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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

#431

Post by bArray »

I would expand on this - there are a surprising number of times where a relatively small amount of money would make a large difference to one or multiple people.

Most people I know who have ended up in debt for example didn't not have the money to pay the debt entirely, they were just short for one month by a small amount. It's not long till it spirals completely out of control with interest, repayment penalties, etc, and that interest keeps adding up.

A family member that is the sole income earner for a household had their car break down. They had no additional income to fix it, no additional income to get another car and failing to get to work would spiral out their financial situation. That day I gave them an old car and told them to keep it. They used it for a month, eventually got the other car fixed and sold the car I gave to them.

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

#432

Post by Faaak »

mlyle wrote: post #353
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…

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…

I'm sorry but I lived in France and this didn't happen. We had to pay for the food (~3€), and if you didn't had the money (basically because of low resources), then it was free. People that could pay payed, and people that couldn't didn't.

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

#433

Post by taurath »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #414
camgunz wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no moral hazards when it comes to social welfare programs. People really think there are, but every time we look we find practically no freeloaders. This idea that we have to threaten people with literal starvation to get them to be productive members of society is ironically deeply impoverished. And if we really think that's true, why do we let people accrue wealth at all? Why do we then think that the mos…

>People really think there are, but every time we look we find practically no freeloaders. I don't believe that is true. You didn't provide any support for your claim at all either. Let's just consider a single example: >In the past three decades, the number of Americans who are on disability has skyrocketed. The rise has come even as medical advances have allowed many more people to remain on the job, and new laws h…

If you’ve ever considered going on disability, or needed to, you’d be very quickly enlightened. It’s hard. You have to have documentation, you will get denied. Even then the benefits are pretty shit. It’s not a thing that you can just accidently get. There’s a lot of people who are just disabled.

What happens if the parents who should be responsible, aren’t?

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

#434

Post by viraptor »

mlyle wrote: post #353
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…

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…

> it sounds like your dad was maybe capable of paying but wanted to freeload.

But it went a step further. He didn't want to pay either way, so the poster was in exactly the same situation as the poor kids.

If we're scared to help people who need help, because there's a small chance that someone else may benefit as well, we've lost as a society. Just raise the taxes and give it to every kid.

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

#435

Post by rcxdude »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #417
heresjohnny wrote: post #367

As someone from Europe, I had heard before about bankrupting ambulance rides, slavery in prisons, and food deserts. I did not expect to add “lunch money humiliation ritual” to that list. I’ll think of this next time I complain about my 50% income tax.

[flagged]

You can do both, especially given the latter pays dividends. People moan about the US's domination on the world stage because it obviously benefits you, collectively, as a country, substantially. The US gets tremendously wealthy off the power and influence it buys with the way it acts on the world stage (as well as unparalleled safety and security). Which is why it grates and/or is mystifying when you complain about that state of affairs. How you distribute the wealth internally is also mystifying, but for different reasons, and largely unrelated to how you get that wealth in the first place.

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

#436

Post by mtnGoat »

snkzxbs wrote: post #403
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…

[flagged]

Except this isn’t a political issue, it’s humanitarian and basic empathy. Never said anyone should be removed from earth, that’s quite the projection, but go on.

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

#437

Post by mettamage »

bgnn wrote: post #412
mettamage wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. In the Netherlands we packed our lunches or we cycled home to eat lunch with our parents and then cycled back to school. Lunch was one of the most favorite times of my day. A break from school during school hours. What a treat!

Yeah, dry bread and cheese..

Read the HN guidelines. I didn't downvote you, as I am giving you the benefit of the doubt, but it reads as a sarcastic snarky comment [1].

It's bread, butter and cheese. Not dry bread and cheese. I didn't eat that as a kid though, I hated cheese when I was young.

The quality of the bread varies, depending on the views of the household. The way I grew up everyone favored white bread but me. I always ate brown bread.

Nowadays, I come to the US quite often and it frustrates me that there's almost no supermarket that sells a good loaf of bread. A lot of bread has added sugar and I don't even want to know what other stuff they add to it. I'm not a fan of the bakeries either as the bread they make tastes alright, but not for $8. So whenever I'm in the US, I make my own bread, because even after a first try, it was better [2] (by an American baker. It's not that they can't - it's just that affordable nice bread is not a pervasive thing in the US).

And if you genuinely think it's dry bread and cheese. You're wrong, I know what dry bread tastes like. Done well, it's called toast.

My school lunch was bread with butter and a fried egg.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdoP33KPYtY&ab_channel=Brian...

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

#438

Post by mtnGoat »

pif wrote: post #404
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…

I mean, you are right. But your father was an a*, too! It was his responsibility to make sure you did not go hungry, and he chose to ignore it.

Yes, he was an interesting guy. Not a good dad, which is why I can’t help but feel the way I do about others that would do the same to a child.

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

#439

Post by anabab »

mtnGoat wrote: post #436
snkzxbs wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Except this isn’t a political issue, it’s humanitarian and basic empathy. Never said anyone should be removed from earth, that’s quite the projection, but go on.

empathy is a political issue nowadays
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