Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt

huffpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 918 posts

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

#261

Post by gs17 »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #202
mproud wrote: post #63

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/

>> 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.

> 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.

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

#263

Post by horacemorace »

Kapura wrote: post #121
piva00 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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.

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

#264

Post by gs17 »

lesuorac wrote: post #194
senectus1 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

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?

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.

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

#265

Post by FireBeyond »

jccalhoun wrote: post #242
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 B…

> 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.

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

#266

Post by I-M-S »

mylesp wrote: post #214
bombcar wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

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 enou…

Even a very low fare still needs a huge and costly infrastructure around to enforce it

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

#267

Post by FireBeyond »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #80
m-hodges wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

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

#268

Post by delfinom »

staplers wrote: post #243
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.

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.

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

#269

Post by trollbridge »

bombcar wrote: post #102
glitchc wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Post reply on HN