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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

#461

Post by ta1243 »

> and eliminated lunch debt at 12 schools. That’s 12 schools where kids don’t get their trays taken away

For a few weeks. Then presumably there will be debt again.

If you get a major wound then applying a tourniquet can be a great move to stabilise the patient until the problem can be fixed. If you have a memory leak, killing the process and restarting it is a great move to get the system working again, but you need to tackle the root cause.

The only solution I can see would be for the state to pay for everyone's meals

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

#462

Post by amelius »

mobtrain wrote: post #402
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…

While I wholeheartedly agree that no child should ever go hungry and school lunches should be free (from a EU country, this isn’t even a thing here), if you call people subhuman, we can't be friends, nor acquaintances.

[flagged]

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

#463

Post by sebstefan »

It's a no brainer. Kids perform better at school if they're fed lunch. If it improves test scores those lunches pay for themselves in basic externalities when the kid grows up with better chances in life. I don't recall the numbers but the return on investment is worth it

It's always more expensive in the long run to allow kids to go hungry

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

#464

Post by ta1243 »

t0bia_s wrote: post #426
iamflimflam1 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a big leap from the comment you are replying to.

Please, explain.

You pay taxes for the military right? And for roads? And for the police? And the courts? And for the schools themselves.

Is that socialism?

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

#465

Post by cess11 »

blueflow wrote: post #455
cess11 wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few days ago you posted comments where you questioned whether it was appropriate to apply lessons from the Holocaust when interpreting contemporary state policies, and that some Wikipedia "spree" convinced you that it wasn't appropriate. This likely means that you consider current starvation campaigns with exterminationist aims more defensible than 'der Hungerplan' and Vernichtungskrieg of the Holocaust. To me this…

No, it means that i use the word "Holocaust" exclusively for this specific genocide. It follows that the rest of your comment doesn't apply.

Someone wrote:

"There are numerous conflicts worldwide where one side is trying to systematically destroy the other population, civilians and all. Whether they are exactly the same or how you define that is pretty secondary to that fact."

To which you responded:

"Whatever. Since my last Wikipedia spree on that topic i feel such comparisons are highly inappropriate."

This was in reply to this specific context:

"It's interesting we always talked about the Holocaust and the Nuremberg trials when talking about accountability, as if similar atrocities aren't currently happening."

Now, what would it take for you to change your mind and to start agreeing that contemporary crimes of deliberate starvation and exterminationist policies should be tried in an international court or tribunal?

To you, what is it that makes the Holocaust so very special? To a large extent it was perpetrated in the same manner as the genocide against the circassians, and to an extent in the same manner as the genocide against the herero and nama peoples. In your mind, was the Holocaust just the killing by poison and that's why you don't see any contemporary cases of similarity?

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

#467

Post by decimalenough »

charcircuit wrote: post #428
nucleardog wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I say this as an IT worker making what most would consider an absurd amount of money and pays 0.55*absurd money in taxes, a dad, a human, etc... what the fuck does any of this matter. If a c…

>A child is, pretty much by definition, incapable of fully caring for themselves. This is disrespectful to the intelligence of children. >we're punishing you with going hungry until he wises up Not giving people free things is not a punishment. >as a society, have the means to ensure that no child ever has to go hungry. Giving away free food is not the only way to achieve that. >Every decision that leads to hungry ch…

I'm not sure where to even begin with this, but a large part of why free school lunches exist is that there are many kids in abusive or simply desperately poor families who do not get fed properly, meaning that the school lunch may be the only decent meal they get.

> Not giving people free things is not a punishment.

This is absurd. Kids don't have money to purchase what they need, so parents have a duty to feed, clothe, house etc them. Intentionally not providing children what they need, like food, is abuse, period.

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

#468

Post by ta1243 »

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]

Is America planning on reducing its insanely high military budget?

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

#469

Post by hombre_fatal »

mettamage wrote: post #397
askonomm wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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!

Meanwhile, in Texas (~2005), we weren't even allowed to leave the building to eat on the patio outside in high school.

Something I thought a lot about when I moved to Mexico and saw kids leaving school at lunch to wander out and eat lunch together in the surrounding part of the city.

Too much dangerous liability to allow going outside during lunch hours in a wealthy part of Texas, but not in Guadalajara, Mexico and nor of the world. Sigh.

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

#470

Post by giantg2 »

freehorse wrote: post #368
giantg2 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Except that's a false solution. That does nothing to fix the neglect at home, especially over weekends and summers.
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