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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

#681

Post by smileysteve »

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…

Your anecdote is a great example of how inequality leads to crime. And the systems that are in place to "punish" the "unequal"/"un-privileged", results in high effort ways that punish the "privileged".

If we extend your anecdote to normalizing petty crime, and the likelihood to extend to adulthood -- not paying for school lunches now may be a great way to increase paying for school lunches when a person is sent to prison for vagrancy / petty crimes (repeatedly, and will never be able to dig out of the prison/debt hole)

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

#682

Post by Suppafly »

bombcar wrote: post #105
internetter wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without reading into lunch specifically, I'd very much be inclined to say yes. The reason is, I spent many hours researching the fair structure of my transit agency. Fares that have, obviously, been in the news for being harming to low income citizens. What I found was that the city spent almost 1 billion on upgrading their collection systems, whereas the yearly revenue from those same systems amounted to 1/10th of t…

One of the "don't say the quiet part out loud" with transit fares (which would NOT apply to school lunches) is that transit fares are a convenient way to remove unwanted transit enjoyers. It is somewhat hard to define "being disruptive on the subway" but it's easy to define "doesn't have a ticket".

It'd probably be cheaper to pay for guards to remove disruptive passengers than it would be to implement a ticketing system.

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

#683

Post by bluecheese452 »

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 the next thing you know we will demand they have access to clean water.

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

#684

Post by lucideng »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #581
x-complexity wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that lunches can be freshly made, on site, out of healthy ingredients and children are active participants in serving and cleaning up is just crazy. > When I encountered it for the first time I felt like a big part of my childhood had been sold to the lowest bidder. ....I share the sentiment, but I also see the chasm between the requirements to get to what's desired, & what's actually given to meet those r…

This "cultural toll" you talk of, is just another form of conformist behaviour that all societies have in different forms. Some countries have class/caste strata, others have a laissez-faire attitude to expectations in general, others have a rigid societal code, others appear to be less so but the moment you go near guns, abortion or taxation the societal codes and hierarchy spring into action and snap shut around th…

"...seems to be leading to a fractured partisan nation where everyone hates anyone who even slightly disagrees with them."

This, 100x times over. The cultural toll of 'conformity' sounds bad until you realize it's a construct enabling everyone to 'play nice' in the general sense and work towards a greater good, collectively. We are losing that conformity. The average US citizen person is socially crippled by their outrage. Nothing else matters. If you have doubt in yourself, get back in that echo chamber that probably made you into what you are and reassure yourself. It used to be ok to disagree, have intelligent debate, vote on it, and lose.

In today's US, if you want to be heard, it's more about how emotionally outraged you are, not how good your ideas actually are. The more dire you can make the outrage, the better. Come up with a sound bite for your movement, catchier the better. Misrepresent anything your oppositions says, retire objective and reasonable critical thinking to 'dinosaur thinking'. Then, convince people your group/movement/lifestyle has been marginalized. Then, if your subject agrees with you, make sure they're at least as outraged as you. Use any guilt that they have to steer them current or future causes. Next, if they won't comply, publicly shame and label opposition so that you can associate them with bad things/people/events. When you dont get what you want, attack the process, call them bigots, etc. Rinse and repeat until you get what you want.

As our "cultural tolls" are avoided or erode, the more divided we become as a people. The more divided we are, the more we are seen as individuals. Everyone becomes marginalized when everyone is an individual. The more divided we are, the less we hold open doors and the more we slam that door in their face, because you know... they're a bigot or whatever, so you dont have to feel guilty for hurting that evil person.

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

#685

Post by wredcoll »

charcircuit wrote: post #522
decimalenough wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, clo…

>meaning that the school lunch may be the only decent meal they get "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime." By giving away food you are getting people stuck in a bad situation. Preventing a reconfiguration of people's lives. A kid could have figured out how to get 3 proper meals a day if they had to figure out how to get food themselves instead of sustain…

> By giving away food you are getting people stuck in a bad situation. Preventing a reconfiguration of people's lives. A kid could have figured out how to get 3 proper meals a day if they had to figure out how to get food themselves instead of sustaining themselves on a single daily handout.

You realize this is a completely invented statement of faith, right? It has no data or research supporting it.

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

#686

Post by idrios »

pnutjam wrote: post #575
ethbr1 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids don't go to all schools: they go to their school. So by fixing things in one school, any school, you're really fixing things for all the kids that go there.

This is why the wealthy should be required to use public schools.

The wealthy do use public schools. They pay huge amounts to live in upper class neighborhoods with wealthy peers, where a lot of tax money goes into the schooling system so the kids can take all sorts of extracurriculars and AP classes. It gets the same results as private school but the cost comes from living in that neighborhood rather than paying the school directly

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

#687

Post by walthamstow »

Suppafly wrote: post #677
walthamstow wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I learnt a new Americanism today. Fence, verb, meaning to shift stolen goods. Upon first read I thought they would be sword fighting with stolen bluetooth speakers.

>Fence, verb, meaning to shift stolen goods. Does it not also have that meaning in commonwealth countries?

I'd never heard it before, from googling it seems to be antiquated language in Britain.

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

#688

Post by osrec »

permo-w wrote: post #600
mystraline wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there, at least in the USA, a large amount of very dumb people. They also tend to be quite sadistic as well, thinking 'those people' deserve the sadism and torment. This percolates through our whole society, one case of which is this scholastic food 'debt'. And also, during some of Biden's years, there was a few years of free school lunches. And was also summarily cancelled. Even democrats have this pervasive 'th…

you're proving my point. people think these things because, as you say, they're instilled in the American national mentality. it makes sense to think that's wrong, it makes sense to think people should think for themselves and try to engage their empathy circuits for people not in their immediate family, but it's taking it a million steps too far to say they're subhuman or unevolved, and it's not helping anything any…

A less evolved sense of humility (as I originally put it) does not equate to stupid. They are far from stupid - they are ruthless consumers of every scrap of advantage they can get, including the best education, food, clothes to name but a few things. They believe they deserve that advantage.

In fact, they see the person who can't afford lunch as stupid - after all, an intelligent person should at least be able to get lunch - it's so easy! What they don't realise is how much each person is impacted by their own starting position in life (which, I believe to be random), and how that in turn impacts where they are now.

Many "privileged" people lack empathy, because they believe the tables can never turn. They don't even want to entertain the thought. They believe their privilege is a birthright. In some cases, they are probably correct; they will enjoy privilege for their entire lives. But in exceptional circumstances, they will be caught out, and their opinion will undoubtedly change.

So, it's not stupidity, it is willful ignorance. History is full of such examples, some more chilling and devastating than others.

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

#689

Post by graemep »

pertymcpert wrote: post #422
graemep wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree the child should be fed, but we also need to think about the other wide of this. It sounds as though the dad in this case was able to pay but refused to pay. What sort of person puts their own child through this to make a point? It is neglectful or abusive.

You know there are countless parents that abuse their kids, physically, emotionally, sexually. They rape their kids and strangle them until they pass out. They hit them in places where bruises aren't visible. They break bones and threaten the kids with death if they dare tell anyone or show their injury or pain. Why do we suddenly need to especially think about the other side of this because tax money is involved? No…

No, we should care in all cases.

The point is that the problem is not necessarily fixed by providing lunch. What else is going on if someone is deliberately not feeding a child?

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

#690

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

iandanforth wrote: post #232

On the off chance you're interested in school lunches I highly recommend watching videos of Japanese school lunches on YouTube. There's a bunch out there now and if you were raised in the American system it will probably blow your mind. The idea that lunches can be freshly made, on site, out of healthy ingredients and children are active participants in serving and cleaning up is just crazy. When I encountered it for…

> When I encountered it for the first time I felt like a big part of my childhood had been sold to the lowest bidder.

Not to be a total downer but I often feel like this is true of every aspect of life in America.

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