The Money Mustache Community
Other => Off Topic => Topic started by: Nick_Miller on August 13, 2019, 12:30:02 PM
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Okay so I would self-identify as like a 7 or 8 on a 1-10 conservative to liberal spectrum. BUT...this is one issue that makes me set my jaw, grind my teeth, and clench my manicured writer's fingers into fists of indignation.
To be clear...I WANT kids to eat. Every single day. I want kids to be healthy and happy. And I understand that in SOME, limited circumstances, a family may struggle to put food on the table and need assistance. I have absolutely no problem with that. Schools do more than educate; they act as sort of a social safety net.
I just think that feeding your kid is like one of the very very very most basic duties of a parent, and that this duty shouldn't be outsourced to the government, especially on a long-term basis.
Let me summarize the school lunch program in my largish mid-western city's urban school district.
Number of students: roughly 100,000
Number of students who get free lunch: roughly 90,000
Yes you read correctly.
Now, it's a bit complicated because basically if a school is determined to be in a certain "low income" area, then ALL students at the school eat free, even if they otherwise wouldn't qualify for a free lunch. So of our 100 or so schools, 90 of them are these sorts of schools!
That leaves 10 schools, and my daughters attend 2 of those 10. Even at these 'select' schools, plenty of kids qualify for free lunches; they just have to apply individually.
So basically, a tiny fraction of parents in my city pay for their kids' lunches (and breakfasts too, if they eat those at school). I don't mind paying for my kiddos' lunches, like I said, I think it's a basic duty for parents. But I guess I'm a bit taken aback when I think we're in the vast minority here. I point to irresponsible parents, and I think I am right to do so in most cases (not all), but the issue always comes down to not punishing kids for their parents economic situation.
We're all here talking about optimizing our finances, upping our savings rates to 30, 40, 50%, etc., yet tons of parents don't even freakin' feed their kids. How can we as a society fix this? Or do some people simply not see this as a "problem?" Are people entitled to have kids even when they can't feed them? Do we need some sort of government (or perhaps corporate/govt combo) to educate people on being parents? I know that might sound gross, but...what is the solution? I just feel like this is a big issue that ripples out to many others.
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But is the free food given because otherwise the kids would die of starvation? Or is just another welfare program?
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I'm a little confused. If 90% of schools/students get free meals by default, this doesn't imply that those kids parents aren't feeding them, it just means they're taking advantage of the free meal that is offered. I would do the same.
Perhaps your anger is directed at the policy of providing free lunch to all students at those schools?
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Nick - what are the demographics of your area?
Specifically:
Average and median income
COL - high or low?
White, black, Hispanic, other?
Primarily English speaking or ESL?
White or blue collar?
What's the homelessness rate?
What's the unemployment rate?
I encourage you to dig a bit into the economic realities of your largish mid-western city's urban school district, and not just you and your direct neighbors. Because schools don't get that status without economic reality behind it. The fact that your children are in schools that aren't 100% free lunch tells me that you may be isolated from the true reality of your area, so you're likely operating with incomplete information.
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I'm a little confused. If 90% of schools/students get free meals by default, this doesn't imply that those kids parents aren't feeding them, it just means they're taking advantage of the free meal that is offered. I would do the same.
Perhaps your anger is directed at the policy of providing free lunch to all students at those schools?
My understanding is that at some point it's easier to just feed all the students then to deal with the paperwork of trying to figure out who does/doesn't qualify.
And my personal feeling is "just feed the kids". Outcomes for hungry students in school are much, much worse (because they're hungry, and distracted, and can't really focus on classwork), and school lunches aren't that expensive. I'm happy to contribute (via my tax dollars, or directly if it comes to that) to making sure hungry kids get healthy meals.
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I did a little more digging. The 90% of schools where everyone gets a free lunch have student populations where at least 60% of them qualify for SNAP, or are otherwise classified as homeless, migrant, foster children (in some cases), etc. So that's the floor. Some of those schools obviously have populations higher than 60% but you'd really have to dig into data to figure that out.
So okay, let's be conservative and say that means just 70% of families in my city are viewed by the government as being economically precarious, or whatever term you'd want to use for struggling to put food on the table...that's still the majority, and I guess it still floors me.
I guess I just think you shouldn't have kids unless you can afford to feed them and clothe them. Maybe that makes me a moderate these days, I dunno. I know on Twitter I feel like freaking Republican sometimes. *cringes*
And my main gripe is NOT that students are necessarily feeding the kids, it's that SO many families apparently qualify for these programs in the first place! So I'm bitching about people not being responsible in family planning, managing finances, working, etc. I'm not complaining so much about the schools; as I said in the OP they act as a safety net. They somewhat mitigate against parental negligence.
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As icky as it sounds, I think the real issue at hand is that poor/uneducated people have way more kids than do educated and those earning in the upper class. I'm not even going to bother looking up the data, isn't it universally accepted at this point? Anyway, that leads to situations like free lunches, more handouts, etc. I'm there with you, something about that doesn't feel right to me either. Similar to the other debate/thread about forgiving student loans. Like, you should pay for the choices you made. I get it and feel the same way often.
But, Idk the solution. Nazis and Americans (not that long ago) favored eugenics, and I sure af don't support that.
Another thing to consider...What do you think is the best way for these kids to grow up and be productive members of society? Free lunch or being hungry? Does a free lunch program result in a culture of welfare queens? Hypothetical question, I don't claim to know the answer or even have an opinion really.
For me it's simple. What's the desired goal? Productive and educated and independent adults? Well, how do we best achieve that? Then, you can work out the details, such as these govt programs.
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Nick - what are the demographics of your area?
Specifically:
Average and median income
COL - high or low?
White, black, Hispanic, other?
Primarily English speaking or ESL?
White or blue collar?
What's the homelessness rate?
What's the unemployment rate?
I encourage you to dig a bit into the economic realities of your largish mid-western city's urban school district, and not just you and your direct neighbors. Because schools don't get that status without economic reality behind it. The fact that your children are in schools that aren't 100% free lunch tells me that you may be isolated from the true reality of your area, so you're likely operating with incomplete information.
See my post above for some of this info. We are a pretty diverse city, 70% white, 20% African American, 10% Latinx or Asian American
You don't think it's a little nuts that 70% or so of families are viewed as not being able to feed their kids without some sort of significant economic hardship?
See, to be honest, even as a pretty progressive guy, I see this as the progressives' big blind spot. Nowadays, it's become unacceptable to point out that people share at least SOME responsibility for their current situations. Yes, I totally agree there is white privilege, and I know there's an uneven playing field in education, the workforce, etc. BUT don't we need to really take a hard look at why a majority of families struggle to feed their kids? Is it because of too many unintended pregnancies? Does that mean more sex ed and more access to contraceptives? Do some people feel "entitled" to have kids even when they realize they are going to struggle mightily to pay for them, and thus acknowledge that others of us will be footing some of that bill?
I view this differently than health care, which can totally bankrupt someone through a horrible accident or disease that might never could have been prevented. But when you have kids and can't afford food for them...I mean crap, the government HAS to step in, but why are people putting government in this position in the first place?
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I guess I just think you shouldn't have kids unless you can afford to feed them and clothe them...
And my main gripe is NOT that students are necessarily feeding the kids, it's that SO many families apparently qualify for these programs in the first place!
Humans have a few primary drives, sex being one of them. People are going to have sex, and therefore are going to have children; quite often being able to afford them doesn't factor into that equation. Universal access to sex education, birth control, and abortion services would go a long way, but Americans are split on those things.
Kids that aren't hungry do better in school. As of 2018 about 12% of households in the US were using SNAP benefits. If 60%+ of the students in a school qualify, the median income in those schools is likely quite low. It may seem outrageous to you that so many qualify, but you are likely in a relatively low-income area (well, not you in particular, but the city).
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I think I know how the Republicans on the board feel now. :)
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For reasons that can be discussed ad nauseam poor people have more kids. It's cheaper to feed the kids than to deal with the fallout of having millions of adults malnourished during their development years.
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Yeah, there's no good solution for the current kids. They go hungry, and we save some money now; or they're fed, and we (likely) save a lot more money later.
Wanna know the real solution? Real jobs with real wages for their parents.
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1. The poor are always with us.
2. An economically successful and morally civilised society doesn't leave its poor to starve.
3. There will never be a perfect alignment of poor people and society's metric for helping poor people.
4. Because the alignment is never perfect there will be constant change in the metric to better align it to need.
5. That change will probably cycle between states of providing more help and of providing less help, and of being more effective or efficient and being less effective or efficient.
6. If you think the system is wrong in any particular direction don't worry, sooner or later it will cycle around to your views.
Personally I would focus my concerns about education on how it is that after 12 years of compulsory full time education a significant proportion of the population leaves school functionally illiterate and innumerate.
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See, to be honest, even as a pretty progressive guy, I see this as the progressives' big blind spot. Nowadays, it's become unacceptable to point out that people share at least SOME responsibility for their current situations. Yes, I totally agree there is white privilege, and I know there's an uneven playing field in education, the workforce, etc. BUT don't we need to really take a hard look at why a majority of families struggle to feed their kids? Is it because of too many unintended pregnancies? Does that mean more sex ed and more access to contraceptives? Do some people feel "entitled" to have kids even when they realize they are going to struggle mightily to pay for them, and thus acknowledge that others of us will be footing some of that bill?
I view this differently than health care, which can totally bankrupt someone through a horrible accident or disease that might never could have been prevented. But when you have kids and can't afford food for them...I mean crap, the government HAS to step in, but why are people putting government in this position in the first place?
If you feel more sex ed and access to contraceptives would help (and I agree), then I'm not sure why you're placing the blame on progressives here. They're in favor of those things. You believe the government has a duty to feed the kids, so what policies exactly are you arguing against?
Also, yeah, people are entitled to have kids. What is the alternative? Make people get a permit declaring income and net worth? There are plenty of people who are entitled to vote despite putting no thought into it, doesn't mean I want to bring back literacy tests. There are also probably parents who were economically stable, and then something happened over the course of 18 years that meant their kids qualified.
Since you compared this to health care: should we pay for other people's choices? Someone who smokes all their life and gets lung cancer? Drinks and gets liver disease? Car crash injuries due to not wearing a seatbelt?
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Two parent families may be able to afford 2 kids so they have them. Then they divorce, Dad skips town not paying child support and mom’s job makes her and kids poor. Or one parent loses a job through illness, disability, etc and they are poor. As a former social worker many unexpected things happen to families.
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In thinking about this from the parents perspective: it seems to me that people don't take pride in taking responsibility anymore, and it's because you're not supposed to shame people for being irresponsible. Which is sort of the implication.
So you might as well jump on the entitlement bandwagon I guess, lest you be a sucker who's paying for the entitlement. It drives an "I got mine" mentality.
This is always the moral hazard of socialist policies: enabling grifters at the expense of everyone else, but especially at the expense of those who really need x.
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If you want to do something to encourage people to put off having kids until they can support those kids, then I suggest you support candidates who would make effective birth control widely available to women and girls for free. And when I say support those candidates, I mean give them money and vote for them. I would be happy if every high school nurse could perform the procedure to put a Norplant in the arm of any teenage girl who wants one. I would be happy if any girl or young woman who wants an IUD (they're safe now!) could get one put in for free at a doctor's office, and have it replaced when appropriate as well. That way when boys and girls inevitably have sex -- there's no way to get them to stop -- they at least won't end up with babies they can't support. (STDs are a separate, though related, matter.)
I'm normally very lefty, and this is the way I feel about this issue. I could get accused of being right-wing about it, but that's fine; I think I'm talking from both logic and compassion.
There's no way to get people to stop having sex.
Unprotected sex makes babies. Sometimes these are babies people would rather put off if they put any thought into the matter.
Poor people often feel a sense of hopelessness that can keep them from taking reasonable defensive actions, such as getting birth control. BUT, if girls in poor schools were encouraged to, more of them might do it, if someone asks them sincerely whether they want a baby soon, and they say no. Without intervention, they just think that's the expected path for them, because they see it all around them.
Most people really, really want babies in general, sometime while they're of appropriate age. This is true whether or not they can afford them. It's a basic human drive. People will definitely have those babies whether or not they can support them. We can whine about it, but if we're smart, we'll take societal action to minimize the number of *accidentally made* babies.
Whether or not it's fair, the burden of birth control falls on women. (Spoiler: it's not fair.)
Lots of kids don't want to talk to their parents about sex. I know many parents believe it's their right to approve any medical decisions on behalf of their kids, but I believe an exception should be made for underage kids who want birth control and don't want to talk to their parents. I remember how *I* was at that age, and I wasn't even poor. (It's a miracle I didn't get pregnant in high school.)
So, if you want to reduce the number of poor kids, *one* of the ways to do it is to offer free, easily available birth control to *at least* the poor kids, and preferably to *all* the kids to avoid problems all along the socioeconomic spectrum. Yes, it will cost money, but it will cost a lot less than the cost to society of so many people having kids before they really want them.
But for heaven's sake, don't look at kids who get free lunches and think that all those parents wouldn't feed their kids. Probably a large majority would skimp on other things to put food on the table. Things like the electric bill. Things like paying for their own prescriptions.
Lastly: getting grouchy helps nothing. Take some small action. Call your state legislator. Write to the governor. Look at organizations who can help, and give them your time and/or your money.
I appreciate that you want kids to eat. But let's look past the problem right under your nose, toward the root of the problems, and try to help people fix the problems and make their lives better.
/rant
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See, to be honest, even as a pretty progressive guy, I see this as the progressives' big blind spot. Nowadays, it's become unacceptable to point out that people share at least SOME responsibility for their current situations. Yes, I totally agree there is white privilege, and I know there's an uneven playing field in education, the workforce, etc. BUT don't we need to really take a hard look at why a majority of families struggle to feed their kids? Is it because of too many unintended pregnancies? Does that mean more sex ed and more access to contraceptives? Do some people feel "entitled" to have kids even when they realize they are going to struggle mightily to pay for them, and thus acknowledge that others of us will be footing some of that bill?
I view this differently than health care, which can totally bankrupt someone through a horrible accident or disease that might never could have been prevented. But when you have kids and can't afford food for them...I mean crap, the government HAS to step in, but why are people putting government in this position in the first place?
If you feel more sex ed and access to contraceptives would help (and I agree), then I'm not sure why you're placing the blame on progressives here. They're in favor of those things. You believe the government has a duty to feed the kids, so what policies exactly are you arguing against?
Also, yeah, people are entitled to have kids. What is the alternative? Make people get a permit declaring income and net worth? There are plenty of people who are entitled to vote despite putting no thought into it, doesn't mean I want to bring back literacy tests. There are also probably parents who were economically stable, and then something happened over the course of 18 years that meant their kids qualified.
Since you compared this to health care: should we pay for other people's choices? Someone who smokes all their life and gets lung cancer? Drinks and gets liver disease? Car crash injuries due to not wearing a seatbelt?
Yep we totally agree about more sex ed and access to contraceptives. No argument there. And no I don't blame progressives for that part at all.
You're right about the voting thing too. No I am not advocating for gov't tests for having kids or voting. BUT...I am strongly advocating for people to take these things a hell of a lot more seriously than they do!! Is that too much to ask?
When you see generation after generation of families make the SAME dumb choices...you start to wonder, "When does it get better? What generation steps up to break the cycle?" As a poster pointed out above, even a lot of high school graduates are...well, I'll be charitable and say "woefully ill-equipped for a successful life." Whose fault is that? Schools can't do everything! If parents don't prioritize education, few kids are determined enough to get their on their own.
So yeah...I am blaming the loads of irresponsible parents. I absolutely am. I worked in schools for a while. Hell, I was a prosecutor too. I've been on the front lines of things. I've seen a lot of really stupid people with really crappy upbringings, and guess what, most of these folks had kids that I fear are destined for the same thing. And they can't even feed them.
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OP: please do a little reading on the cycle of poverty and why it persists.
I would love for everyone to take their life by its short ones and guide it in exactly the right direction.
When everyone around you models hopelessness and lack of proactiveness, most people will pretty much go with expectations as they see them. Then their kids will do the same.
It's a very difficult problem, without a single solution.
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The qualification cutoff in my town is a few thousand more than my family spends per year. That means my kids would qualify if I chose to work fewer hours, let investments grow, and have more time to spend with them. I wouldn't need or necessarily even want to take the free lunch but I wouldn't lie about my income if I were asked .
Of course In that situation I would also have a lot more time to pack sack lunches than a parent with the same income working twice as many hours at some low wage job.
In general, free lunch doesn't bother me. What bothers me more is that schools try to restrict what kind of food you can pack for your kid.
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I'm firmly in the "feed all the kids regardless" camp. A year and a half ago, we were classified as homeless for most of spring semester and the beginning of the following fall semester. My son's guidance councilor offered to have us put on free lunch, but I had already paid for the rest of the year by that point and didn't see the point. Would I care if other people made a different choice? Nope. Not my life. I do what I have to do and you do you. Things happen. People get sick. People lose their jobs. People get pregnant. Sometimes on purpose and sometime on accident. And the people who can least afford to have a (nother) child are the same ones who have a thousand hurdles in their way to prevent it or deal with it.
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A good policy solution (but not one that would ever work in America, since y'all are so religious) would be to pay people (a small amount, say $500) to have abortions. You'd need a lifetime limit of 1 or 2 payments under this policy, obviously, to stop people 'gaming' it, and the money ought to be paid back if the recipient has a child within say 3 years of receiving the payment. The policy would do a lot to give prospective parents the financial and regulatory freedom to ask themselves, "Am I really capable of supporting the kid I'm about to have?"
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I also don't get why people have so many unplanned kids. Even if you're hellbent on not using a condom, the rhythm method has a 10-20% failure rate per year, when used correctly, and the withdrawal method (pee before sex, only 1x ejaculation per session so that sperm doesn't linger in the urethra) has a 5% failure rate and even when used 'imperfectly in practice' has a 10-20% failure rate per year. Combine the two methods and your average failure rate would be 1-4% per year. It's not brain surgery to not have children. And obviously condoms are quite cheap if you want a proper contraceptive method.
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See, to be honest, even as a pretty progressive guy, I see this as the progressives' big blind spot. Nowadays, it's become unacceptable to point out that people share at least SOME responsibility for their current situations. Yes, I totally agree there is white privilege, and I know there's an uneven playing field in education, the workforce, etc. BUT don't we need to really take a hard look at why a majority of families struggle to feed their kids? Is it because of too many unintended pregnancies? Does that mean more sex ed and more access to contraceptives? Do some people feel "entitled" to have kids even when they realize they are going to struggle mightily to pay for them, and thus acknowledge that others of us will be footing some of that bill?
I view this differently than health care, which can totally bankrupt someone through a horrible accident or disease that might never could have been prevented. But when you have kids and can't afford food for them...I mean crap, the government HAS to step in, but why are people putting government in this position in the first place?
If you feel more sex ed and access to contraceptives would help (and I agree), then I'm not sure why you're placing the blame on progressives here. They're in favor of those things. You believe the government has a duty to feed the kids, so what policies exactly are you arguing against?
Also, yeah, people are entitled to have kids. What is the alternative? Make people get a permit declaring income and net worth? There are plenty of people who are entitled to vote despite putting no thought into it, doesn't mean I want to bring back literacy tests. There are also probably parents who were economically stable, and then something happened over the course of 18 years that meant their kids qualified.
Since you compared this to health care: should we pay for other people's choices? Someone who smokes all their life and gets lung cancer? Drinks and gets liver disease? Car crash injuries due to not wearing a seatbelt?
Yep we totally agree about more sex ed and access to contraceptives. No argument there. And no I don't blame progressives for that part at all.
You're right about the voting thing too. No I am not advocating for gov't tests for having kids or voting. BUT...I am strongly advocating for people to take these things a hell of a lot more seriously than they do!! Is that too much to ask?
When you see generation after generation of families make the SAME dumb choices...you start to wonder, "When does it get better? What generation steps up to break the cycle?" As a poster pointed out above, even a lot of high school graduates are...well, I'll be charitable and say "woefully ill-equipped for a successful life." Whose fault is that? Schools can't do everything! If parents don't prioritize education, few kids are determined enough to get their on their own.
So yeah...I am blaming the loads of irresponsible parents. I absolutely am. I worked in schools for a while. Hell, I was a prosecutor too. I've been on the front lines of things. I've seen a lot of really stupid people with really crappy upbringings, and guess what, most of these folks had kids that I fear are destined for the same thing. And they can't even feed them.
Okay, blame the parents. It's not gonna do anything. You know that. If you want to vent about shitty situations that you've seen kids put in, you can. I would point my finger at both societal causes and individual parents, but pointing my finger isn't gonna do anything, either.
People do things that I don't like all the time. They buy giant wasteful houses and drive cars around all day long and buy tiny water bottles that hold 3 sips of water and then get thrown on the side of the road. They steal money from their citizens and get away with it. They take away freedoms. They put children in cages.
When there are things that I can change, I try to change them. We've all vented about people making dumb decisions. But providing lunch to kids who might not otherwise get a consistent healthy meal is very low on my list of concerns.
I also don't get why people have so many unplanned kids. Even if you're hellbent on not using a condom, the rhythm method has a 10-20% failure rate per year, when used correctly, and the withdrawal method (pee before sex, only 1x ejaculation per session so that sperm doesn't linger in the urethra) has a 5% failure rate and even when used 'imperfectly in practice' has a 10-20% failure rate per year. Combine the two methods and your average failure rate would be 1-4% per year. It's not brain surgery to not have children. And obviously condoms are quite cheap if you want a proper contraceptive method.
Um, a 4% failure rate is pretty terrible if you're trying to get pregnant less than once a year...
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It's per year. Those failure rates are per year.
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Gotcha. That's still a lot of people left to get pregnant, and it's not like teenagers are being taught the rhythm method. I'm in my 30's and I couldn't tell you when I'm ovulating! Relying on some guy to pull out in time is also incredibly risky.
It should be easy, in theory, to avoid unplanned pregnancies. This is assuming an ideal world with easily accessible, cheap/free methods of effective birth control, proper sex ed, parents who won't kick their kids out of the house if they find condoms, hormonal birth control that doesn't play havoc with your body, no protesters attacking anyone who accesses a women's health clinic, etc etc.
And it's not like all of these kids getting subsidized lunches were unplanned or unwanted.
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People will have sex. People want to have children. But, as time passes in the US, fewer and fewer people have any savings. That means they are financially insecure which leads to food insecurity.
Having grown up in a school similar to the ones you describe, I am very grateful that the free school food programs exist. I agree with you that kids should eat . . . we had a school provided mid-morning snack as well. Many of my neighbors were very hard working, just for the record, and they were still fairly poor due to a variety of reasons. Free lunch programs and lazy/irresponsible parents don't correlate as directly as you would like to think.
Did you know that in Japan, most schools have the ingredients on hand but the students prepare the food for all of the other students? They take turns doing it. They also tend to have a system of the students cleaning the classrooms and school grounds each day so they don't need janitors . . . something different than our society.
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This thread premise is so bizarre!
Being financially eligible for free or reduced lunches doesn't mean you don't feed your kids. It just means your family income is below some $$ figure relevant to the number of people in your household.
There are other programs tied to eligibility for free/reduced lunches, especially having to do with college and financial aid. If you are eligible for free/reduced lunches, you can also get a waiver to take the SAT for free. Some colleges waive their application fees. On the FAFSA, being eligible for free/reduced lunches is one of the conditions for qualifying for either the Simplified Needs Test (assets do not need to be reported) at AGI < $50k, or Auto zero EFC at AGI < $26k currently. Just hitting those AGI won't work; you need both conditions to qualify.
So for mustachians maxing out retirement accounts while living frugally, filing for free/reduced lunches materially increases college financial aid by reducing the EFC (the calculation adds back retirement contributions to AGI, artificially inflating disposable income).
The lunches are merely a side effect, which my kids were ambivalent about - they were just as likely to pack a lunch that they wanted to eat from my well-stocked pantry and fridge.
I also have a niggling idea that a higher ratio of students receiving free/reduced lunches is good for a school district's funding.
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I'm a pretty left-leaning, personal responsibility believing single parent who's spent the better part of the past decade and a half making school lunches or making sure there were good choices for the kids to take to school. Likely we would have qualified for the subsidy but I never explored it. The options for the school lunch are so shitty and unhealthy, that unless it was pizza day or something, I and my offspring preferred to bring food from home. And I'm glad free lunches exist.
When you look at school lunch pictorials from around the globe, the US pales in comparison. It's embarrassing. A truly radical idea would be to take the funds we as a society now pay to provide crap food and redirect it to make healthy, interesting lunches available to ALL students, with the children taking ownership of helping (with major direction and resources of course) the growing, preparing and serving of the food. Environmentally it's a win. Think of all the plastic and waste that goes into some take from home choices: Lunchables, plastic bags, potato chip and cookie bags, water bottles and so on.
Our country is ready for a reboot in how we feed millions of children every day.
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A least you're not experiencing the same thing as my friend, whose son sees his schoolmates that are getting free lunches walking around with the newest iPhones.
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I know this is not the point, but you are making up your statistics. There is not a public school district in the Midwest with 100k students. Chicago has 400k, and then Columbus, Ohio and Detroit, Michigan with just about 50k students each. I could be missing something in my definition of Midwest, but I really can’t think of the district you are talking about.
Overall, about 50% of students nationwide qualify for free and reduced lunch. By contrast, child poverty is 17.5%. So a large part of this is that the school lunch program is fairly generous as subsidies go. We tend to err on the side of caution when the consequence is child hunger, and I think that’s pretty reasonable.
Surely you’re not suggesting that half of all children are born to parents too irresponsible to deserve children? I personally think there should be more support for families raising children, not less. For some reason in our society we’ve undertaken a massive wealth transfer from young to old, meaning a family earning $25k, just under the poverty level for a family of 4, will pay over $1900 in taxes to support Social Security and Medicare. Due to the support of social security, only 9.3% of people 65+ are poor, yet we blame our high rates of child poverty on the economic choices of the parents.
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I also think you're missing the point. The free lunches are meant to be financial aid for families with incomes below a certain level. I'm sure that most of these families could afford to send lunch for their kids but this is a social welfare initiative for families with low incomes.
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@SimpleCycle I live in a real city. You can doubt me if you wish, as I can hardly stop you from doing so. I'll leave it at that.
@calimom Those are interesting ideas, and yeah actually teaching kids food prep, cooking, more about where food comes from, how it's transported, plus manners and dining etiquette, perhaps even how to have discussions over a meal, would provide for great learning opportunities.
I feel like I am repeating myself on the main point but I'll say it once more and then I am done.
I don't mind the schools doing this at all. I am a big advocate for public schools. We all know that they fill in the gaps that might otherwise go unfilled. Teachers have a special place in my heart; they put up with more shit for less money than I ever would dream of doing. I'm just disheartened that SO many families are in the position to need help (or be viewed as needing it).I don't claim to have the solution, but when you see families repeat the same behavior generation after generation, clearly a new approach is needed to break the wheel. The status quo ain't working.
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This thread reminds me of the Circle of Control (https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/10/07/how-big-is-your-circle-of-control/) post.
In the grand scheme of things, as long as kids are being fed in school, who cares how it is accomplished?
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It's really hard to break out of the socioeconomic class you were born into. If so many people are using these programs is it because we don't pay working adults enough to support a family? Maybe it's because I lean towards being a liberal now but I think the gap between the highest earning Americans and middle-income America is way too large and there seems to be a correlation with the achievement gap in schools between wealthy and poor students. ~20% of children live in poverty, but only 5% of children have at least one unemployed parent. How can we help lift working people out of poverty? Education always seems to be the default answer given, and children have to eat to learn. However I read a book recently talking about how we push fixing education over poverty and that's a backward approach because when people aren't in survival mode, education comes more naturally. Perhaps paying their parents a living wage and providing free public personal finance classes would be a start.
Also, more inner-city, urban schools started offering free lunch to 100% of students to offset the stigma that was attached with taking a free lunch. In my old high school 77% of kids qualified for a free lunch, keeping in mind that wealthier people in the district typically self-selected out of the school district for a "better" public school or private school which does skew the data. It's tough when our cities and therefore schools remain heavily segregated.
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So, the way that I try to look at these situations is a cost benefit analysis.
My kid is going to school. My kid needs to learn while he's there. If several of the kids around him are acting out/misbehaving/being disruptive and preventing this because they can't concentrate due to hunger . . . that's defeating the whole purpose of my kid being in school. My tax dollars are paying for all of the kids to go to school so they can become educated and productive members of society. If they can't become educated due to hunger, that's wasting a tremendous amount of my money.
So feeding any kid who is hungry sounds like a great idea.
Will some people take advantage of this program even if they could very well feed their own kids? Probably. Is the cost of food outweighing the total societal costs of having a large percentage of kids go hungry? Probably not. Seems like money well spent then.
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Also, more inner-city, urban schools started offering free lunch to 100% of students to offset the stigma that was attached with taking a free lunch.
This is huge.
In addition to hunger being a major distraction for learning, feelings of shame and inferiority are a major distraction for learning (in addition to being awful things for a child to potentially feel).
I generally lean to the right but when it comes to kids and free school lunches I'm all for it. Hard to believe, but there are schools that go out of their way to use meal debt shame as a tactic.
https://www.eater.com/2019/5/22/18634237/lunch-shaming-students-meal-debt-american-schools
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However I read a book recently talking about how we push fixing education over poverty and that's a backward approach because when people aren't in survival mode, education comes more naturally. Perhaps paying their parents a living wage and providing free public personal finance classes would be a start.
A recent article in The Atlantic, "Better Schools Won’t Fix America," discusses this: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/education-isnt-enough/590611/
We have confused a symptom—educational inequality—with the underlying disease: economic inequality. Schooling may boost the prospects of individual workers, but it doesn’t change the core problem, which is that the bottom 90 percent is divvying up a shrinking share of the national wealth.
tl;dr Better schools follow better wages.
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This country wasted a ton of money giving tax cuts to the wealthy. I think all schools should have free lunch for everyone to cut the stigma.
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I'm a moderate. Back about 10 years ago, there was a controversy in my state about college students getting food stamps. I was perfectly fine with that, because the government cut it's funding of college so much as to make the costs skyrocket. Of course, the Republicans in charge changed the law so as to exclude most college students from SNAP. Can't let someone eat for free!
Now, some of those students really didn't need the help, but I think it was probably helpful even for the middle class students. Anyway, I may complain about what foods are allowed for purchase under that program, but I don't have a problem of people taking advantage of it when they qualify. Businesses look for any programs that may help them, and we call that good business sense. Not sure why there's a different standard for individuals.
Now, as far as poor people having kids they can't afford, I think it's wrong. My old BFF was one such person. Desperately wanted to make babies, but couldn't support them without government help, plus wasn't much of a mother, either. There's always going to be poor people with this mindset. I don't think there are that many more of them, there are just a lot less middle class people's offspring around to counteract it. We need to encourage the responsible middle class parents to have a few more children, by making it easier for them to do so. That's what this country could do to help the problem. Allow all childcare costs to be tax deductible, for starts. More family paid leave. Perhaps shorter work weeks, or better/cheaper programs for children after school and during the summer.
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Hmmm... here are my comments, in no particular order.
1. My kids get free lunch. They both attend schools were the % of students who are eligible is high. That's not necessarily why they get free lunch. Several years ago, the district started giving free lunch to all students at a few schools with mostly poor kids. Then they decided to add schools to the list every year. At this point, all elementary schools in our district except for 3 out of 13 or 14 get free lunch, and 2 of the 4 junior high schools. Everyone gets free breakfast.
2. I fully support this. Kids who are fed learn better. Period.
3. I think all kids deserve an education. My kids attend schools with students who are homeless, foster kids, living in cars, living with multiple families. One of my son's classmates was sleeping on the floor, no bed, until recently when the housing authority found his family a SFH, but pretty much only because his mother was murdered by her boyfriend and his grandparents had no room for the kids.
4. If you want to ask why "people don't feed their own kids, or think about that before they have kids", you are asking the wrong question. While certainly, there are some people who just don't think things through, there are thousands (millions?) who do. I know many of them - divorced. Dad ran off. Former military folks who can't find a job. Families working 2 jobs but housing eats up too much of it. Layoffs. What should my college roommate have done with her 16, 13, and 10 year old daughters when her husband was laid off and they couldn't afford food? Even with SNAP everyone in the family lost weight, the girls dangerously so - and they had a farm with chickens!
I'm in the middle of reading "Nickle and Dimed". Old book, sadly still relevant. People assume that layoffs will never happen to them. People don't realize HOW MANY people end up working for minimum wage. There are newer books that discuss the same issues.
On a side note, we had a conversation about poverty this week. Apparently kid #2 told people at camp that we have a Lamborghini. Kid #1 said "you think he even knows what that is?" Anyway. Kid #1 thinks we are poor. We are not going to disabuse him. At his school, most kids ARE poor. And as it is 85-90% Latinx, most of the Latinx kids think that all the white kids are rich. Which isn't a far out statement. Middle class for many of them.
I know a lot of these people. They are not lazy. They don't hate family planning. But a lot of them are poor. They don't have as much access to birth control, and a lot of them are Catholic. Their culture is based on having children and I know this culture, having been raised Catholic (I am the 8th of 9 children, and we were poor!) My family was too proud to take any kind of welfare, but there were times when we ran out of food.
As long as a reasonable % of jobs in this country pay shitty, we are going to have these issues. You can't just tell people who have these jobs to not have kids, and you have to recognize that a lot of people already have kids when things go south.
So, there you are. My kids eat free lunch. There is literally no way for us to pay for their lunch at school.
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We live in a school district where free lunch is provided to all students, based on the average income of the community. Each year we get a form to fill out, asking our income. We would be over the threshold for free lunch based on our income if the meals were split between free + pay.
When we moved here, kindergarden was provided 1/2 day, ---when our kid started kindergarden it had been moved up to full day. This helped us out in terms of being able to keep "full time" work hours, as both parents work. We probably have a nicer house than many and therefore, pay more real estate taxes, therefore put more towards the schools budget.
Most days we pack a lunch , but we will let child pick a day each week to eat the school provided lunch, based on which day she likes the menu. She has a friend who brings lunch often - it usually consists of : peanut butter + jelly sandwich , some sort of frito-lay brand chips, and two desserts, along with a [10%] juice box. The school lunch is better nutritionally than what the friend brings from home....
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We live I a metro area where some districts feed everyone and some are the standard system where you have to apply for free/reduced.
If my district put out a bond to pay for free breakfast and lunch for all kids, I would vote for it.
Many time the very families that need F/R lunch are the ones incapable of filling out the paperwork either due to language barriers, fear of immigration issues, mental illness, disability, or general instability at home that precludes filling out forms.
My number one priority is all kids coming to school ready to learn and food is too if that list (of things the school can control).
Ideally people wouldn't have kids they can't feed. But also keep in mind that the qualifying income is sometimes actually quite high, certainly LMC. The point isn't "if this family gave up absolutely everything else could they feed their kids". It is "can this family use some help so we make sure their kids have plenty of food".
We qualified for WIC when my kids were little and my H was laid off. We could have used money from savings but we chose to accept any aid we qualified for (WIC and UI) and keep savings for as long as possible. I also got a part time job I could take a baby and toddler too, so that my H could job hunt as effectively as possible.
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I guess I just think you shouldn't have kids unless you can afford to feed them and clothe them. Maybe that makes me a moderate these days, I dunno. I know on Twitter I feel like freaking Republican sometimes. *cringes*
Nick, as just one example, I had my first kid when I was a law student. At the time my wife was working at a relatively low-paying job. We qualified for various government programs. That does not at all lead to the conclusion that I couldn’t “afford to feed and clothe” him. I could. I worked my a$$ off, grew a ton of food in a garden, shopped in thrift stores. And yes, also accepted some government beans and cheese and milk. Kid wasn’t old enough at that point to be in school, but if he had been he definitely would’ve gotten free lunch.
The position that low-income people shouldn’t have kids is *way* to the right of moderate. I’d say it’s somewhere between Republican and “just plain offensive.” Closer to the latter.
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I appreciate the pragmatism of the state feeding all the kids, but I can't help but shake the defeatist nature of it. Surely we can promote personal and familial responsibility without denigrating those in need of help. How can that happen? I'm asking for suggestions.
This can be expanded more generally into other policies as well. Having children when you shouldn't, drug use, etc.
Of course the cycle of poverty is tragic but policies like this do contribute to them in part.
My skepticism of harm reduction comes from the understanding that--at some point--a drug addict needs to make a personal choice to quit. There is no other way out. So it follows that safe injection sites, for instance, enable addicts who might otherwise force themselves to quit over the risks they're taking. I don't see how externalizing those risks makes the world better, it simply moves the tragedy around(needles in parks, homelessness and infectious diseases) to places where we don't directly see it. And it facilitates growth of the pathology.
I'm sure this will seem barbaric in the face of a hungry child but I don't think we're getting this entirely right as a society.
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An argument could be made that children from irresponsible parents SHOULD struggle, as it directly forces incentive for the parents to prioritize their well being. And it would drive the people around that child to put pressure on the parents, when they're wondering why that child isn't eating. Maybe the other kids at the table would learn a lesson about gratitude and sharing, as they would invariably help out.
The state intervening also interferes with this social truth-seeking and substitutes it with a panacea. It destroys the pursuit of merit.
If any of you are familiar with anti fragility (nassim taleb), you'll know that our challenges are the things that make us stronger.
I'm sure this is contentious but I'd rather lay out my thoughts and have them torn up. In the interest of anti fragility.
(I don't have kids in case that wasn't readily apparent)
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We live I a metro area where some districts feed everyone and some are the standard system where you have to apply for free/reduced.
If my district put out a bond to pay for free breakfast and lunch for all kids, I would vote for it.
Many time the very families that need F/R lunch are the ones incapable of filling out the paperwork either due to language barriers, fear of immigration issues, mental illness, disability, or general instability at home that precludes filling out forms.
My number one priority is all kids coming to school ready to learn and food is too if that list (of things the school can control).
Ideally people wouldn't have kids they can't feed. But also keep in mind that the qualifying income is sometimes actually quite high, certainly LMC. The point isn't "if this family gave up absolutely everything else could they feed their kids". It is "can this family use some help so we make sure their kids have plenty of food".
We qualified for WIC when my kids were little and my H was laid off. We could have used money from savings but we chose to accept any aid we qualified for (WIC and UI) and keep savings for as long as possible. I also got a part time job I could take a baby and toddler too, so that my H could job hunt as effectively as possible.
So much this. For a couple of years, I qualified for some stuff. Reduced price lunch for the kiddos, which also qualified me for charity internet service. Colorado Indigent Care Program (didn't qualify for Medicaid, but this let me pay only $140 for an ER visit instead of the $2500 it was going to cost on my HDHP).
But the thing is, I wasn't really "poor." I was a middle class overeducated white woman in straitened circumstances. I could navigate all that paperwork. When I was 15 minutes late to a meeting to apply for CICP because I couldn't figure out where to park, they cancelled the meeting and made me come back. (Never mind that they had blocked a whole hour and it only took 15 minutes.) This was a problem, but not a huge one because I had my own car, which my wealthy grandfather bought me when I got divorced because he worried about my '99 Honda Accord. If I was a person living in poverty but also having grown up in an impoverished background with family members who were also poor, it would have been so much harder to keep all those balls in the air. I never noticed my privilege so much as when I didn't have money.
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Wrench, when kids are hungry they cannot concentrate in school and learn. They become behavior problems. When I was a social worker 2 kids on my caseload were born normal and had IQ’s below 70 from lack of food. By the time we took the kids away the negative effects were permanent. I think you lack empathy. I would see my clients if they were late because of all the barriers they faced just getting to appointments.
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Maybe the other kids at the table would learn a lesson about gratitude and sharing, as they would invariably help out.
Interesting that you approve of kids learning the value of gratitude and sharing and helping out those less fortunate. But you think adults are exempt from this lesson? Did you learn that lesson?
Many people in this thread can attest to the fact that, no, kids will not "invariably" help out by giving up some of their own lunch.
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Wrench, when kids are hungry they cannot concentrate in school and learn. They become behavior problems. When I was a social worker 2 kids on my caseload were born normal and had IQ’s below 70 from lack of food. By the time we took the kids away the negative effects were permanent. I think you lack empathy. I would see my clients if they were late because of all the barriers they faced just getting to appointments.
What type of government social structure would you suggest that we build in order to prevent the circumstance you described? Do we start issuing food to children at the time of birth? At some point this becomes untenable. At some point the responsibility of caring for children lies on the parents, and not the state.
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Maybe the other kids at the table would learn a lesson about gratitude and sharing, as they would invariably help out.
Interesting that you approve of kids learning the value of gratitude and sharing and helping out those less fortunate. But you think adults are exempt from this lesson? Did you learn that lesson?
Many people in this thread can attest to the fact that, no, kids will not "invariably" help out by giving up some of their own lunch.
I approve of consensual charity. Not state mandated and coercive ones. I think that the state acts as a third party that is increasingly unnecessary in a world of gofundme and patreon, etc. The state acts as a coercive force that poisons the charitable acts between individuals. If we are going to discuss UBI, this is a better strategy I believe. I would like to see the state step back from social assistance as we move forward. There are a few reasons for this.
-Starvation is a decreasing risk in developed countries
-Prosperity is abound, despite being distributed unevenly
-Social media/platforms can do a better job of bureaucracy than the old State model full of career politicians and lobbyists, and people that seek to graft their own self-interest onto these challenging situations.
Also, I would say that:
Children are tougher than people give them credit for. My own experience is truth to that, although I don't expect that to convince you.
People need to develop good-faith relationships despite bad situations. It's easy to dislike someone for "eating from the trough", but it's tougher to dislike your neighbor that got laid off. This should occur at a proximal social level, not through the state. It's not going to happen through the state, imo, because of the baggage.
I will say my temperament is a factor in my thoughts here. I am high in neuroticism and low in agreeableness which means I lean towards libertarian beliefs and a general faith in people's ability to deal with their own problems, eventually, even if driven by anxiety or shame.
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Interesting topic. Post#36 quoted a lunch shaming article which suggested that schools provide books and busing for its students, so why not lunch as well? How expensive is a typical lunch? Is there a large difference between students coming to school with a cut lunch, or being given lunch at school? Rich parents pay much more income tax than poor parents, so rich parents are already paying their way.
I strongly recommend the link below about the French school lunch program. Students have a sit down lunch, where all students eat th same meal together, poor and not so poor alike. Fried food only once a week, no vending machines, no junk food.
https://karenlebillon.com/french-school-lunch-menus/
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Make all lunches part of the free services every child gets at school, regardless of income. It's the most efficient way because a school district doesn't buy food at retail prices. There's no reason not to do it.
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I approve of consensual charity. Not state mandated and coercive ones.
Who is coercing anyone? You're treading awfully close to rape language btw.
-Children are tougher than people give them credit for. My own experience is truth to that, although I don't expect that to convince you.
- I am high in neuroticism and low in agreeableness
- deal with their own problems, eventually, even if driven by anxiety or shame.
I get that you think that adverse childhood events can be a badge of honor and strength instead of a crippling lifetime issue to deal with, but your own language infers that you yourself are not fine as a result of it. I know you don't think people like you need or needed saving as kids, but consider that if someone were to step in it would be to prevent the mental illness (disguised as drug addiction and under employment /poverty) that you claim is plaguing our society.
In a previous thread you said "should we feed children as babies?" flippantly as if that would be a bridge too far, and the answer is YES because we already do. In the US it's called WIC. I'm sure Canada has a similar program.
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The thing to keep in mind about all of this is that kids cannot control their parents. Kids have no say in how their parents behave, so when parents decide they'd rather buy scratch tickets and cigarettes than feed their children, then the kids are going to go hungry. Society doesn't want children to starve, so we feed them, because their parents are terrible and we don't want the kids to suffer.
That's how you have to mentally approach this problem. I know it can be difficult, but you have to stop thinking of terms of "why aren't these parents doing their duty" and start thinking in terms of "I don't want helpless kids to go without food."
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Can we shame shitty parents without somehow shaming their kids?
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I will say my temperament is a factor in my thoughts here. I am high in neuroticism and low in agreeableness which means I lean towards libertarian beliefs and a general faith in people's ability to deal with their own problems, eventually, even if driven by anxiety or shame.
How are children supposed to deal with the problem of not having enough food to eat?
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I will say my temperament is a factor in my thoughts here. I am high in neuroticism and low in agreeableness which means I lean towards libertarian beliefs and a general faith in people's ability to deal with their own problems, eventually, even if driven by anxiety or shame.
How are children supposed to deal with the problem of not having enough food to eat?
They can just eat those bootstraps they’re supposed to be pulling themselves up by. /s
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The thing to keep in mind about all of this is that kids cannot control their parents. Kids have no say in how their parents behave, so when parents decide they'd rather buy scratch tickets and cigarettes than feed their children, then the kids are going to go hungry. Society doesn't want children to starve, so we feed them, because their parents are terrible and we don't want the kids to suffer.
That's how you have to mentally approach this problem. I know it can be difficult, but you have to stop thinking of terms of "why aren't these parents doing their duty" and start thinking in terms of "I don't want helpless kids to go without food."
Correct. Once the parents have their kids, we as a society are bound to give the children a reasonable amount of support which is why I support free lunch programs.
That said, I also support incentivising parents not to have children by making abortion much easier to access, free, and guilt-free.
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There's no way to get people to stop having sex.
Yes, there is. In the case of minors, it's called parenting.
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There's no way to get people to stop having sex.
Yes, there is. In the case of minors, it's called parenting.
LMAO
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There's no way to get people to stop having sex.
Yes, there is. In the case of minors, it's called parenting.
Um, Candace didn't mention age. Adults have unprotected sex. And minors have sex. Minors have snuck around behind their parents' backs for ever. Even the witch couldn't keep Rapunzel in her tower. And what age is the age of majority depends on local jurisdiction.
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There's no way to get people to stop having sex.
Yes, there is. In the case of minors, it's called parenting.
I suppose you can homeschool your kid and only let them out of sight for a part-time job and Regnum Christi-sponsored super-Catholic youth group. Oh wait, that's what the parents of one of the kids in my high school youth group did. He somehow managed to impregnate one of the girls in the group. I can only surmise that it happened in someone's car on a work break or that the parents were lied to about a work shift (the scandal happened right before I joined). Another girl in the group had parents who were almost as strict and extremely religious. They believed that their teen daughter was locked in her room every night. She told me later that she'd figured out how to shimmy out of her window and across the roof to a climbable tree. She had her first kid in her late teens.
My point...older teens who are motivated to have sex will find a way unless their parents maintain total physical control 24/7. That's not good parenting either.
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There's no way to stop people having sex, but any of the following would lower the birthrate:
- Mandatory sex ed education focused on contraception, not abstinence
- Free condoms/birth control
- Free abortions
- Unfettered access to abortions
- Free post-abortion counselling
- Fostering an environment where birth control and abortion are encouraged and supported
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There's no way to stop people having sex, but any of the following would lower the birthrate:
- Mandatory sex ed education focused on contraception, not abstinence
- Free condoms/birth control
- Free abortions
- Unfettered access to abortions
- Free post-abortion counselling
- Fostering an environment where birth control and abortion are encouraged and supported
^^^This.
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This conversations took a pretty dark turn. I'm pretty sure some of Thomas Malthus's descendents are posting on this forum.
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Wealthy families typically teach their children not to have kids until they are ready; that they are responsible for raising children well and to provide an excellent education. Wealthy families also teach their children not to have more kids than they can afford. Wealthy families will put effort into raising children who fit into society's norms so it is easier for them to advance and succeed in life.
Some of this is culture and cultural preservation.
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Also a school district in our state with 60% of low-income students is now offering dental care at school. They have a mobile dentist's vehicle (trailer) come to school to give dental appointments.
On the one hand, I am OK with this. On the other hand, I think that schools should spend more time thinking about teaching children reading and math than how to provide non-education services.
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That said, I also support incentivising parents not to have children by making abortion much easier to access, free, and guilt-free.
How do you make an abortion guilt-free?
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That said, I also support incentivising parents not to have children by making abortion much easier to access, free, and guilt-free.
How do you make an abortion guilt-free?
Decriminalise it, everywhere.
Criminalise any protest groups that encroach physically on the surrounds of an abortion clinic.
Teach children that it's perfectly fine to plan your family how you like.
Offer free pre- and post-abortion counselling.
Offer "morning after" pill at all pharmacies and subsidise its cost.
Provide "family planning" leave as part of every employee's sick leave entitlement.
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Wealthy families typically teach their children not to have kids until they are ready; that they are responsible for raising children well and to provide an excellent education. Wealthy families also teach their children not to have more kids than they can afford. Wealthy families will put effort into raising children who fit into society's norms so it is easier for them to advance and succeed in life.
Some of this is culture and cultural preservation.
Wealthy people’s kids have better access to birth control, sex ed, family planning, and abortion services, you mean.
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No, I mean that wealthy people spend more time talking with their children about choosing their partner and preparing to start a family. They also spend more time talking about the importance of education and being financially responsible and prepared. They teach their children to be long-term thinkers.
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That said, I also support incentivising parents not to have children by making abortion much easier to access, free, and guilt-free.
How do you make an abortion guilt-free?
Decriminalise it, everywhere.
Criminalise any protest groups that encroach physically on the surrounds of an abortion clinic.
Teach children that it's perfectly fine to plan your family how you like.
Offer free pre- and post-abortion counselling.
Offer "morning after" pill at all pharmacies and subsidise its cost.
Provide "family planning" leave as part of every employee's sick leave entitlement.
I think that improves access and reduces stigma, but it does not alleviate guilt.
It is interesting that this movie is making an impression on young people:
https://www.unplannedfilm.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unplanned
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That said, I also support incentivising parents not to have children by making abortion much easier to access, free, and guilt-free.
How do you make an abortion guilt-free?
Criminalise any protest groups that encroach physically on the surrounds of an abortion clinic.
That would violate the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution which is part of the Bill of Rights. If someone in government tried that, they would suddenly find themselves in a lot of trouble.
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I don't like all the "poor people should kill their children" comments, which is how people where I'm from interpret a lot of the comments on this thread. Since you folks are apparently the final arbiters of these situations, how much money should a person have to be allowed to fall in love and have children? If they live on Hillbilly Mountain, does that mean they are not allowed to ever have families? What is your command for that situation? [/snark]
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Please keep the tone civil. I fear this could spiral to a bad place, and I'm considering asking a mod to close the thread.
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Please keep the tone civil. I fear this could spiral to a bad place, and I'm considering asking a mod to close the thread.
Hold up. You started a thread in which you stated that the poor should not have kids. And now you're cautioning other people about their tone?
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Please keep the tone civil. I fear this could spiral to a bad place, and I'm considering asking a mod to close the thread.
Hold up. You started a thread in which you stated that the poor should not have kids. And now you're cautioning other people about their tone?
+1
Nick, go look in the mirror.
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Please keep the tone civil. I fear this could spiral to a bad place, and I'm considering asking a mod to close the thread.
Hold up. You started a thread in which you stated that the poor should not have kids. And now you're cautioning other people about their tone?
I'm pretty disappointed you would choose to slam me like that. I never said anything of the sort.
I do think that people should be in a financial position to feed children before they have said children. Perhaps that paints me as some sort of radical, I don't know. I mean, isn't that pretty basic? How on earth is this a controversial take?
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Please keep the tone civil. I fear this could spiral to a bad place, and I'm considering asking a mod to close the thread.
Hold up. You started a thread in which you stated that the poor should not have kids. And now you're cautioning other people about their tone?
I'm pretty disappointed you would choose to slam me like that. I never said anything of the sort.
I do think that people should be in a financial position to feed children before they have said children. Perhaps that paints me as some sort of radical, I don't know. I mean, isn't that pretty basic? How on earth is this a controversial take?
That's always the way it starts. The "Soft Eugenics". Then the tone gets harsher and people start talking about sterilization etc. Who are anyone to determine who gets to have families or whether it's better for someone to be poor or not to exist?
Whenever I hear these Malthusian arguments, I shake my head, because as a former welfare kid who now has a level of wealth that puts me in the Top 12% of all Americans, my very existence disproves the "reduce the surplus population" rhetoric that gets thrown around.
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Please keep the tone civil. I fear this could spiral to a bad place, and I'm considering asking a mod to close the thread.
Hold up. You started a thread in which you stated that the poor should not have kids. And now you're cautioning other people about their tone?
I'm pretty disappointed you would choose to slam me like that. I never said anything of the sort.
I do think that people should be in a financial position to feed children before they have said children. Perhaps that paints me as some sort of radical, I don't know. I mean, isn't that pretty basic? How on earth is this a controversial take?
That's always the way it starts. The "Soft Eugenics". Then the tone gets harsher and people start talking about sterilization etc. Who are anyone to determine who gets to have families or whether it's better for someone to be poor or not to exist?
Whenever I hear these Malthusian arguments, I shake my head, because as a former welfare kid who now has a level of wealth that puts me in the Top 12% of all Americans, my very existence disproves the "reduce the surplus population" rhetoric that gets thrown around.
But doesn't any position/argument become problematic (or worse) when taken to some sort of radical extreme?
I mean, you could argue, "Parents should be encouraged to procreate as much as possible regardless of the circumstances," but would that really be a good argument to make? Don't people have a duty to consider the effect their actions have on others? Even if you entirely wave away the increased costs to taxpayers having fewer kids, would you really wave away arguments about overpopulation? The environmental impact? Food scarcity?
So I don't think it's wise to hijack someone's position and then criticize it because it could be bad when taken to the extreme. Because virtually all positions are susceptible to that.
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You said, in discussing people who qualify for free school lunch:
I guess I just think you shouldn't have kids unless you can afford to feed them and clothe them.
Then I said:
You started a thread in which you stated that the poor should not have kids.
Then you said:
I'm pretty disappointed you would choose to slam me like that. I never said anything of the sort.
I think you very much said something "of the sort." Nobody's twisting your words here.
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You said, in discussing people who qualify for free school lunch:
I guess I just think you shouldn't have kids unless you can afford to feed them and clothe them.
Then I said:
You started a thread in which you stated that the poor should not have kids.
Then you said:
I'm pretty disappointed you would choose to slam me like that. I never said anything of the sort.
I think you very much said something "of the sort." Nobody's twisting your words here.
I would draw a distinction between poor/working class and "not even able to buy food for your kids." I mean, that is the very very very most basic duty of a parent, to feed/clothe their child. My family was working class/poor growing up, and we didn't have ANYTHING fancy, but got us the basics like food and consignment store clothes.
But yes, to be 100% clear I think people should not voluntarily/intentionally have kids when they can't afford to put food in the kids' mouths.
That being said, I agree with feeding the kiddos once they are here. I don't think it's optimal for the gov't to have to feed kids, but it's necessary and has to happen in some situations. No one is arguing to punish the kids.
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I would draw a distinction between poor/working class and "not even able to buy food for your kids." I mean, that is the very very very most basic duty of a parent, to feed/clothe their child. My family was working class/poor growing up, and we didn't have ANYTHING fancy, but got us the basics like food and consignment store clothes.
But yes, to be 100% clear I think people should not voluntarily/intentionally have kids when they can't afford to put food in the kids' mouths.
That being said, I agree with feeding the kiddos once they are here. I don't think it's optimal for the gov't to have to feed kids, but it's necessary and has to happen in some situations. No one is arguing to punish the kids.
So maybe what I'm missing is where you are seeing all the parents who literally "can't afford to put food in the kids' mouths." The start of the thread was about parents of kids who qualify for free/reduced lunch. Those are different, as many have pointed out.
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I think there are two very different questions here.
1. At the present moment, there are kids who don't get enough nutritious food at home, so what should be done to make sure they are fed and educated?
As a society, I think we should feed those kids both out of compassion (no child should go hungry) and pragmatism (kids who are well fed will learn better and grow up to be more productive citizens and tax payers)
2. How do we prevent the situation of kids existing who don't get enough food at home?
This is way more complicated and requires action on several levels, but as a society, ensuring that adults earn living wages or adequate disability/unemployment benefits, teens receive comprehensive sex ed, universal access to contraception and abortion, and universal access to healthy, affordable food would be a start
Also, plenty of people could have been in a great situation when they had kids, but then they lost their job, got divorced, left abusive relationships, one parent went to jail, bankruptcy due to a medical issue, or any myriad of reasons could have led to a present day food insecurity. I don't think we need to write off kids who are victims of unfortunate circumstances, in a country that clearly has enough to go around.
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Seriously people, read all, some, or bits of “Promises
I can keep” a book tha summarizes extensive study of single poor mothers in [edited to fix] Philadelphia. It is eye opening.
These single moms have children because that is their culture. While that is a broad generalization it is also true. They want children. They value children in their lives, early in their lives. The young moms are very much against having children later in life, and some of their reasons are practical.
It is a cultural divide, those who define their lives as “ready for parenthood” in certain ways. Your middle class values are showing in this thread.
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Seriously people, read all, some, or bits of “Promises
I can keep” a book tha summarizes extensive study of single poor mothers in Baltimore. It is eye opening.
These single moms have children because that is their culture. While that is a broad generalization it is also true. They want children. They value children in their lives, early in their lives. The young moms are very much against having children later in life, and some of their reasons are practical.
It is a cultural divide, those who define their lives as “ready for parenthood” in certain ways. Your middle class values are showing in this thread.
It was in Philly but yeah.
Another study that refers to, and builds upon, Edin & Kafalas: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2743434/
We find strong support for the proposition that childbearing outside of marriage carries little stigma, limited support for the proposition that women prefer to have children well before marrying, and almost no support for the proposition that women hesitate to marry because they fear divorce.
This is where contraception and education helps:
Consistent with the notion of drifting into pregnancy, Edin and Kefalas report that nearly half the women they studied said that becoming pregnant was neither fully planned or fully unplanned but “somewhere in between – something that “just happened” as a result of sexual activity without contraception.
[emphasis added]
It's a fascinating read.
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Seriously people, read all, some, or bits of “Promises
I can keep” a book tha summarizes extensive study of single poor mothers in Baltimore. It is eye opening.
These single moms have children because that is their culture. While that is a broad generalization it is also true. They want children. They value children in their lives, early in their lives. The young moms are very much against having children later in life, and some of their reasons are practical.
It is a cultural divide, those who define their lives as “ready for parenthood” in certain ways. Your middle class values are showing in this thread.
It was in Philly but yeah.
Another study that refers to, and builds upon, Edin & Kafalas: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2743434/
We find strong support for the proposition that childbearing outside of marriage carries little stigma, limited support for the proposition that women prefer to have children well before marrying, and almost no support for the proposition that women hesitate to marry because they fear divorce.
This is where contraception and education helps:
Consistent with the notion of drifting into pregnancy, Edin and Kefalas report that nearly half the women they studied said that becoming pregnant was neither fully planned or fully unplanned but “somewhere in between – something that “just happened” as a result of sexual activity without contraception.
[emphasis added]
It's a fascinating read.
Oh yeah,
Philly! Thanks. i will edit my post.
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<snip>
I guess I just think you shouldn't have kids unless you can afford to feed them and clothe them. Maybe that makes me a moderate these days, I dunno. I know on Twitter I feel like freaking Republican sometimes. *cringes*
<snip>
Here's the thing, it doesn't matter if the parents shouldn't have had the kids in the first place. The reality is that the kids are there, regardless of how good or bad their family life is.
I think that a free lunch should be offered to all students because having at least one meal a day is the humane thing to do.
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<snip>
I guess I just think you shouldn't have kids unless you can afford to feed them and clothe them. Maybe that makes me a moderate these days, I dunno. I know on Twitter I feel like freaking Republican sometimes. *cringes*
<snip>
Here's the thing, it doesn't matter if the parents shouldn't have had the kids in the first place. The reality is that the kids are there, regardless of how good or bad their family life is.
I think that a free lunch should be offered to all students because having at least one meal a day is the humane thing to do.
Why do they get only one meal? Why doesnt all of the other food programs reach them? SNAP benefits are fairly easy to get. The moms who dont work cant slap together a peanut butter sandwich? This is too difficult?
My takeaway ffrom discussions about feeding programs for poor children is that Umm—many here like the idea of UBI because it lifts all out of poverty? I dont i derstand what happens to all of the children whose parents apend all of the UBI money on non essentials. Clearly, something isnt working in getting food to children now thru the food stamp programs.
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Please keep the tone civil. I fear this could spiral to a bad place, and I'm considering asking a mod to close the thread.
Once again, Nick posts “provocative” thread, has his say, expresses dismay when others chime in, and then backpeddles.. Ok bud, you do you. But geez.
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I don't like all the "poor people should kill their children" comments, which is how people where I'm from interpret a lot of the comments on this thread. Since you folks are apparently the final arbiters of these situations, how much money should a person have to be allowed to fall in love and have children? If they live on Hillbilly Mountain, does that mean they are not allowed to ever have families? What is your command for that situation? [/snark]
You are using quotes for “poor people should kill their children.”
Can you be specific as to which post used that phrase?
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<snip>
I guess I just think you shouldn't have kids unless you can afford to feed them and clothe them. Maybe that makes me a moderate these days, I dunno. I know on Twitter I feel like freaking Republican sometimes. *cringes*
<snip>
Here's the thing, it doesn't matter if the parents shouldn't have had the kids in the first place. The reality is that the kids are there, regardless of how good or bad their family life is.
I think that a free lunch should be offered to all students because having at least one meal a day is the humane thing to do.
Why do they get only one meal? Why doesnt all of the other food programs reach them? SNAP benefits are fairly easy to get. The moms who dont work cant slap together a peanut butter sandwich? This is too difficult?
Well, the kids are at school during lunch - not home - so having lunch at school and provided by the school seems like the best if not only way to make sure the kid is actually getting the opportunity to eat. Yes, the other food programs are good and necessary, too. Serving the child a meal where the child *is* seems like a logical extension of that.
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<snip>
I guess I just think you shouldn't have kids unless you can afford to feed them and clothe them. Maybe that makes me a moderate these days, I dunno. I know on Twitter I feel like freaking Republican sometimes. *cringes*
<snip>
Here's the thing, it doesn't matter if the parents shouldn't have had the kids in the first place. The reality is that the kids are there, regardless of how good or bad their family life is.
I think that a free lunch should be offered to all students because having at least one meal a day is the humane thing to do.
Why do they get only one meal? Why doesnt all of the other food programs reach them? SNAP benefits are fairly easy to get. The moms who dont work cant slap together a peanut butter sandwich? This is too difficult?
Well, the kids are at school during lunch - not home - so having lunch at school and provided by the school seems like the best if not only way to make sure the kid is actually getting the opportunity to eat. Yes, the other food programs are good and necessary, too. Serving the child a meal where the child *is* seems like a logical extension of that.
My comment was more toward the poster who opined the school lunch might be the only meal the kids gets that day.
We have a high level of poverty in my urban core, far more than The OP’s area. One of my neighbors relayed the story of visitors to his house years ago, kids who knew his own children. The visitors stayed for dinner. They asked his kids “do you eat every day?”
Not “do you eat LIKE THIS every day?” But “do you eat every day?”
It is shameful to have your children in this situation. Shameful.
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IL, that’s so sad. The problem with Snap and many programs can be that as soon as people make a little more money they get cut. They don’t get enough to feed their kids for a month. It’s a sad and complicated problem. Kbecks, rich people don’t do a better job in general teaching their kids responsibilities but have more money to clean up the mess. I taught my 3 boys about BC, responsibilities, etc and it worked but it could have just as easily turned out otherwise.
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I'll also point out that abusive & neglectful parents and poor parents are not the same thing. Feeding children isn't necessarily or exclusively about the parents being too poor to afford food.
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If a child's only meal is at school, for any length of time, I think this situation would warrant child protective services getting involved. Continuing to sustain negligence on the part of the parents is probably akin to putting a bandaid on a much more severe issue.
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Wrench, when kids are hungry they cannot concentrate in school and learn. They become behavior problems. When I was a social worker 2 kids on my caseload were born normal and had IQ’s below 70 from lack of food. By the time we took the kids away the negative effects were permanent. I think you lack empathy. I would see my clients if they were late because of all the barriers they faced just getting to appointments.
What type of government social structure would you suggest that we build in order to prevent the circumstance you described? Do we start issuing food to children at the time of birth? At some point this becomes untenable. At some point the responsibility of caring for children lies on the parents, and not the state.
Let's look to a lot of the developed world for answers to that.
Free meals at school (our schools give free breakfast and lunch, and there are actually several locations for dinner)
National health care that is free at point of use
Low cost or subsidized child care
Living wages
Why does that become untenable? I'm trying to figure out how it is untenable for so many countries that navigate these issues with MUCH less poverty. I'm sure no place is perfect - because times change, countries change, economies change.
To be honest, I just finished reading Nickle and Dimed, and even though it came out almost 20 years ago, it's still relevant. Maybe even moreso. Vast swaths of people do not make enough money to support themselves, much less a family. Why? Who cares. Vast swaths of jobs pay shitty and rents are too high. Rather than ask why people have children they cannot support - ask why companies are allowed to pay people so little that they end up on Medicaid and SNAP, all while not paying any income taxes (the companies, not the workers).
Because sometimes, those jobs are all that are available.
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Rents are high and pay is low because people bid them up and down, respectively. I still haven't figured out precisely how it works but it's a consequence of financing and probably also fiat currency. Maybe bonds and stocks and their spread are involved, I don't know. I haven't studied finance and economics to a high degree yet. However, rents are still generally paid by workers and young families, so I can't see the argument that rent is too high to be particularly persuasive. If others can make it work, why can't those recipients of the program? Also, I would be more supportive of a SNAP program because it still requires parents to at least make a lunch. Feeding your children is such a primary task as a caregiver that I am not eager to detach this responsibility from the parents.
My concern, as always with these threads, is that socialism requires careful means testing and triage. My adversaries in this thread seem to think these things can be dispensed with and it won't create a different moral hazard. Perhaps I am mischaracterizing their arguments; correct me if so.
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Unsustainably low pay is a result of a power imbalance between employers and workers. This is why unions started, it evened things out a bit. From what I have read on the forums, there are a lot of states whose legislated working conditions give way more power to employers than to employees.
I don't know all the American details, but for example, isn't Walmart a company that makes a lot of money, pays its employees so poorly that they are eligible for social support, and bans unions?
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Unsustainably low pay is a result of a power imbalance between employers and workers. This is why unions started, it evened things out a bit. From what I have read on the forums, there are a lot of states whose legislated working conditions give way more power to employers than to employees.
I don't know all the American details, but for example, isn't Walmart a company that makes a lot of money, pays its employees so poorly that they are eligible for social support, and bans unions?
If it's unsustainable for an employee, isn't it unsustainable for the employer in the long run? Eventually this parasitism will hit the bottom line, no?
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Unsustainably low pay is a result of a power imbalance between employers and workers. This is why unions started, it evened things out a bit. From what I have read on the forums, there are a lot of states whose legislated working conditions give way more power to employers than to employees.
I don't know all the American details, but for example, isn't Walmart a company that makes a lot of money, pays its employees so poorly that they are eligible for social support, and bans unions?
If it's unsustainable for an employee, isn't it unsustainable for the employer in the long run? Eventually this parasitism will hit the bottom line, no?
You and I are both Canadian and used to the Canadian employment rules. So this does not look sustainable to us. But so far it seems to work for the companies there.
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Perhaps I am a simplton, but I do not understand why free school lunch is controversial.
Should parents take care of their children's needs? Certainly. But what if they don't? Then we, as a community and as compassionate people, should look after them in the easiest and least morally fraught way possible. We are talking about offering a single, simple meal (or, possibly 2 if there's a breakfast involved) five days a week (not even every day!) for 9 months a year.
We are also talking about children who *live in our communities* - not some random kid far away (not that that should matter, but still) who might deal with food insecurity. For me, it is just not an ideological issue and it seems like a real stretch to make it one.
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That said, I also support incentivising parents not to have children by making abortion much easier to access, free, and guilt-free.
How do you make an abortion guilt-free?
Decriminalise it, everywhere.
Criminalise any protest groups that encroach physically on the surrounds of an abortion clinic.
Teach children that it's perfectly fine to plan your family how you like.
Offer free pre- and post-abortion counselling.
Offer "morning after" pill at all pharmacies and subsidise its cost.
Provide "family planning" leave as part of every employee's sick leave entitlement.
I think that improves access and reduces stigma, but it does not alleviate guilt.
It is interesting that this movie is making an impression on young people:
https://www.unplannedfilm.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unplanned
Guilt is a social construct as much as anything. Do people feel guilty for using the morning after pill? Not nearly as much these days since it's widely available and condoned in society. In the past it would have been seen as absolutely reprehensible to use the morning-after pill.
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Rent used to be reasonable here and much of the economy was based on tourism. People could make ends meet. Then Indian gaming hurt us big time. Then affluent retirees moved here and tech companies came. Now rents and housing prices have skyrocketed and many families are screwed. Our homeless population is growing and there are seniors and working poor homeless. Talk about a mess.
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Make all lunches part of the free services every child gets at school, regardless of income. It's the most efficient way because a school district doesn't buy food at retail prices. There's no reason not to do it.
Would charter schools get the free meal? What about all meals, why just lunch?
Woild private schools get any of these handouts in your scenario?
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Unsustainably low pay is a result of a power imbalance between employers and workers. This is why unions started, it evened things out a bit. From what I have read on the forums, there are a lot of states whose legislated working conditions give way more power to employers than to employees.
I don't know all the American details, but for example, isn't Walmart a company that makes a lot of money, pays its employees so poorly that they are eligible for social support, and bans unions?
If it's unsustainable for an employee, isn't it unsustainable for the employer in the long run? Eventually this parasitism will hit the bottom line, no?
You are correct about Walmart, and they were profiled in the Nickle and Dimed book.
Unsustainable? Not when you have the power of Walmart. You've got a really big stick. As I said, that book came out 18 years ago...
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Make all lunches part of the free services every child gets at school, regardless of income. It's the most efficient way because a school district doesn't buy food at retail prices. There's no reason not to do it.
Would charter schools get the free meal? What about all meals, why just lunch?
Woild private schools get any of these handouts in your scenario?
Private schools are a choice. You can choose to pay, or private schools can choose to give you a scholarship. And they are welcome to provide free food if they want to. However, as private schools, generally:
- cost a lot more
- pay teachers less
- require parents to fundraise in addition to paying tuition
I'm guessing that no, you won't get a free meal.
Our charter schools are public schools. If they have the infrastructure for lunch, why not? As it happens, our two charter schools are 2 of the 3 that do not provide free lunch. One of them does not have the infrastructure for a cafeteria. The other is one of the 2 wealthiest schools, and they have their own, separate "admissions" policy. So they are not eligible.
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@mm1970 I read Nickle and Dimed way back when. I imagine much of it is still relevant and should be on the reading list for the thoughtful people in this thread.
Due to my husband's early death, my children have received Social Security benefits for the last dozen years, and will continue till the youngest reaches age 18 in another five years. We long ago exhausted the amount my husband paid into the system.Our lives would look a lot different had that program not been put in place in the 1930s by FDR's administration. I make an OK living, but the SS allows us to hang onto the middle class and pay for groceries that go into my kids' school lunches from home. My active, swim team teenaged son just makes food disappear. Those benefits have helped keep us in our house, pay for summer camps and the kids' health insurance costs (and thank you Obama for the ACA).
Socialism and capitalism are integrated constructs that need each other in order to survive. Anyone thinking differently is not seeing the full picture.
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Cali, that’s why the program exists is to help people in these circumstances. It could happen to anyone.
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IL, that’s so sad. The problem with Snap and many programs can be that as soon as people make a little more money they get cut.
This is a great point. My BIL finally found a job recently, but he makes just enough now to no longer qualify for SNAP. But not enough to really afford to feed his kids. And while he's a pretty good example of not having kids you can't afford and not we-could-afford-them-when-we-had-them, the kids are here and they need to be fed.
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Perhaps I am a simplton, but I do not understand why free school lunch is controversial.
Should parents take care of their children's needs? Certainly. But what if they don't? Then we, as a community and as compassionate people, should look after them in the easiest and least morally fraught way possible. We are talking about offering a single, simple meal (or, possibly 2 if there's a breakfast involved) five days a week (not even every day!) for 9 months a year.
We are also talking about children who *live in our communities* - not some random kid far away (not that that should matter, but still) who might deal with food insecurity. For me, it is just not an ideological issue and it seems like a real stretch to make it one.
The sad thing is the people whining are the same ones who say we should take care of the people in our own country before we take care of others. Then we try to feed people and they scream socialism.
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My takeaway ffrom discussions about feeding programs for poor children is that Umm—many here like the idea of UBI because it lifts all out of poverty? I dont i derstand what happens to all of the children whose parents apend all of the UBI money on non essentials. Clearly, something isnt working in getting food to children now thru the food stamp programs.
This is a really interesting and crucial downside to UBI that I had not considered. Something would have to be reworked in Yang's policy to where we don't literally starve the children of moronic parents over UBI
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Make all lunches part of the free services every child gets at school, regardless of income. It's the most efficient way because a school district doesn't buy food at retail prices. There's no reason not to do it.
Would charter schools get the free meal? What about all meals, why just lunch?
Woild private schools get any of these handouts in your scenario?
Free lunches are primarily provided by the Feds through the USDA to all public (which includes charters) and nonprofit private schools, so in some cases yes.
There is no equivalent federal program for breakfasts and dinners, so that would be on state or local entities to address. Practically, most students are not at school during dinner time, so providing free dinner seems problematic. Many of the schools I work with do provide breakfast, and some provide it for free. Not sure about the funding sources.
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Two parent families may be able to afford 2 kids so they have them. Then they divorce, Dad skips town not paying child support and mom’s job makes her and kids poor. Or one parent loses a job through illness, disability, etc and they are poor. As a former social worker many unexpected things happen to families.
^ I see this over and over. Two parent, two income families that are suddenly one income families.
We have a really awesome receptionist at our company who turned down a raise and promotion because it would push her just over the threshold to lose state health insurance for her kids (she already did not qualify for free lunch). But our company sponsored health insurance was so expensive it would have cost almost half of her paycheck to insure her and her children (her husband had skipped out and was several years behind on child support).
I tend to think that the larger picture of stagnating wages and increasing home and insurance costs sums up a lot of why people get to middle age and all of the sudden can't afford the things that they could basically afford 15 years ago.
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Free lunches are primarily provided by the Feds through the USDA to all public (which includes charters) and nonprofit private schools, so in some cases yes.
There is no equivalent federal program for breakfasts and dinners, so that would be on state or local entities to address. Practically, most students are not at school during dinner time, so providing free dinner seems problematic. Many of the schools I work with do provide breakfast, and some provide it for free. Not sure about the funding sources.
A lot of schools (that I've seen) offer backpacks to kids with meals for the weekend. I'm not sure how widespread that is nationally but in our few moves to different districts in different states I've seen it a couple times. I've always seen breakfast offered, and for free/ reduced kids the breakfast is also at that same price point.
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Free lunches are primarily provided by the Feds through the USDA to all public (which includes charters) and nonprofit private schools, so in some cases yes.
There is no equivalent federal program for breakfasts and dinners, so that would be on state or local entities to address. Practically, most students are not at school during dinner time, so providing free dinner seems problematic. Many of the schools I work with do provide breakfast, and some provide it for free. Not sure about the funding sources.
A lot of schools (that I've seen) offer backpacks to kids with meals for the weekend. I'm not sure how widespread that is nationally but in our few moves to different districts in different states I've seen it a couple times. I've always seen breakfast offered, and for free/ reduced kids the breakfast is also at that same price point.
In our area, that is not the schools. I've seen both churches and non-profits or a combination thereof do it. The schools are simply the place it is distributed.
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School breakfast is Federally assisted.Besides benefiting children- breakfast and lunch are part of the commodities program and benefit farmers. The government buys commodities from farmers to keep prices stable. We have a summer program I see advertised in Illinois in poorer neighborhoods. There is a lot of waste in government- but I can't get upset about feeding children.
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More thoughts in defense of free lunch:
It doesn't just save money, it saves intellectual energy and time, and also some economic leveling.
When my kids were on free lunch*, $80/month for their lunches would have a big stretch. So why not pack lunches? Well, finding the time was a big challenge, for one thing. For another, I worked, and I almost never picked them up on days when I dropped them off. They NEVER came home with their lunch boxes and dishes. (They were only about 4 and 5.) So it just wasn't sustainable. And they preferred school lunch. Nowadays you can't tell who is getting free food and who is paying, so it was nice for them to be able to eat the same lunch as their friends.
*Technically we were approved for reduced price lunch, but we were never charged the forty cents.
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More thoughts in defense of free lunch:
It doesn't just save money, it saves intellectual energy and time, and also some economic leveling.
When my kids were on free lunch*, $80/month for their lunches would have a big stretch. So why not pack lunches? Well, finding the time was a big challenge, for one thing. For another, I worked, and I almost never picked them up on days when I dropped them off. They NEVER came home with their lunch boxes and dishes. (They were only about 4 and 5.) So it just wasn't sustainable. And they preferred school lunch. Nowadays you can't tell who is getting free food and who is paying, so it was nice for them to be able to eat the same lunch as their friends.
*Technically we were approved for reduced price lunch, but we were never charged the forty cents.
Same at my son's elementary school. All kids have a payment "code" that gets punched in to a keypad so there 's no way to tell whether a kid has free/subsidized/full price lunch.
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This is where contraception and education helps:
Consistent with the notion of drifting into pregnancy, Edin and Kefalas report that nearly half the women they studied said that becoming pregnant was neither fully planned or fully unplanned but “somewhere in between – something that “just happened” as a result of sexual activity without contraception.
[emphasis added]
It's a fascinating read.
@Nick_Miller You could look at the dynamic described above (and well documented in other studies) through the lens of ethics and personal responsibility, in which one should not willingly impose costs on others, like having children they cannot afford. I'd suggest that's a dead end. I'd rather live in a world were divorce wasn't socially normal, where employers felt they had a moral responsibility to their employees, and where adults didn't have kids unless/until they were prepared to provide for them materially and emotionally. But I don't get to impose my moral will on society.
If we accept that we don't get to be society's moralists, we're left with structural changes and incentive structures.
Long-acting contraception has been shown to reduce fertility. As far as I'm concerned, we should be providing IUDs to anyone who wants one, on the spot, and totally free of charge. The ROI on effective family planning is tremendous.
But the other major way of reducing fertility is to raise the anticipated future earnings of young women. Under conditions where women anticipate high future earnings, they're far more likely to delay childbearing and have fewer children since the perceived opportunity cost to young motherhood is high.
What we instead have are conditions where young women anticipate their future earnings will be low, so the opportunity cost to having children early is also low. Those low opportunity costs are further offset by emotional and cultural goods of parenthood, as well as some state benefits that offset a portion of the monetary costs.
The result is the literal indifference that @bacchi describes above, which can also be described as people falling on the indifference curve between having kids now or later.
While the solution some would propose is to cut public benefits to shift this indifference curve by increasing the cost to the individual to having children, people have mentioned over and over in this thread that such an approach won't be viable because if we did it the long term consequences would bite us all as a society, and ultimately we're still humane enough as a society that we will blink before the parents and just feed the kids.
The most humane and progressive solution I see is to raise the expected future earnings for young women so that they see young, single, poor motherhood as a bad alternative to later, richer, likely married motherhood.
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Another humane and progressive method, particularly keeping in mind that many regions are overpopulated as it is, would be to incentivise birth control, morning after pill and abortion as much as possible. If every school came with free condom vending machines and every convenience store had cost-price morning-after pill available, wouldn't that cut the birth-rate tremendously?
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Kids don't "just happen". The mechanics are well known. I'm not really buying this argument that children weren't planned when a couple is having unprotected sex regularly. Seems like a moral copout on the part of the adults. You'd think such a decision would be taken more seriously, if for no other reason than the long term outcome of said children. Very selfish.
Moral wills are imposed on people, for instance, prohibiting late-term abortion. Or vaccines that are required to attend school. Or sex ed class. Although I generally agree that these issues are really about the integrity of society and something I keep noticing in my thoughts on this: faith. Not necessarily faith in a religious sense(I'm not very religious) but in the sense of having faith in society, faith in your own strengths and abilities to overcome, faith in opportunity, etc. Whether or not those things are present are just as important as if they are perceived to be present. I imagine most people in the 1800s would be pretty impressed by society today, despite the problems we face. So there is a relativism to it.
In some ways, I think contraception has caused this problem, because the question arises--why is it not being used? The tragedy of an unwanted pregnancy used to be accepted as part of the burden of existence, and pregnancies were an inevitability. But now that we have contraception, the burden has shifted heavily to the judgement and responsibility of the parties involved.
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That's a good point from wrench turner. I think most of us would agree that it is not right to punish children for their parents' profligacy. But it doesn't follow that there aren't ways to incentivise or disincentivise certain choices by parents. At some stage there has to be scrutiny of parents' actions, because they cause a ripple effect that then affects the rest of society.
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At some stage there has to be scrutiny of parents' actions
Aye, there's the rub!
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Although I generally agree that these issues are really about the integrity of society and something I keep noticing in my thoughts on this: faith. Not necessarily faith in a religious sense(I'm not very religious) but in the sense of having faith in society, faith in your own strengths and abilities to overcome, faith in opportunity, etc. Whether or not those things are present are just as important as if they are perceived to be present.
I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that the decision to have kids without really providing for them is a sign that faith in society is broken.
The initial post-war social contract in the United States might be summarized as a single male breadwinner would be compensated enough to provide all socially expected necessities for a family of 5+ in exchange for working full time. Then it became two adults. Now it's two adults with college degrees. And increasingly now it's two adults with college degrees after paying back a pile of student debt. It doesn't surprise me that a significant segment of the population is going to opt out of that last deal, have kids now, and see about how they'll provide for them later.
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Why is the social contract contingent on supporting a family of 5? Is it written in the Declaration of Independence somewhere that you get to have three children fed and clothed regardless of your life circumstances?
Most civilised countries have a birthrate hovering around 1.8-2 per woman.
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Why is the social contract contingent on supporting a family of 5? Is it written in the Declaration of Independence somewhere that you get to have three children fed and clothed regardless of your life circumstances?
Most civilised countries have a birthrate hovering around 1.8-2 per woman.
That was an historical observation. The birth rate in the US peaked in the late 1950s at about 3.7 per woman, at a time when many/most middle class women were not working outside the home.
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Kids don't "just happen". The mechanics are well known. I'm not really buying this argument that children weren't planned when a couple is having unprotected sex regularly. Seems like a moral copout on the part of the adults. You'd think such a decision would be taken more seriously, if for no other reason than the long term outcome of said children. Very selfish.
I feel the same way, and yet I constantly hear either first-hand or second-hand (from Wife) of people who get pregnant and say something to the effect of "we weren't really trying, but we weren't doing anything to stop it". The logic of 'not doing anything to stop it' = trying doesn't seem to register with most people. Failing to plan is planning to fail. But I still don't want to live in a society that punishes the kids for it, so I'm still in favor of just feeding the kids.
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This is where contraception and education helps:
Consistent with the notion of drifting into pregnancy, Edin and Kefalas report that nearly half the women they studied said that becoming pregnant was neither fully planned or fully unplanned but “somewhere in between – something that “just happened” as a result of sexual activity without contraception.
[emphasis added]
It's a fascinating read.
@Nick_Miller You could look at the dynamic described above (and well documented in other studies) through the lens of ethics and personal responsibility, in which one should not willingly impose costs on others, like having children they cannot afford. I'd suggest that's a dead end. I'd rather live in a world were divorce wasn't socially normal, where employers felt they had a moral responsibility to their employees, and where adults didn't have kids unless/until they were prepared to provide for them materially and emotionally. But I don't get to impose my moral will on society.
If we accept that we don't get to be society's moralists, we're left with structural changes and incentive structures.
Long-acting contraception has been shown to reduce fertility. As far as I'm concerned, we should be providing IUDs to anyone who wants one, on the spot, and totally free of charge. The ROI on effective family planning is tremendous.
But the other major way of reducing fertility is to raise the anticipated future earnings of young women. Under conditions where women anticipate high future earnings, they're far more likely to delay childbearing and have fewer children since the perceived opportunity cost to young motherhood is high.
What we instead have are conditions where young women anticipate their future earnings will be low, so the opportunity cost to having children early is also low. Those low opportunity costs are further offset by emotional and cultural goods of parenthood, as well as some state benefits that offset a portion of the monetary costs.
The result is the literal indifference that @bacchi describes above, which can also be described as people falling on the indifference curve between having kids now or later.
While the solution some would propose is to cut public benefits to shift this indifference curve by increasing the cost to the individual to having children, people have mentioned over and over in this thread that such an approach won't be viable because if we did it the long term consequences would bite us all as a society, and ultimately we're still humane enough as a society that we will blink before the parents and just feed the kids.
The most humane and progressive solution I see is to raise the expected future earnings for young women so that they see young, single, poor motherhood as a bad alternative to later, richer, likely married motherhood.
This is such a smart analysis, thank you.I mean, your base premise is (I am sorry to say) pie in the sky, that we need to raise base income expectations of women from poor cultures. But your argument is so nicely laid out, it is a valuable contribution to this thread.
You are right that these young poor single mothers do not see a better life/living wages on their horizon, and one of the studies suggested that their vision is correct, that even without children it is unlikely they will reach middle class income standards.
I also like the way you laid out our choice of being moral mentors or not. I do not want to be anyone’s mommy. Only when I am Queen will I decide societal standards to guide their lives. So until then yeah, we feed the hungry children.
But still I will bitch and moan about lack of appropriate parenting as I see it, especially since my tax dollars are supporting these kids born into poverty tho it may not be practical to complain about it. And in a way for my life it IS a good deed of the government to relieve me of any personal involvement in my neighbor’s life of poverty. When Nanny G. swoops in to make everything better for all, I can step back and forget about any societal duty. ‘ Cause I have paid my tax bill.
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I don't know about that. I think that community has tremendous effects for positives or negatives. I once paid sports fees for a family I knew that was struggling, because I know that giving the kids something to do is good for them. I have heard of internet folks on a parenting board sending money for a mom from their tribe to buy a new winter coat. I think all of these things are good and human and better than government bureaucracy. Some people don't like churches but churches can and do a lot as well.
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I don't know about that. I think that community has tremendous effects for positives or negatives. I once paid sports fees for a family I knew that was struggling, because I know that giving the kids something to do is good for them. I have heard of internet folks on a parenting board sending money for a mom from their tribe to buy a new winter coat. I think all of these things are good and human and better than government bureaucracy. Some people don't like churches but churches can and do a lot as well.
In no way do I mean
1) the gooberment does it all better than any one else or any other institution
2) no one need help out the humans in their community since Nanny G covers it
I just mean that for me personally, my chit to society is minimally covered by my tax bill. Going above and beyond the minimal by personally helping those who need it and contributing to churches and food banks etc. is, well, going above and beyond. Perhaps you think that is necessary and that is ok!
I dont choose to use my resources (time and money) toward those endeavors. My gifting is about animal welfare, historic buildings, plants and plant cultivation, not human services.
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@mm1970 I read Nickle and Dimed way back when. I imagine much of it is still relevant and should be on the reading list for the thoughtful people in this thread.
Due to my husband's early death, my children have received Social Security benefits for the last dozen years, and will continue till the youngest reaches age 18 in another five years. We long ago exhausted the amount my husband paid into the system.Our lives would look a lot different had that program not been put in place in the 1930s by FDR's administration. I make an OK living, but the SS allows us to hang onto the middle class and pay for groceries that go into my kids' school lunches from home. My active, swim team teenaged son just makes food disappear. Those benefits have helped keep us in our house, pay for summer camps and the kids' health insurance costs (and thank you Obama for the ACA).
Socialism and capitalism are integrated constructs that need each other in order to survive. Anyone thinking differently is not seeing the full picture.
Are we only thoughtful if we read it and liked it? Or can we be considered thoughtful if we read it and did not like it? I read it pretty carefully back in the day along with its critiques and consider much of it bunk.
One big area of criticism you will find about this book is that really poor people make fun of the author for many of the choices she made. Truly poor people know how to find things cheaper. A classic eye-opening book on this topic is the self published book by Ruby Payne called A Framework for
Understanding Poverty.
It is not an academic study and it’s not accepted by the academics as valuable information.But it is great, I think, for opening up the eyes of middle-class people as to the challenges of being continually poor (not college student poor) and the skills and survival systems developed by those in poverty.
The author of Nickled and Dimed Could’ve done well to employ some of those systems.
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@mm1970 I read Nickle and Dimed way back when. I imagine much of it is still relevant and should be on the reading list for the thoughtful people in this thread.
Due to my husband's early death, my children have received Social Security benefits for the last dozen years, and will continue till the youngest reaches age 18 in another five years. We long ago exhausted the amount my husband paid into the system.Our lives would look a lot different had that program not been put in place in the 1930s by FDR's administration. I make an OK living, but the SS allows us to hang onto the middle class and pay for groceries that go into my kids' school lunches from home. My active, swim team teenaged son just makes food disappear. Those benefits have helped keep us in our house, pay for summer camps and the kids' health insurance costs (and thank you Obama for the ACA).
Socialism and capitalism are integrated constructs that need each other in order to survive. Anyone thinking differently is not seeing the full picture.
Are we only thoughtful if we read it and liked it? Or can we be considered thoughtful if we read it and did not like it? I read it pretty carefully back in the day along with its critiques and consider much of it bunk.
One big area of criticism you will find about this book is that really poor people make fun of the author for many of the choices she made. Truly poor people know how to find things cheaper. A classic eye-opening book on this topic is the self published book by Ruby Payne called A Framework for
Understanding Poverty.
It is not an academic study and it’s not accepted by the academics as valuable information.But it is great, I think, for opening up the eyes of middle-class people as to the challenges of being continually poor (not college student poor) and the skills and survival systems developed by those in poverty.
The author of Nickled and Dimed Could’ve done well to employ some of those systems.
Ah but the assumptions seem to be:
1. All really poor people have skills and know how to find things cheaper. They don't.
2. Anyone who suddenly finds themselves to be poor can develop these skills quickly. They can't.
And then there's the general thoughts about what is "okay". We legislate these things, in some cases.
I mean, poor people live many different ways. Homeless, in cars, in substandard housing, with multiple families in a house or apartment. We've legislated "density" in this country and in many states and local areas - which can be defined as # of people per room (1), # of people allowed per bedroom (2), or amount of space required per person (168 sf).
Many ways poor people use to survive basically involve ... flouting ...these regulations. So yeah, she did some dumb things. But my kid has classmates who sleep on the floor in 1 bedroom apartments with 6 - 10 people in them. The kids maybe have 3-4 changes of clothing, tops. Yay, they've figured out how to survive.
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I have helped people escape poverty by watching their kids while they went to job training or college, helped with food when food stamps were cut because of the school financial aid they received to pay tuition and books and Xmas gifts for their kids. One neighbor had 2 kids and it was a 3 year commitment with me, her dad and my elderly mom all helping her. She got a accounting degree and was successful.
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@mm1970 I read Nickle and Dimed way back when. I imagine much of it is still relevant and should be on the reading list for the thoughtful people in this thread.
Due to my husband's early death, my children have received Social Security benefits for the last dozen years, and will continue till the youngest reaches age 18 in another five years. We long ago exhausted the amount my husband paid into the system.Our lives would look a lot different had that program not been put in place in the 1930s by FDR's administration. I make an OK living, but the SS allows us to hang onto the middle class and pay for groceries that go into my kids' school lunches from home. My active, swim team teenaged son just makes food disappear. Those benefits have helped keep us in our house, pay for summer camps and the kids' health insurance costs (and thank you Obama for the ACA).
Socialism and capitalism are integrated constructs that need each other in order to survive. Anyone thinking differently is not seeing the full picture.
Are we only thoughtful if we read it and liked it? Or can we be considered thoughtful if we read it and did not like it? I read it pretty carefully back in the day along with its critiques and consider much of it bunk.
One big area of criticism you will find about this book is that really poor people make fun of the author for many of the choices she made. Truly poor people know how to find things cheaper. A classic eye-opening book on this topic is the self published book by Ruby Payne called A Framework for
Understanding Poverty.
It is not an academic study and it’s not accepted by the academics as valuable information.But it is great, I think, for opening up the eyes of middle-class people as to the challenges of being continually poor (not college student poor) and the skills and survival systems developed by those in poverty.
The author of Nickled and Dimed Could’ve done well to employ some of those systems.
Ah but the assumptions seem to be:
1. All really poor people have skills and know how to find things cheaper. They don't.
2. Anyone who suddenly finds themselves to be poor can develop these skills quickly. They can't.
And then there's the general thoughts about what is "okay". We legislate these things, in some cases.
I mean, poor people live many different ways. Homeless, in cars, in substandard housing, with multiple families in a house or apartment. We've legislated "density" in this country and in many states and local areas - which can be defined as # of people per room (1), # of people allowed per bedroom (2), or amount of space required per person (168 sf).
Many ways poor people use to survive basically involve ... flouting ...these regulations. So yeah, she did some dumb things. But my kid has classmates who sleep on the floor in 1 bedroom apartments with 6 - 10 people in them. The kids maybe have 3-4 changes of clothing, tops. Yay, they've figured out how to survive.
The salient point here, @iris lily is that you read the book and had a reaction. That it wasn't the same as mine or others is fine! We're all allowed to form different opinions and conclusions about anything we read. That's one of the reasons I love my IRL book group - it provides good conversation when we don't all agree. I'll look into the book you recommended. @mm1970 suggested a memoir awhile back: This House Protected by Poverty and I found it an excellent read and was happy to have heard about it.
And @Cassie that's a great story. Sometimes it takes a village to help lift others out of a bad economic situation. Good on you and the others who helped that mom. I've received a fair amount of assistance as I've been raising my kids and have tried and will contine to pay it forward as much as possible.
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After my divorce I was 21 with a 2 year old and poor. My parents helped me and I worked full time but couldn’t afford daycare and my job had health insurance. They watched him until I found a program that President Carter enacted for people in this situation. It had a sliding scale for payment. My parents also fixed my car when it broke down. I think at times many people need help.
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Those kids who qualify for free lunch - if they didn't qualify, how many would still eat lunch? Probably most of them, I would think If you are ok with food stamps, which would be used for buying lunch ingredients, how is that any different than free lunch programs? You are just skipping the step of the parent buying and packing the food.
My kids' school provides free breakfast to all students. We do not qualify for the free lunch program, but they still eat the free breakfast. If they did not eat breakfast at school, I would certainly feed them at home. But they are going to eat there, so I'm not going to double feed them. I'm pretty sure I still accept the parental responsibility of feeding my kids.
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Those kids who qualify for free lunch - if they didn't qualify, how many would still eat lunch? Probably most of them, I would think If you are ok with food stamps, which would be used for buying lunch ingredients, how is that any different than free lunch programs? You are just skipping the step of the parent buying and packing the food.
My kids' school provides free breakfast to all students. We do not qualify for the free lunch program, but they still eat the free breakfast. If they did not eat breakfast at school, I would certainly feed them at home. But they are going to eat there, so I'm not going to double feed them. I'm pretty sure I still accept the parental responsibility of feeding my kids.
I talked about this above. Skipping the buying and packing was a godsend for my family.
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Those kids who qualify for free lunch - if they didn't qualify, how many would still eat lunch? Probably most of them, I would think If you are ok with food stamps, which would be used for buying lunch ingredients, how is that any different than free lunch programs? You are just skipping the step of the parent buying and packing the food.
My kids' school provides free breakfast to all students. We do not qualify for the free lunch program, but they still eat the free breakfast. If they did not eat breakfast at school, I would certainly feed them at home. But they are going to eat there, so I'm not going to double feed them. I'm pretty sure I still accept the parental responsibility of feeding my kids.
I talked about this above. Skipping the buying and packing was a godsend for my family.
^ makes total sense to me. I pack my kids' lunches daily because of dietary needs and it is a pain and I have a very flexible schedule and we aren't trying to stretch our dollars. Having lunch provided seems like it would certainly help with the time paucity and decision fatigue that comes hand in hand with not quite having enough to make ends meet.
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...If you are ok with food stamps, which would be used for buying lunch ingredients, how is that any different than free lunch programs? You are just skipping the step of the parent buying and packing the food. ...
How is it different? Because Nanny G treats it as a whole ‘nother system of bureaucracy with administrators and fiefdoms for the taxpayers to support.
I wonder why we need two (at least these two, there are many more feeding programs out there—private food banks, government supported food banks, government supported summer feeding stations, etc) when we have the big USDA program known as Foodstamps.
I dont buy that Foodstamps are not enough as has been asserted here, although certainly that would be true in some cases for some families. If it isnt enough, why isnt it enough? And how much is enough?
Even a robustly funded Food stamp program won’t help the children who, as mentioned above, are unlucky enough to have parents unable or unwilling to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. So we are throwing money at a feeding program when the problem isnt lack of food.
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If you are ok with food stamps, which would be used for buying lunch ingredients, how is that any different than free lunch programs? You are just skipping the step of the parent buying and packing the food.
My guess, and this is just a guess - Don't school lunches/breakfasts have dietary and nutritional guidelines they must follow? Thus, ensuring the child receives a somewhat proper meal. If so, seems this would be an added benefit compared to the parent possibly just feeding them soda and chips(which is a common narrative). Could be wrong.
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...If you are ok with food stamps, which would be used for buying lunch ingredients, how is that any different than free lunch programs? You are just skipping the step of the parent buying and packing the food. ...
How is it different? Because Nanny G treats it as a whole ‘nother system of bureaucracy with administrators and fiefdoms for the taxpayers to support.
I wonder why we need two (at least these two, there are many more feeding programs out there—private food banks, government supported food banks, government supported summer feeding stations, etc) when we have the big USDA program known as Foodstamps.
I dont buy that Foodstamps are not enough as has been asserted here, although certainly that would be true in some cases for some families. If it isnt enough, why isnt it enough? And how much is enough?
Even a robustly funded Food stamp program won’t help the children who, as mentioned above, are unlucky enough to have parents unable or unwilling to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. So we are throwing money at a feeding program when the problem isnt lack of food.
I don't think anyone is denying a systemic societal issue that is beyond food. Still, we're talking about children who are at the mercy of their parents' situations and who need to be fed. I have no problem with some of my tax dollars supporting free school meal programs to make sure that kids have access to food even if they might not have a regular supply at home.
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Food is really, really cheap in the US. Food is really, really important, especially for kids.
As such, I'd say just give free basic food to everyone, anytime they want it. Minimal cost, lots of gain. Want to eat something fancier/tastier/different? You're welcome to purchase food just like now. Need to scrimp and save because you're in grad school or lost your job or growing up in poverty? You can save a few bucks eating free decent food and focus on becoming a more useful member of society.
Everyone basically wins, IMO. Nobody is going to lose their drive to succeed because they can get free flour and baking powder. Cost to society is tiny. Benefits are considerable.
-W
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Food is really, really cheap in the US. Food is really, really important, especially for kids.
As such, I'd say just give free basic food to everyone, anytime they want it. Minimal cost, lots of gain. Want to eat something fancier/tastier/different? You're welcome to purchase food just like now. Need to scrimp and save because you're in grad school or lost your job or growing up in poverty? You can save a few bucks eating free decent food and focus on becoming a more useful member of society.
Everyone basically wins, IMO. Nobody is going to lose their drive to succeed because they can get free flour and baking powder. Cost to society is tiny. Benefits are considerable.
-W
Interesting thought. Would probably be the most effective way to steer people toward healthier choices too.
People hate being told what to do (how to spend SNAP, bans on unhealthy foods) but they love free stuff.
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If you are ok with food stamps, which would be used for buying lunch ingredients, how is that any different than free lunch programs? You are just skipping the step of the parent buying and packing the food.
My guess, and this is just a guess - Don't school lunches/breakfasts have dietary and nutritional guidelines they must follow? Thus, ensuring the child receives a somewhat proper meal. If so, seems this would be an added benefit compared to the parent possibly just feeding them soda and chips(which is a common narrative). Could be wrong.
In theory this is true, but in practice it falls apart because of corruption and nepotism. For example, frozen mini pizzas as officially classified as a 'vegetable' and therefore can be an option, thanks to what I'm sure was some very creative lobbying efforts.
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Food is really, really cheap in the US. Food is really, really important, especially for kids.
As such, I'd say just give free basic food to everyone, anytime they want it. Minimal cost, lots of gain. Want to eat something fancier/tastier/different? You're welcome to purchase food just like now. Need to scrimp and save because you're in grad school or lost your job or growing up in poverty? You can save a few bucks eating free decent food and focus on becoming a more useful member of society.
Everyone basically wins, IMO. Nobody is going to lose their drive to succeed because they can get free flour and baking powder. Cost to society is tiny. Benefits are considerable.
-W
I was going to say, I'm totally down with that! But now let's get to the specifics -- let's define basic food. You are talking about basic ingredients. Would you help me get an understanding of what you mean by basic food?
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Food stamps were never intended to buy all the food for a family. I don’t know if they have kept up with the rising cost of food. Plus remember many poor people live in a food desert and don’t have cars to drive to a cheaper store. I am happy to spend my tax dollars on feeding kids.
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I was going to say, I'm totally down with that! But now let's get to the specifics -- let's define basic food. You are talking about basic ingredients. Would you help me get an understanding of what you mean by basic food?
Flour was probably a bad example. Most people have no idea how to bake, nor the time/inclination. And if we're trying to save people money, making them spend an hour turning the free food into actual edible stuff is probably a bad idea.
You could do something like WIC - peanut butter, bread/tortillas, milk. I'd add in some basic vegetables and fruits (apples, bananas, spinach, potatoes, etc) and maybe eggs, cheese, beans (canned beans). That gets you, with a few condiments, a pretty reasonable diet that isn't going to cause you terrible health problems. You can do french toast and breakfast burritos and all sorts of things, you can do lunch sandwiches of various kinds, you can do a dinner omelet or scramble, etc.
I mean, you could do a much better list than what I just came up with in 60 seconds, and you'd have to provide for people with allergies and such, but really, it would be pretty easy, and it's a diet I've lived on happily many times in my life. And everything on the list is dirt cheap. You could feed people for pennies a day buying in bulk, I'm guessing.
-W
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You have to store the food. You have to deliver the food or have a place for people to come pick it up. You have to hire people to administer the program. Food stamps already use an existing infrastructure to do this.
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Food is really, really cheap in the US. Food is really, really important, especially for kids.
As such, I'd say just give free basic food to everyone, anytime they want it. Minimal cost, lots of gain. Want to eat something fancier/tastier/different? You're welcome to purchase food just like now. Need to scrimp and save because you're in grad school or lost your job or growing up in poverty? You can save a few bucks eating free decent food and focus on becoming a more useful member of society.
Everyone basically wins, IMO. Nobody is going to lose their drive to succeed because they can get free flour and baking powder. Cost to society is tiny. Benefits are considerable.
-W
I was going to say, I'm totally down with that! But now let's get to the specifics -- let's define basic food. You are talking about basic ingredients. Would you help me get an understanding of what you mean by basic food?
Flour for one thing is insulting to many people. Wheat flour is the devil.
Who cooks the basic food is what I would like to know from the waltworks. Reading between the lines, he proposes recipients cook. But with no functional stove, not much you can do with a sack of flour.
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But isn't that a motivator? If you decide you want to eat paleo, then you work for it.
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You have to store the food. You have to deliver the food or have a place for people to come pick it up. You have to hire people to administer the program. Food stamps already use an existing infrastructure to do this.
Sure, so just give everyone food stamps.
-W
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But isn't that a motivator? If you decide you want to eat paleo, then you work for it.
Are you talking about desire or possible issues with allergies?
Flour for one thing is insulting to many people. Wheat flour is the devil.
Who cooks the basic food is what I would like to know from the waltworks. Reading between the lines, he proposes recipients cook. But with no functional stove, not much you can do with a sack of flour.
Yeah, wheat flour is the devil.
It's tricky though - much more efficient to give people food stamps than actual food. I suppose you could do something like WIC where you define what COUNTS as food. But I hear that gets complicated about what can be bought and what cannot be. I'd imagine that could be a complete pain.
And yeah, not everyone has cooking facilities or the ability to cook. You can do lots of things in a hotel room or without a real kitchen. Eat lots of cold food. But if no fridge?
I've done my share of meal prep and cooking in hotel rooms (and dishes). It can be hard to navigate and everything is more expensive because you can't buy in bulk. My added frustration is the gluten sensitivity. I finally went bonkers on my husband on vacation - we were shopping every couple of days at small stores in Copenhagen. One such trip he was rushing me through the store "okay we are done let's go!"
No, YOU are done. YOU have green beans and frozen pizza. I CANNOT EAT THE FROZEN PIZZA. Please give me 10 minutes to look through the store, read labels, and try to translate Danish on my phone!
Sorry, that was totally unrelated to the topic.
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SO my real world example....
We ran into this when our kids started getting free lunches.
Our household annual income has been over $150K the whole time. When it first started I actually called the school and said we could pay. They said there is no way to pay if your qualify for free lunch. How do our kids qualify? A series of interesting rules in how things work.
First our exes both have income issues that would make the kids qualify at their homes. In my case my ex is not residential parent so I believe (all of this is unclear because no one has been able to explain exactly what triggers the qualification for all our kids) that is is not coming from her. In my wife's case their divorce decree in essence violates what should happen is one parent is declared residential and basically they both are because her ex fought it and somehow the court just gave in and said "sure we won't make a decision, you both has final decision making power". I'm sure you can guess how that all works out, but I digress. So at her ex's since he never has a job he has qualified for SNAP and WIC, and so the kid's qualify. Then there is a rule that if one kid in a household qualifies, they all qualify, so that I think is what made my kid's eligible (unless it is something with my ex, but if it is I have no idea what). So for the last 7 years our kids have had free lunches because of this and even when we tried to pay we were told no.
So perhaps this helps people understand how these things get to be the way they are..... In our case has zero to do with parent responsibility. I tried. I tried, real hard, like even arguing up to the superintendent's office about how stupid this was to waste taxpayer money and basically was told, nothing we can do about, your kid's get free lunch. I suppose we could force our kids to bring lunch everyday from home....
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In your case, I would throw extra dollars at the school's fundraisers and PTO and call it done.
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In your case, I would throw extra dollars at the school's fundraisers and PTO and call it done.
This would be the approach I'd take.
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In your case, I would throw extra dollars at the school's fundraisers and PTO and call it done.
Or throw a few extra bucks at rhe U.S. treasury come April 15.
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In your case, I would throw extra dollars at the school's fundraisers and PTO and call it done.
Or throw a few extra bucks at rhe U.S. treasury come April 15.
Because the Feds are so responsible?
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In your case, I would throw extra dollars at the school's fundraisers and PTO and call it done.
Or throw a few extra bucks at rhe U.S. treasury come April 15.
Because the Feds are so responsible?
Naw, psychic karma. Give back to those who gave.
I am just kidding here. Giving dinero to the school is probably the best plan.
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So many people posting on this thread have never known hunger before and it really shows. *sigh*
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I grew up in an area where some of my childhood friends *literally* had no food in their home. I remember going to one friend's house after school when I was about 12 and we were hungry so we went looking for something to eat in his kitchen. All that was in the refrigerator was a bottle of ketchup. I can still see it. It's burned in my memory. He called his Dad to say "hey, dad, what time are you getting home? I'm really hungry?" and was told his dad would pick him up a burrito at Taco Bell on the way home and they could go to the store on Friday (payday). I think bean burritos were like 39 cents at that time.
Another time I went to a different house and all that was there was a single canister of cheesy poofs.
Looking back, some of the lack of food was poverty and some of it resulted from parental ineptitude or addiction. Many of the parents didn't really seem to know how to cook. Regardless of the reason, I'm really, really happy that there was free breakfast and lunch at my school.
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So many people posting on this thread have never known hunger before and it really shows. *sigh*
That's also my feeling.
These are kids! Who for whatever reason are hungry -- just feed the freakin' kids in the least obtrusive way possible (because teenagers in particular can be really cruel) and let's move on with trying to educate them, m'kay?
Is it really better to spend mental energy on figuring out how to punish the kids and/or their parents, or to try to educate the next generation?
Caracarn, our school lunch program has fundraisers to cover some of the food they upgrade from basic federal standards -- you might find out if you can make donations directly to your lunch program. And, yes, it's the "if one kid in the household qualifies for free lunches, they all do" rule that's most likely in effect for your kids. I imagine we all can figure out why that rule exists.
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We already pay a ton of $$ to set up the school buildings, maintain them, pay the staff, etc... If all that $$ is going to be wasted because a few of the kids are disruptive because they are hungry, why not just have free breakfast, free snack and free lunch for all of them as the basic standard? Incrementally it's very little extra $$ and it would have a large positive impact on the ability of all the kids to learn.
I just don't understand why lots of people are perfectly OK with the large outlays around building/maintaining/staffing a school, but then balk at the relatively small additional $$ it would take to feed the kids. Weird.
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We already pay a ton of $$ to set up the school buildings, maintain them, pay the staff, etc... If all that $$ is going to be wasted because a few of the kids are disruptive because they are hungry, why not just have free breakfast, free snack and free lunch for all of them as the basic standard? Incrementally it's very little extra $$ and it would have a large positive impact on the ability of all the kids to learn.
I just don't understand why lots of people are perfectly OK with the large outlays around building/maintaining/staffing a school, but then balk at the relatively small additional $$ it would take to feed the kids. Weird.
There's a knee-jerk reaction to anyone potentially getting something that they don't deserve that many suffer from . . . even if the benefits of performing the action are substantial.
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We already pay a ton of $$ to set up the school buildings, maintain them, pay the staff, etc... If all that $$ is going to be wasted because a few of the kids are disruptive because they are hungry, why not just have free breakfast, free snack and free lunch for all of them as the basic standard? Incrementally it's very little extra $$ and it would have a large positive impact on the ability of all the kids to learn.
I just don't understand why lots of people are perfectly OK with the large outlays around building/maintaining/staffing a school, but then balk at the relatively small additional $$ it would take to feed the kids. Weird.
My understanding has always been that everyone's lunch is subsidized anyway. I always paid "full price" but my cost for school lunch ranged from .85 to 1.60. That doesn't seem like enough to run a cafeteria even if everyone paid.
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We already pay a ton of $$ to set up the school buildings, maintain them, pay the staff, etc... If all that $$ is going to be wasted because a few of the kids are disruptive because they are hungry, why not just have free breakfast, free snack and free lunch for all of them as the basic standard? Incrementally it's very little extra $$ and it would have a large positive impact on the ability of all the kids to learn.
I just don't understand why lots of people are perfectly OK with the large outlays around building/maintaining/staffing a school, but then balk at the relatively small additional $$ it would take to feed the kids. Weird.
There's a knee-jerk reaction to anyone potentially getting something that they don't deserve that many suffer from . . . even if the benefits of performing the action are substantial.
What's weird to me is that the goal of the school is to have kids learn well. We invest a ton of $$ in the building/maintaining/staffing, and ALL that money is put at risk if there's disruptive kids due to hunger. From a cost/benefit analysis, it makes MUCH more sense to just give everyone free breakfast/snack/lunch and thus protect the $$ already invested. From a cost/benefit analysis, free meals is money well spent.
But I guess their objection is not fiscal? I dunno, it's weird that they are willing to spend a lot of money on education but somehow draw the line when it comes to food. I don't understand that.
And if the objection is "they are getting something they don't deserve", well the same thing could be said about education itself. I mean, are those kids paying for their own education? So why is a free education OK, but free food isn't? And if a lack of food causes problems for ALL the students (not just the hungry one), why wouldn't people be willing to have free food at schools so all the other investment dollars aren't wasted? It just makes no sense at all.
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caracarn, I'm in a somewhat similar situation, just without the blended family issues. My kids go to a Title 1 school, 55% low income students. The entire district participates in a program that provides free breakfast to all students, and in two-thirds of the district's schools, the entire school has qualified for free/reduced lunch because >75% of students qualify individually. (My kids go to one of the remaining 1/3 currently, but will likely go to one of those schools for middle school.)
My kids eat some breakfast at home, but less than they otherwise would, and then eat again at school. I'm not super thrilled about it because it's not as good nutritionally as what we eat at home, plus it's all pre-packaged and taken to classrooms in plastic bags, so there's a lot of waste. BUT, I think that it helps lessen the stigma when all the kids are participating regardless of income, and I donate generously to the school.