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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

#481

Post by b2w »

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…

The kid is starving and child protective services isn't a free lunch program. Is the effort of potentially displacing the kid to foster care really solving the immediate problem?

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

#482

Post by smeeger »

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…

his dad did pay… he paid the schools entire budget. you cant just throw the whole system into chaos where people are expected to pay in several different ways and then they turn the tablet around and aggressively ask for a tip. without a clear, simple and singular source of funding it just becomes an excuse for corruption. and here we are, being told that we are inhuman monsters for not subsidizing a bloated tumor of administrators. how about the administrators downsize and take 100k home instead of multiple hundreds of thousands? why arent they subject to any of this scrutiny?

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

#483

Post by veunes »

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…

We can't keep pretending that punishing kids for their parents' circumstances is anything but cruel

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

#484

Post by giantg2 »

kerkeslager wrote: post #295
giantg2 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a real argument. There are plenty of assistance programs, including free school lunches.

How many assistance programs have you applied for? Frankly, if you haven't applied for any, your opinion is uninformed. Even people who are told how difficult it is, underestimate how difficult it is to apply for many programs. I've helped a bunch of homeless folks apply to assistance programs (not for school lunches, but for a lot of other aid) and almost universally, applying for aid is extremely difficult. I've wa…

Yes, I'm familiar with medicaid and some other stuff. Your complaint about SNAP ignores foodbanks. They usually don't check anything and it starts immediately. This can cover the gap. Medicaid may take months to recieve but it can cover costs incurred since applying retroactively once it is approved. Most hospitals even have case workers that will help patients apply.

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

#485

Post by smeeger »

camgunz wrote: post #475
gred wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are no moral hazards when it comes to social welfare programs. This is a wild statement. Of course people take advantage of welfare programs. Of course welfare programs have unintended consequences and sometimes encourage immoral or anti-social behavior. That doesn't mean they're all bad or that they need to be completely eliminated, but leading with this obvious falsehood made it very hard to read the rest o…

This is exactly why I stake out such a strong position, so that positions like this poke their heads up. Individuals getting benefits when they're ineligible accounts for tiny amounts of the total fraud in these programs. Time after time we discover at least one of two things: - The effort/cost required to reduce fraud usually overshadows the cost of the fraud itself and also dramatically reduces the benefits of the…

[flagged]

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

#486

Post by thrwzzz »

choeger wrote: post #460

What I don't get about lunch in school is where this assumption comes from that it has to be a warm and complete meal, ideally with starter and dessert. I am really wondering about that. School is more like an office job than a construction site or other heavy work and thus would not a sandwich and a salad be more appropriate? It would be much easier to offer good quality this way, especially when it comes to fruits…

I was bringing my own sandwitches when I was at primary school, sometimes I forgot to take them- that's the only time when I was hungry and that's what made me to make my sandwitch in the morning even if I was feeling lazy or if I did not like the smell of it (we were bringing our sandwitches in backpacks). I later learned some kids had hot meal in the cantine (that's also when I learned there was a cantine in my school), but somehow I never thought I need a hot meal at school myself. It was nice to be a kid :)

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

#487

Post by chronid »

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…

In my country you pay for school lunches as a local tax (and assistance is available for low income families). Children are always fed. Parents are the ones with the debts and the garnished salaries.

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

#488

Post by smeeger »

nucleardog wrote: post #396
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…

> 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…

[flagged]

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

#489

Post by camgunz »

switch007 wrote: post #448
taurath wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

For every story about it being difficult to claim, there are plenty about people who haven't worked for 20 years who have received over £400,000 in welfare, who could have worked, because they learnt the game. The two sides have to move beyond these talking points if any useful discussion is to be had.

> For every story about it being difficult to claim, there are plenty about people who haven't worked for 20 years who have received over £400,000 in welfare

This is perfectly accurate: the stories you hear make these issues out to be equal, when in fact they're anything but. Study after study shows that work requirements (the policy you're implicitly advocating for here) do not work:

https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/expandi...

https://www.cbpp.org/blog/work-requirements-dont-work

https://www.cbpp.org/blog/more-evidence-that-work-requiremen...

https://www.cbpp.org/research/tanf-studies-show-work-require...

https://www.epi.org/publication/snap-medicaid-work-requireme...

More to the point, millions of people are eligible for TANF benefits but don't receive them. Which is to say, even if there are some people scamming the system, there's tons of people who could legitimately receive benefits but don't.

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The overall point here is that if we let criminals and a very small number of freeloaders sour us on these programs, we literally let kids go hungry; we literally let them die of preventable illnesses; etc. etc. It is absolutely bonkers to me that we are making this tradeoff.

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

#490

Post by giantg2 »

freehorse wrote: post #451
kerkeslager wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many assistance programs have you applied for? Frankly, if you haven't applied for any, your opinion is uninformed. Even people who are told how difficult it is, underestimate how difficult it is to apply for many programs. I've helped a bunch of homeless folks apply to assistance programs (not for school lunches, but for a lot of other aid) and almost universally, applying for aid is extremely difficult. I've wa…

That's also in the heart of the issue, having arbitrary thresholds and obscure bureaucracy here makes it easier also to restrict or even close down such a subsidised program, which can be harder when a permanent program of free school lunches has been established.

The NSLP has been around for more than 50 years. It doesn't seem to be going anywhere. It serves about 4.5 billion lunches annually with 70% of them being free or reduced. It seems there isn't a problem here.
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