote: post #160
jefftk wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"food insecure" may be a relatively low bar: it looks like it includes "reports of reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet. Little or no indication of reduced food intake." https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo...

I don't think that's a low bar. The US is an advanced economy. Why would people being unable to get fresh produce or have a balanced and varied diet be acceptable? Especially when you consider the obesity problems the country is facing. I think that food insecurity meaning literal hunger pains is way too low a bar for the US. That number should be literally 0%. Food security for us should mean food that is healthy an…

"food insecure at least some time during the year" includes people who at some point during the year didn't like the food they had available ("reduced desirability"). For example, someone could be getting their food from Meal Hubs and still be counted as food insecure.

If you surveyed specifically on whether people had access to fresh produce you'd get a much lower number.

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