I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt • Hacker News Board

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

#721

Post by Suppafly » Tue, May 06, 2025, 4:57 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #106

rpcope1 wrote: post #82

Surely it can't be that expensive to just provide every child living in our country that so desires/needs it three decent meals a day, regardless of their situation? That one has always confused me, if our country is actually prosperous and powerful, that something as simple as that seems like a given that would be embarrassing not to provide.

Let's assume (bad assumption, but it should be good enough for the math) that a Happy Meal™®© is a decent meal. It costs about $6 around here, so let's say without toy it's $5. https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp says there are 71 million kids. $466 billion a year. Ok, ok, that is maybe too high. Let's assume a wonderful world where you can produce a meal for a dollar (less than the local scho…

>It costs about $6 around here, so let's say without toy it's $5.

Sure but half of that is profit, so it's a silly thing to even mention. If you are using bad faith exams intentionally, it's a good sign that your comment is being made in bad faith.

>$77 billion a year.

I'm not sure you how go to 77 billion from 71 million kids, but whatever, if that's what it costs we should do it.

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

#722

Post by Suppafly » Tue, May 06, 2025, 5:00 PM UTC

llm_nerd wrote: post #141

andreicap wrote: post #25

My poor country (Moldova) just implemented free lunches for kids in primary and middle schools. What is the reason US doesn’t have this already at federal level?

My rich country that is often accused of "socialism" (Canada) has no real lunch program at any school level. Kids pack and bring their own lunch, though a lot of high schools have a bespoke cafeteria where you can buy some fries or a burger, it operates more like a restaurant than a meal plan, and elementary/middle schools don't have kitchens at all. With four kids I've made a lot of lunches over the years. More rece…

> (Canada) has no real lunch program at any school level

It's always crazy to learn that you guys are so different from us when you dig into the details of things.

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

#723

Post by colechristensen » Tue, May 06, 2025, 5:01 PM UTC

camdenreslink wrote: post #259

New York State just passed universal free lunch and breakfast for public school students. Of all the things that we spend our tax dollars on, this feels like a no brainer. Making sure children are fed should be at the top of the list.

Minnesota did so in 2023, it's working great.

And importantly emphasizing "universal", we're not spending a bunch of money on the bureaucracy of figuring out who gets it and who qualifies and hearing people complain about fraud. They're kids, everybody gets it, nobody set up a test as to which gets get free food.

I pay both MN and NY taxes and couldn't be happier about this expenditure.

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

#724

Post by Suppafly » Tue, May 06, 2025, 5:05 PM UTC

subarctic wrote: post #331

This article doesn't seem to really explain how this whole debt thing works. What I'm guessing happens is some kids go to the cafeteria and get food, and then their parents are supposed to pay the bill later, and they can't afford it so they don't (and maybe their parents told them they can't afford and they're supposed to bring a lunch to school but they didn't listen, or their parents didn't tell them). So then the…

>So then the lunchlady has to act like a debt collector and go take their food away and replace it with something cheaper (not sure why they just don't decline them the hot lunch food in the first place).

I'm sure it works 1000 different ways in 1000 different schools, but generally you pick up the tray at the beginning of the line and pay at the end of the line, so kids that are broke get to the end of the line and can't pay and then have the tray taken away and are handed a brown bag with a sandwich in it instead. Since most of these systems are tied to a lunch card or their student id, they don't know that they don't have any money left to pay until they get to the register and are told they don't. Likely they are allowed to "overdraft" by a week or two worth before they get to that point, but I'm sure some schools probably cut them off immediately. The overdraft is what the author in the OP is paying off, so now those kids are back zero and get to overdraft another week or two until they are cut off again. Or theoretically their parents that couldn't pay the overdraft off might be in a position to at least pay going forward.

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

#725

Post by sneak » Tue, May 06, 2025, 5:07 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #697

sneak wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parents would find a way to pay to stay out of jail, same way they do today in finding food to buy their children, or housing, or insurance for their car. Living in our society is not free. Reproduction isn’t either. Socializing the costs of an individual choice to have a child or 8 is not morally defensible. Not everyone in society cares about and values the supply of labor for the functioning of the next generation…

Plenty of people would find ways to hide what's going in instead, and plenty would try but fail. And the notion of imprisoning people instead of simply covering a minor cost, and then harming their children further by taking them out of homes unless there are more serious reasons to that can't be trivially mitigated just comes across as brutally cruel and demonstrating a wildly irrational willingness to harm your own…

No, you’re conflating two things: subsidizing the poor (eg food stamps) and subsidizing education.

We don’t subsidize the education of children for just the poor - we subsidize the education of children for EVERYONE, including families that can afford to pay for their own luxury choices like having children.

This isn’t about letting children go without. This is about who out of two families, one with kids and one without, both of whom can afford what is needed, pays for the choices of the family that opted to have children.

It’s all too easy to obscure the moral issue here, which is that people who don’t have or want children are being forced to pay for the education of the children of parents who very well can pay for their own children. That’s like making everyone in a city, regardless of car ownership, pay into a public automobile insurance fund that covers anyone with a car (including luxury cars).

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

#726

Post by kibwen » Tue, May 06, 2025, 5:07 PM UTC

Suppafly wrote: post #664

kibwen wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Somehow shame doesn't work anymore. We don't need to wonder. Shame as a mechanism only works in social contexts that feature a high degree of social dependency. In olden days, if all your neighbors hated you to the point of dissociating with you, that could be tantamount to a death sentence (who's going to share food with you when your harvest fails or take care of you when your household falls ill?); that's a soci…

>Economic transactions have replaced social dependency. The flipside of this is that a lot of situations have improved. You can divorce your abusive spouse now instead of your priest telling you to just accept the abuse because god wills it. Everyone whining about the downfall of society seems to forget that it didn't actually work for everyone before.

> Everyone whining about the downfall of society seems to forget that it didn't actually work for everyone before.

I'm not presenting this as either a good thing or a bad thing, only pointing out that the mechanisms by which people ensure social adherence have changed. And yes, that's "changed", and not "gone away". For all the things the cryptobros got wrong, they did accurately identify that, in a transactional society, the only thing required to exclude someone from society is to take away their ability to perform financial transactions.

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

#727

Post by ponector » Tue, May 06, 2025, 5:22 PM UTC

jacknews wrote: post #667

ponector wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from a country where university degree can be easily obtained for free. As a result: 1. Students usually are not interested in attending classes, like at the middle school. 2. Bachelor/masters degrees means nothing as everyone has one.

There's a big difference between 'degree for free' and 'education for free' I think. One is just worthless paper, the other is equal opportunity for everyone to actually attain the standard required for a degree.

But education without a degree already is free and accessible for everyone everywhere where internet is. Free courses, free books, free lessons!

During my student years I could only dream of attending lectures from Stanford or MIT! Nowadays they are at your fingertips anytime you want.

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

#728

Post by kjkjadksj » Tue, May 06, 2025, 5:44 PM UTC

walthamstow wrote: post #687

Suppafly wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Must have never played an elder scrolls game huh

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

#729

Post by kjkjadksj » Tue, May 06, 2025, 5:45 PM UTC

turtlebits wrote: post #662

I read a recent comment that changed my mind about school lunches (free for all, not just those that need it). Essentially, if you're legally required to be somewhere, meals should be provided.

Tell that to the dmv line. I’ll be happy with starting with bathrooms.

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

#730

Post by kjkjadksj » Tue, May 06, 2025, 5:49 PM UTC

taxedrollik wrote: post #374

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.

50% sounds manageable still. Currently paying ~65% of whatever I bill, in taxes and that hurts quite a lot. Assuming no costs to deliver, I need to bill 10K€ to net ~3,5K€. It makes exports uncompetitive with other lower taxed countries. Despite this, seeing a general practitioner can take months for issues that aren't-killing-you-right-now.

Ahh but you can see a general practicioner! That puts you head an shoulders over the average urban californian saddled with being triaged into the stripmall based urgent care system for lack of regional hospitals and gps. Corporate healthcare solutions are no greener grass than your public option… wait until you find out what is considered a cosmetic procedure (like having teeth).