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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

#821

Post by chmod775 »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #202
mproud wrote: post #63

I love living in Minnesota. Walz passed the Free Meals for School Kids Program[^1] at my elementary school, no less! about two years ago. I’m happy that other states are finally realizing, gee, this is such a straightforward issue we could actually solve. [^1] https://education.mn.gov/MDE/dse/FNS/SNP/free/

>> gee, this is such a straightforward issue we could actually solve Shifting the cost from the parents who had the kids onto the taxpayers is not solving the problem. It's making people who didn't cause the problem subsidize the people who did cause the problem. That's not solving the problem. It's making sure there will be more problems.

Compared to the rest of the school system, the price of a kid's lunch is a small amount of money, and it's certainly not worth the overhead of bookkeeping, administration, payment processing, and checking eligibility for each individual kid.

Take Finland as an example. Schools are paid for by taxpayers, costing around 8,000 euros per student per year [1] (the numbers don't change much regardless of which level of education you look at). Of that just 570 euro pay for balanced and healthy meals (mostly labor costs).[2] That works out to roughly 3 euro per meal.

The benefit of a good meal probably outweigh many other things you could do with that money when it comes to educating children that are your future taxpayers.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1134054/finland-regular-... [2] https://www.schoolmealscoalition.org/sites/default/files/202...

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

#822

Post by Capricorn2481 »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #574
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 consider how someone feels about free school lunch, a basic test of their humanity. I'll bite (pun alert). It isn't about free handout, it's about ROI. The valid counterpoint to free lunch for children is any program can become grossly mismanaged because of "think of the children". There are recent stories of unhealthy and expired food being served to children that made them sick. Moreover, what they are getting c…

I'm sorry, I'm all for discretion with what we feed kids, but that is not a valid counterpoint to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are many consistently worse side effects of not giving growing children food that outweigh whatever you think processed food does.

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

#823

Post by asdf6969 »

em-bee wrote: post #766
tc43 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or proportional to the household eating habits. I'm definitely in the upper income bracket of my son's state primary school and he brings a sandwich and a piece of fruit like every other kid because it's a sensible amount of food for a small child.

when does your son come home and when (and what) is his next meal? a sandwich is enough for a mid morning snack, but not for a midday meal unless the kids get another meal right when they come home. traditional wisdom has it that you should have a good breakfast and lunch, and a smaller meal for dinner. that's possible when the kids come home no later than 2pm but if they usually come home at 3-4pm or later then a sa…

A sandwich and a piece of fruit will probably be in the 400-800 calorie range. It’s absolutely enough food for 1/3 meals. Especially if the kid is also eating snacks

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

#824

Post by kccoder »

asdf6969 wrote: post #817
kerkeslager wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stuff like this seems like such a dividing line to me. Like, in theory when people believe things that are morally wrong, I want to reach out to them with compassion and respect and try to gently persuade them to my side because we're all, in theory, on the same side. But if you don't want kids to be fed, I really am not sure we're actually on the same side any more and I really am not sure what to do with that.

[flagged]

This is an absolutely disgusting, immoral, ghoulish position.

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

#825

Post by aetherspawn »

em-bee wrote: post #766
tc43 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or proportional to the household eating habits. I'm definitely in the upper income bracket of my son's state primary school and he brings a sandwich and a piece of fruit like every other kid because it's a sensible amount of food for a small child.

when does your son come home and when (and what) is his next meal? a sandwich is enough for a mid morning snack, but not for a midday meal unless the kids get another meal right when they come home. traditional wisdom has it that you should have a good breakfast and lunch, and a smaller meal for dinner. that's possible when the kids come home no later than 2pm but if they usually come home at 3-4pm or later then a sa…

I think you’re thinking of adult portions, but a sandwich and a piece of fruit is a lot of food for a child considering the volume of their stomach.

This could also be an overseas perspective because in my opinion (having just returned from USA) the single meal portions are very large in USA compared with overseas.

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

#826

Post by mech9879876 »

camgunz wrote: post #791
mech9879876 wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your method of argument relies on lumping all persons into one category. The annoying detail about designing public policy is that policy changes happen on the margin, and it is the marginal cases where moral hazard presents itself first. If you continue to boundlessly extend your empathy for everyone that walks into their doctor's office to anybody that says they have back pain, you will clearly have fraud. And Hale…

I'm gonna do the point by point thing here, not because I think you really deserve it, but because I want you to really think about the arguments you're making. Will it work? I don't know. Do I know of a better way to do it? I wish I did. OK here we go. > Your method of argument relies on lumping all persons into one category. I literally broke people up into different generations, people who can work, people who can…

My main intention in my argument was to convince you that moral hazard exists in current social welfare programs. Judging by your statements, you were already aware of this, but rely on discussion points that deny it exists. Starting off an argument with such a clearly untrue line of discussion sets up pretty poor grounds for an honest talk.

That's all I intend for this. There's room for agreement on some other points, but I doubt it would be a productive conversation when you deny the existence of the downside tradeoffs of your preferred policies.

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

#827

Post by lmz »

inetknght wrote: post #228
lmz wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you already have that? They get kicked to El Salvador IIRC.

That's not VoteKick, that's AdminBan.

We(1) vote Him in. He kicks them out.

(1) not actually me, since I'm not a US citizen just a pro-Russia bot.

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

#828

Post by em-bee »

asdf6969 wrote: post #823
em-bee wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when does your son come home and when (and what) is his next meal? a sandwich is enough for a mid morning snack, but not for a midday meal unless the kids get another meal right when they come home. traditional wisdom has it that you should have a good breakfast and lunch, and a smaller meal for dinner. that's possible when the kids come home no later than 2pm but if they usually come home at 3-4pm or later then a sa…

A sandwich and a piece of fruit will probably be in the 400-800 calorie range. It’s absolutely enough food for 1/3 meals. Especially if the kid is also eating snacks

depending on age a child needs about 1400-3000 calories per day. the bulk of which should be eaten in the early part of the day when you are most active. 400-800 is not enough for that.

the official US guidelines for school provided lunch range from 550–850. that's a bit lower than i would choose based on daily needs especially for older kids. breakfast and lunch should be more than 1/3rd each. dinner should be less than 1/3rd.

i am from austria. a sandwich here is considered a snack. not a meal.

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

#829

Post by dragonwriter »

noworriesnate wrote: post #764
dragonwriter wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is what's frustrating about America. There is so much bureaucracy that exists only to pay for itself, and I suppose, provide a few jobs, No, it exists to prevent people from receiving public services , both by its direct operation and indirectly by making the service more painful to use so people who would be entitled to use it nevertheless avoid it.

For the first part, that will always be necessary. The people are supposed to decide through indirect democracy who is qualified to receive welfare. But your second point is very true. It can be very painful to interact with the bureaucracy, something people shouldn’t have to deal with when they’re at the bottom of the barrel.

> For the first part, that will always be necessary.

There's no reason it has to be.

> The people are supposed to decide through indirect democracy who is qualified to receive welfare.

There's no reason the people couldn't decide, through democracy (direct or indirect, as is their pleasure; certain existing governments only embrace one, but the people can always change that, too) that the answer is "everybody gets the public service/benefit; and the payment comes through the tax system" and have one tax bureaucracy instead of a tax bureaucracy and a separate eligibility verification bureaucracy for each program.

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

#830

Post by lazyasciiart »

yieldcrv wrote: post #318
lazyasciiart wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is simply not true. Multiple states have tried and failed to pass state funding for universal free lunches - because in each state there are groups who argue giving free lunches to all kids is bad. It’s not an argument about where the money comes from.

and NY State is an example of where it is true. I'm not sure how the observation that other places also lacked consensus at the state level discredits anything. Some people dislike it on the federal level, and are fine with it at the state level, as they are two different organizations. My comment was only about them.

> You and the other parties actually agree that it isn't controversial

That is not true. Regardless of what NY state did.

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