I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by giantg2 » Tue, May 06, 2025, 2:09 AM UTC

AngryData wrote: post #227

rufus_foreman wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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.

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.

"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.

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

#242

Post by jccalhoun » Tue, May 06, 2025, 2:09 AM UTC

giancarlostoro wrote: post #158

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.

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

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

#243

Post by staplers » Tue, May 06, 2025, 2:09 AM UTC

iandanforth wrote: post #232

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…

  I felt like a big part of my childhood had been sold to the lowest bidder.

It was. Most local procurement laws enforce this.

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

#244

Post by bonestamp2 » Tue, May 06, 2025, 2:10 AM UTC

irrational wrote: post #208

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.

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.

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

#245

Post by jccalhoun » Tue, May 06, 2025, 2:11 AM UTC

klntsky wrote: post #50

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?

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.

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

#246

Post by airforce1 » Tue, May 06, 2025, 2:16 AM UTC

ryoshoe wrote: post #139

bombcar wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's assume (bad assumption, but it should be good enough for the math) that a Happy Meal™®© 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 scho…

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...

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

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

#247

Post by vineyardmike » Tue, May 06, 2025, 2:16 AM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #238

freehorse wrote: post #163

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 beca…

"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.

> 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!

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

#248

Post by zdragnar » Tue, May 06, 2025, 2:21 AM UTC

mjevans wrote: post #83

tecirpinslime wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

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 t…

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.

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

#249

Post by jaggederest » Tue, May 06, 2025, 2:23 AM UTC

brundolf wrote: post #196

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…

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.

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

#250

Post by klodolph » Tue, May 06, 2025, 2:29 AM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #206

klodolph wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”.

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…

> 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.