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(I'm in Australia) I dont understand why this concept of schools providing lunches ever became a thing... Why did this idea ever take off?
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I'm pretty sure this is malice. They know, they don't do anything.
I really wish people would exercise more imagination while applying the adage. A cafeteria worker is likely doing what they're told to do from the principal and board of education. They're doing what they're told because of laws that have been passed. At any point along this chain of human beings, someone could be relying on their job to keep one of them family members alive. I know I'm throwing out a random scenario…
It will never happen because additional analyzing would pretty quickly make it obvious that the problems are systemic and cannot be easily described by the kind of partisan quips and advocacy for "obvious" or "easy" solutions that dominate discussion of topics like this.
Basically any serious effort to understand and solve these problems precludes general audience participation and will therefore not be popular.
It's astonishing this is a thing. I'm thankful to live in Massachusetts where all kids can get lunch for free with no questions asked. Where I live, kids can get breakfast too, however I've heard that isn't universal in the state. The article points out another issue that is so widespread. Often times, being right above or below a cut off line can make a huge difference and it's kids just above the cut off line here…
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Often you have a program created, with "free below X, sliding scale until no subsidy at Y" - done right, this is "perfect" in that each marginal dollar is lightly "taxed" (losing a subsidy is the same as a tax, from the worker's perspective).
This is great! Though let's say (theoretically) that the end result is a 1% "tax" for our family, so each dollar they increase income costs them a penny of subsidy. They probably have other subsidies besides school lunches, like WIC, or ACA, or whatever. Those are also sliding down at various amounts, which can cause it to start to get annoying. But it works.
Then the program is expanded, to be "nice" - even nicer! Now the subsidy is 100% below X, but they're going to also cover 100% up to Y! That's great! Everyone is better off now ... except now you have the situation where at Y + 1, you earned one more dollar, but lost potentially thousands in subsidy. This is NOT ACTUALLY WORSE than before, because at Y + 1 in both scenarios you have no subsidy, but it hurts much more in the second because the subsidy wasn't slowly being drained.
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The goal isn’t to make it easy for you to escape the system but more difficult under the theory that then you’re more self sufficient. It’s a stupid philosophy of course.
Strawmen usually have stupid philosophies, yes. The simpler and more convincing explanation is that lawmakers write bad laws, regulators write bad regulations, and everyone votes on hot button issues like the economy, immigration, and trans athletes in sports. School lunch policy details don't get enough attention.
Everyone votes emotionally on issues they don't even understand (e.g, there is ~1 trans athlete out of 10,000 NCAA athletes right now, so why the hell is it even a minor issue, let alone a national debate?).
Is the overhead in deciding who gets free lunch and who doesn't and then managing the debt really saving more money than just giving all public school kids free lunches with no strings attached?
You can look at stats from NYC: https://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/if-no-student-pays-cost... The report used 2014-2015 numbers, where the cost of lunches for elementary students was $102 million and the participation rate was 57%. It estimates that universal free lunch would cost the city an additional $5.2 million. Part of the costs would be offset by federal reimbursements, so the full estimate is higher than $5…
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The goal isn’t to make it easy for you to escape the system but more difficult under the theory that then you’re more self sufficient. It’s a stupid philosophy of course.
Strawmen usually have stupid philosophies, yes. The simpler and more convincing explanation is that lawmakers write bad laws, regulators write bad regulations, and everyone votes on hot button issues like the economy, immigration, and trans athletes in sports. School lunch policy details don't get enough attention.
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Haven't you met people who refused a raise because they were scared of moving to a new tax bracket? Same thing only this is where it actually happens.
The only people that do this are ones that have no understanding of marginal tax rates and progressive taxation.
Some huge number of people think "writing it off as a business expense" means it's basically almost free.
Most people like receiving a big fat refund.
Many don't understand saving for anything, let alone retirement.
Is the overhead in deciding who gets free lunch and who doesn't and then managing the debt really saving more money than just giving all public school kids free lunches with no strings attached?
You can look at stats from NYC: https://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/if-no-student-pays-cost... The report used 2014-2015 numbers, where the cost of lunches for elementary students was $102 million and the participation rate was 57%. It estimates that universal free lunch would cost the city an additional $5.2 million. Part of the costs would be offset by federal reimbursements, so the full estimate is higher than $5…
Nit: could not stand the writing style. It took 3-4x more words than it should have. On the topic I agree and believe strongly that all kids should receive free food at school. It amazes me people will fight to prevent when to me the costs are small but the benefit can be huge for the next generation.
Because that's what makes it a "story" people will remember, rather than just a few more sad statistics about our society that people will see and then forget.
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>Because cruelty is the point for some people. It's not the people peddling cruelty, it's the system. Though obviously people who personally are ok with or like that will be better represented in such a system. > Or said in their parlance, it teaches you self reliance or to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Rephrased another way you're basically saying "it's not my team doing that, it's the other team." And this i…
> It's not the people peddling cruelty, it's the system. The rules of the system are made by people. And yes, for quite some of them the cruelty is the point when making the rules.