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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

#361

Post by verisimi »

yojo wrote: post #346
verisimi wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

[flagged]

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

#362

Post by gopalv »

mtnGoat wrote: post #356
mlyle wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

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 da…

> 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.

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

#363

Post by baq »

oulipo wrote: post #351
mtnGoat wrote: post #343

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…

"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

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.

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

#364

Post by timewizard »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #312
timewizard wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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 peop…

> 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.

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

#365

Post by mschuster91 »

verisimi wrote: post #361
yojo wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

> 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.

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

#366

Post by askonomm »

mtnGoat wrote: post #343

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…

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.

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

#368

Post by freehorse »

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.

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.

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

#369

Post by t0bia_s »

hiddencost wrote: post #357
mlyle wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

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.

[flagged]

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

#370

Post by verisimi »

mschuster91 wrote: post #365
verisimi wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> 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.

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?
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