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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

#501

Post by cess11 »

blueflow wrote: post #479
cess11 wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

> 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? Nothing, because that's already my opinion. > What is it that makes the Holocaust so very special? The name. So this has been a trivial misunderstanding on terminology, and you kinda went full flak on me. Some…

That's akin to a straw man, as shown by the quotes above. You clearly claimed that contemporary genocidal processes are "highly inappropriate" to compare to the Holocaust. This in response to someone using the Nuremberg trials as a frame of reference for suggesting that contemporary exterminationist criminals should be held accountable.

But it's great that you've changed your mind since then.

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

#502

Post by framapotari »

giantg2 wrote: post #470
freehorse wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Sorry Timmy, I know you're hungry but giving you a school lunch portion would actually be a false solution. It would do nothing to fix the neglect you experience at home, especially over weekends and summers."

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

#503

Post by mbreese »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #469
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!

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 n…

In Indiana (mid 90s), we had an open lunch policy in high school. This meant we could all leave campus, so long as we were back by the start of the next class. It was great and we had many choices for quick lunch nearby. I remember picking up something fast, but eating lunch at a park with friends often. The small amount of freedom (and trust) was very nice.

Sadly, I think they stopped allowing that the year after I graduated.

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

#504

Post by notnaut »

RS-232 wrote: post #452
mobtrain wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Subhuman is a rather severe (and incredibly reductionist) judgement. Sure, being anti-free lunch for children is morally objectionable… but they’ve failed to probe that line of reasoning. They’ve encountered a bug, but instead of debugging it, they’ve closed their IDE and walked away. Sometimes an honest conversation—with carefully placed, introspective questions—can be revealing to all parties. When we use our tongu…

This, and there’s something all-too human about ignoring or even basking in the suffering of others, including children. Pretending it’s somehow less than human to be on that side of things feels a bit head-in-sand.

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

#505

Post by xeonmc »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #222
brundolf wrote: post #196

Many people, especially in our subculture, tend to feel like if they can't solve an entire problem forever, if they can't Change The World, what they're doing is futile and pointless But most people can't change the world. Most individuals shouldn't have the power to change the world. What we can do is be a force for good in the lives that are proximal to us. If we can make a few people's lives better, we should rest…

One of my favorite quotes: > "I was in the Air Force a while, and they had what they call 'policing the area,' and I think that’s a pretty good thing to go by. If everyone just takes care of their own area, then we won’t have any problems. Be here. Be present. Wherever you are, be there. And look around you, and see what needs to be changed." -Willie Nelson

“It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.”

— Gandalf

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

#506

Post by Larrikin »

gonzobonzo wrote: post #446
thrance wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the other side is advocating for children to starve, then yeah, fuck them. There is no point in being charitable to people incapable of the most basic decency.

The OP wouldn't have starved. There appears to have been food in the house the OP could have taken, but the OP didn't because he wanted his father to, in his words, "buy lunch food." You'll note that he says his family could afford food, but that he dad wouldn't pay for school lunch specifically because he thought the government should pay for it. The previous poster didn't want to bring the food that was in his home…

This argument has a dumb premise.

Why would he resort to scrounging around for food, looking through lost and found, and eventually stealing from the grocery store if there was food available at home for him. Because there was all this amazing food at home that wasn't "lunch food" is your conclusion? Every conclusion that follows is only logical if you go with a completely nonsensical assumption. If OPs Dad was willing to let his kid starve daily I wonder what his punishment would have been for eating his Dad's food.

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

#507

Post by eesmith »

verisimi wrote: post #416
hofrogs wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what humanity must aim for.

[flagged]

> is it ok to force people to pay for stuff that they don't want to?

Yes. Happens all the time. Money doesn't exist unless people are forced to use it to pay for something they don't want to. (read Graber's "Debt: The First 5,000 Years.")

I don't want to pay for nuclear weapons. Why am I forced to pay for it through my taxes? Because if I don't, the state will use its power to punish me.

Pacifists can't direct their tax monies to avoid military expenditures.

Adherents to one faith can't say their taxes can't be used on apostates.

You sound like this is a surprise. Like you don't understand why people have to pay taxes for schools even if they don't have children, don't understand why people who don't drive still have to pay taxes for roads, don't understand why people who don't swim still have to pay taxes for public pools, .. the list is very long.

Your comments sound very much like 1980s Thatcherism - "There is no such thing [as society]! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first."

The last 40+ years of neoliberal thought hasn't turned out so well, as those who have money no longer feel pressure or obligation to distribute it, resulting in a return to Gilded Age power concentrations.

That's what you want, it seems.

> such as increased salary and pension contributions

Such as tax cuts for the rich. Make Gates "only" a billionaire and we can use the remaining $100 billion to pay off school lunch debt (works out the math) ... forever.

$2.8 million debt for Utah with a population of 3 million people. US population 340 million. Call it $300 million in school lunch debt. Probably within an order of magnitude. That's less than the interest on $100 billion.

Yes, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would have an actual positive impact on education if, instead of funding projects that trained educators knew would fail - and eventually did fail - they has simply put their $10+ billion into funding school meals.

Instead, rich people get to fund "non-profits" that they control - reducing their taxes while not relinquishing the power and influence tied to their money. Gates' wealth gives him a very undemocratic and malignant influence over US education policy.

And you want to blather on about supporting student lunch debt?!

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

#508

Post by notnaut »

blueflow wrote: post #479
cess11 wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

> 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? Nothing, because that's already my opinion. > What is it that makes the Holocaust so very special? The name. So this has been a trivial misunderstanding on terminology, and you kinda went full flak on me. Some…

To a lurker scanning this thread, this comes off as “I’m more interested in semantics and winning an argument than condemning abusive and antisocial behavior.”

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

#509

Post by mistersquid »

lukan wrote: post #400
LandR wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you want to look at it from a purely selfish point of view... if you want to live in a good, prosperous society, this starts with childrens education. A well fed, happy, well slept child is an ideal here to get them the best education they can. Not wanting each child to get the best possible start in life makes absolutely no sense to me. But yes, no child should go hungry at school.

"Not wanting each child to get the best possible start in life makes absolutely no sense to me." Maybe to lower the chances of other children against your own (wealthy) offspring? So from a very selfish individualistic perspective there is sense? I suspect that might be the base motivation, even though you likely won't find many openly stating that or even are aware of it.

> "Not wanting each child to get the best possible start in life makes absolutely no sense to me."

> Maybe to lower the chances of other children against your own (wealthy) offspring?

Some may think and behave along these lines. Their problem is that they conceive economic activity as zero-sum, which it is not.

Good educational outcomes generate wealth for everyone.

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

#510

Post by framapotari »

BoingBoomTschak wrote: post #478
framapotari wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm in favor of free school lunches for kids. But I'm very annoyed with the strawmanning in this thread. For example, it seems like a strawman to say that people who are against free school lunches "want kids to go hungry". Maybe they just believe that parents should be responsible rather than the state. If parents are responsible then the children of the parents who can't or won't provide will go hungry. That is a…

Look into the expression "perverse incentive". Maybe he doesn't want people so thoughtless they'd make children without being able to feed them to do so? Also, too many Americans blindly praising socialism without knowing its consequences in the deep end. It's not all rainbows and butterflies.

I find it such a weird take to call feeding children at school socialism with grave consequences but taxpayer funded mandatory education isn't.
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