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I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt

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Re: I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt

#121

Post by Kapura »

piva00 wrote: post #116
Kapura wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 recip…

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).

Re: I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt

#122

Post by internetter »

mjevans wrote: post #103
internetter wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

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…

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.

Re: I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt

#123

Post by klodolph »

snarf21 wrote: post #98
klodolph wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

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”.

Re: I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt

#124

Post by mjevans »

internetter wrote: post #122
mjevans wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

Re: I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt

#125

Post by Smeevy »

phkahler wrote: post #41

>> 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…

>[...] 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.

Re: I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt

#126

Post by klodolph »

dahart wrote: post #95
klodolph wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

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 %.

Re: I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt

#127

Post by mmastrac »

ryandrake wrote: post #74
grimcompanion wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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"

Re: I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt

#128

Post by mindslight »

thomascgalvin wrote: post #107
vlovich123 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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 th…

> 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.

Re: I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt

#129

Post by mmastrac »

wonderwonder wrote: post #86
mmastrac wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure this is malice. They know, they don't do anything.

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"?

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.

Re: I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt

#130

Post by internetter »

mjevans wrote: post #124
internetter wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

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