[mtnGoat]

As someone who experienced this first hand growing up. I consider how someone feels about free school lunch, a basic test of their humanity.

If you think kids should go hungry or be embarrassed at school because of their parents finances… we can’t be friends, nor acquaintances. IMHO, you are subhuman at that point and not worth my time.

My dad believed that because he paid taxes he shouldn’t have to pay the school to feed me. I begged, borrowed, and stole spare change to pay. He’d chip in once in a while, but once you are so far in debt they won’t feed you anymore (at least they didn’t at the time). I remember going to the lost and found every day to check the pockets of the clothes in there. I learned how to pick the locks on the gym lockers and would steal money from other kids pockets. I sometimes left school so I could go steal lunch from a grocery store near by. I got caught once, but after the lady knew what was up, she conveniently was always looking away from me during mid day of I came in. From the bottom of my heart I hope she receives every possible blessing in this life.

No child should have to do that. Ever! Happy to pay taxes to and live in a state that has solved this problem!

[LandR]

Even if you want to look at it from a purely selfish point of view... if you want to live in a good, prosperous society, this starts with childrens education. A well fed, happy, well slept child is an ideal here to get them the best education they can.

Not wanting each child to get the best possible start in life makes absolutely no sense to me.

But yes, no child should go hungry at school.

[lukan]

"Not wanting each child to get the best possible start in life makes absolutely no sense to me."

Maybe to lower the chances of other children against your own (wealthy) offspring? So from a very selfish individualistic perspective there is sense? I suspect that might be the base motivation, even though you likely won't find many openly stating that or even are aware of it.

[brainzap]

This. It also creates peace

[mlyle]

I don't know what the correct answer is.

The tricky thing is, if you let anyone just choose not to pay, there will be plenty of people who are capable of paying who don't bother. In your case, it sounds like your dad was maybe capable of paying but wanted to freeload.

So as long as you're going to charge for lunches, you need to have some kind of enforcement mechanism. Embarrassing the kid ideally would not be part of it.

California pays for it all, but California is a pretty rich state. And if you're a poorer state, you have the choice between eliminating this problem, or addressing many other types of educational need.

[camgunz]

There are no moral hazards when it comes to social welfare programs. People really think there are, but every time we look we find practically no freeloaders. This idea that we have to threaten people with literal starvation to get them to be productive members of society is ironically deeply impoverished.

And if we really think that's true, why do we let people accrue wealth at all? Why do we then think that the most productive people in our society are also the richest? Shouldn't it be the opposite? I struggle to see the pillars of this moral structure in any other way than "poor people are a different breed and need stricter rules to keep them in line". Which again is super wrong! TFA cites research that shows that these kids' parents work, but their wages/bills are too low/high. Does anyone want to guess how bad those parents' jobs are? Do we need to detail the struggles working people go through (lack of health care, wildly inconsistent hours, sexual harassment and assault, etc)? The nicest thing you can say about this kind of thinking is that it's out of date.

And what is "freeloading" anyway? Kids of all backgrounds and parenting situations get to eat? Bring on the freeloading then. Who do I make the check out to?

[mtnGoat]

Just roll it into property taxes and call it a day. This is not a political issue in my mind, but a basic humanity issue. A child with hunger pangs isn’t focused on learning, if you can’t cover the basic need, the rest is a waste. The haves, selfishly don’t want to help subsidize the have nots. Which I get, BUT these are kids, we as adults should leave them out of it, sack up, and deal with it.

You are correct, my dad was a civil engineer, he very much could afford it. I guess he thought high end alcohol and golf were better expenditures. I found it interesting that the article mentions a lot of the debt isn’t from the lowest income brackets.

[IanCal]

There are fundamentally two different things going on here.

One is whether kids should get fed.

The other is how this is paid for.

The approach of "the child is charged like anyone else buying a thing and hopefully their parents have given them money" is easy but has obvious problems that we're talking about.

However we can split these problems up, one is saying that we will just feed the kids as a flat statement. Then the problem is how to pay for it.

You could have state level taxes, but that's not the only option. On the other end of the spectrum you could send a bill to the parents - this is at its core the same as charging the kids in the best case but avoids issues where people don't give the kids the money. You could do that but have programs to only charge the more fortunate. You could do it by taxes on income, you could do it by income but only if you have kids. You could do it with property taxes.

All have various benefits and drawbacks, as what's "fair" is arguable.

However that is all distinct from whether the kids get fed.

[madeofpalk]

The correct answer is to feed children. It's not difficult. You're making this way more complicated than it needs to be.

> there will be plenty of people who are capable of paying who don't bother

I'm past pretending this argument is made in good faith. It only comes from hate and selfishness.

[nucleardog]

> The tricky thing is, if you let anyone just choose not to pay, there will be plenty of people who are capable of paying who don't bother. In your case, it sounds like your dad was maybe capable of paying but wanted to freeload.

I say this as an IT worker making what most would consider an absurd amount of money and pays 0.55*absurd money in taxes, a dad, a human, etc... what the fuck does any of this matter.

If a child is hungry, the only concern is feeding that child. A child is, pretty much by definition, incapable of fully caring for themselves. If their parents fail to care for them, we have various mechanisms for the state to step in in their stead up to and including taking them away and giving them to someone else.

"Sorry, Johnny, your dad has the money to pay for lunch but chose not to so we're punishing you with going hungry until he wises up."

Full stop no.

If a child is hungry, they get fed. Politics can dictate that adults who are less valuable deserve to starve to death. Politics can dictate that adults who can afford to feed their child but choose not to need to be punished, taxed more, or anything else.

But we, as a society, have the means to ensure that no child ever has to go hungry. Every decision that leads to hungry children is offensive, and anyone choosing to punish adults by starving their children is a monster.

Downvote, flag, or come fight me. I'll die on this hill: Neglecting children is bad and anyone who could help and doesn't is at fault.

[sparsely]

If you don't provide lunches for the children then their parents need to pay for them anyway. Just tax more if you don't already have a budget, this isn't a case where there would be radically different spending patterns without government intervention.

[hiddencost]

This is why we have taxes. Because we can assess how much each person can afford to pay, and then make collective decisions that can't be made by inefficient free market mechanisms.

[mrweasel]

> The tricky thing is, if you let anyone just choose not to pay, there will be plenty of people who are capable of paying who don't bother.

I quite frankly don't care about that type of arguments anymore. If someone wants to be a bad person they are free to do so. I don't care, it should not stop the 95%, or more, that want to do the right thing.

We continuously make more and more convoluted rules, which are a nightmare for decent people to navigate, but which are just ignored by the assholes. I don't care about fighting the assholes for what is minor amounts, if it means overburdening good people with rules which weren't meant for them anyway.

Moving it to taxes essentially does the same thing. The assholes weasel their way out of paying their fair share, while those who want the best for society and everyone is stuck paying the full amount.

[brianmcc]

Treat it as the common good and societal investment it actually is, and fund it from central taxation like plenty of other countries do. Problem solved!

[dragonwriter]

> The tricky thing is, if you let anyone just choose not to pay, there will be plenty of people who are capable of paying who don't bother.

So what? Assuming you have a progressive tax system in the first place, the people that are capable of paying are, in fact, actually paying for the service in any case. Why charge them again?

> So as long as you're going to charge for lunches, you need to have some kind of enforcement mechanism.

Yes, and one of the reasons for free universal public programs paid for by progressive taxes are often better than means-tested programs is that enforcement isn't free (and neither, in the case of school lunches, is handling money for payment for the people that your means-tested free lunch program now means are required to pay for the service) so you end up spending a whole lot more between payment processing and eligibility verification and enforcement than you save by excluding the people actually paying for the service by higher taxes from receiving the service.

[smeeger]

his dad did pay… he paid the schools entire budget. you cant just throw the whole system into chaos where people are expected to pay in several different ways and then they turn the tablet around and aggressively ask for a tip. without a clear, simple and singular source of funding it just becomes an excuse for corruption. and here we are, being told that we are inhuman monsters for not subsidizing a bloated tumor of administrators. how about the administrators downsize and take 100k home instead of multiple hundreds of thousands? why arent they subject to any of this scrutiny?

[viraptor]

> it sounds like your dad was maybe capable of paying but wanted to freeload.

But it went a step further. He didn't want to pay either way, so the poster was in exactly the same situation as the poor kids.

If we're scared to help people who need help, because there's a small chance that someone else may benefit as well, we've lost as a society. Just raise the taxes and give it to every kid.

[Faaak]

I'm sorry but I lived in France and this didn't happen. We had to pay for the food (~3€), and if you didn't had the money (basically because of low resources), then it was free. People that could pay payed, and people that couldn't didn't.

[mulmen]

> I don't know what the correct answer is.

I do.

> The tricky thing is, if you let anyone just choose not to pay, there will be plenty of people who are capable of paying who don't bother.

It isn't tricky. It's taxes.

There's not nuance here. There's only hate and spite for those less fortunate.

[smileysteve]

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

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

[mobtrain]

While I wholeheartedly agree that no child should ever go hungry and school lunches should be free (from a EU country, this isn’t even a thing here), if you call people subhuman, we can't be friends, nor acquaintances.

[RS-232]

Subhuman is a rather severe (and incredibly reductionist) judgement. Sure, being anti-free lunch for children is morally objectionable… but they’ve failed to probe that line of reasoning. They’ve encountered a bug, but instead of debugging it, they’ve closed their IDE and walked away.

Sometimes an honest conversation—with carefully placed, introspective questions—can be revealing to all parties. When we use our tongues to learn about others and build them up rather than tear them down, we’re actively making the world a better place. When we resist the tendency to judge others, we’re actively bettering ourselves.

[em500]

> ... and school lunches should be free (from a EU country, this isn’t even a thing here)

I'm from another EU country (the Netherlands). Primary schools do not provide any lunch or other food whatsoever, secondary schools might have a canteen selling some snacks or low quality fast food. But everyone is basically expected to bring their own or go out/home for lunch.

[oulipo]

"My dad believed that because he paid taxes he shouldn’t have to pay the school to feed me."

I understand this is not what is meant here... but in a sense he's right. In a normal society where everyone pay taxes and they are well spent, it should be indeed the Government that's in charge of feeding kids at school

[baq]

He’s right but if everyone around you tells you you’re wrong, you’re also in a very bad spot.

If your kids are hurting because you stand on the moral high ground… you get your cigs stolen from, by your children no less. All for the psychological comfort of being right.

You could say he was right, just early: this is also known as very wrong in e.g. financial markets.

[exitb]

Taxes aren't magic, you pay some money and receive some services. It's obviously possible to fund meals with tax money, but would he accept a higher tax rate to cover for it?

[mtnGoat]

Absolutely, and more states are starting to realize this. Covering basic needs for the most vulnerable is a cornerstone of community and a sign of success.

[askonomm]

This is wild to me. In Estonia school lunches are free for everyone, paid by the taxpayer. Doesn't matter if you are poor or wealthy, everybody gets the same food.

[mettamage]

Interesting.

In the Netherlands we packed our lunches or we cycled home to eat lunch with our parents and then cycled back to school. Lunch was one of the most favorite times of my day. A break from school during school hours. What a treat!

[veunes]

Feed all the kids, no shame, no paperwork, no bureaucratic gatekeeping - just… lunch

[subscribed]

By the most metric Estonia is the creme de la creme of the decent democracy of the compassionate people.

Yeah, this is wild.

[theoreticalmal]

One should not view others as subhuman because of the ideas they hold.

[pc86]

I think every child should get a hot, nutritious breakfast and lunch at school at taxpayer expense. But I'm also [edit] s/smart/reasonable enough to know that people who disagree with that aren't "subhuman."

There is no "basic test of humanity" and pretending their is is tribalistic bullshit so you can feel superior to other people who disagree with you.

It's digusting.

[mtnGoat]

You are entitled to your opinion, despite throwing an insult in to point out an insult. lol, nice hypocrisy. ;)

[1970-01-01]

>I consider how someone feels about free school lunch, a basic test of their humanity.

I'll bite (pun alert).

It isn't about free handout, it's about ROI. The valid counterpoint to free lunch for children is any program can become grossly mismanaged because of "think of the children". There are recent stories of unhealthy and expired food being served to children that made them sick. Moreover, what they are getting can be something that puts more bad-calories than good into them (processed, high in corn-syrup). While I agree that no child should go hungry, can you both understand and not disagree this isn't a fire and forget problem? Taxpayers need their hard-earned income only going into high nutrition food; food that will not exacerbate the nationwide obesity problem!

https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/expired-food-served-...

https://wchsinsight.org/33581/opinion/school-food-causes-com...

https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/childhood-obesity-facts/childhoo...

[Capricorn2481]

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

[aembleton]

Couldn't you have taken a packed lunch in? Make a sandwich and take it with you.

[mtnGoat]

I could have, and did on occasion, but that would have required my dad to go buy lunch food and keep it on hand. But he didn’t need to do that… the school needed to feed us!

I did learn around 7th grade that I could steal his cigarettes and sell them. I guess he did pay for more lunches than I realized, now that I wrote this.

[pertymcpert]

The fact that you think this is a seriously practical suggestion shows that, very fortunately for you, you have no idea what goes in a household like this. I say this with sincerity, it's a good thing that you don't realize the problem with this suggestion.

[Zanfa]

So let them eat cake?

[asdf6969]

Do you think Canadians are subhuman? We don’t do this and there’s no issue. The school is not a replacement for bad parenting. I bet you’re the type of person who still believes in food deserts.

[chronid]

In my country you pay for school lunches as a local tax (and assistance is available for low income families). Children are always fed. Parents are the ones with the debts and the garnished salaries.

[veunes]

It's honestly heartbreaking - not just what you went through, but how normalized it was. That kind of survival mode shouldn't be part of any kid's school experience

[mtnGoat]

It sticks with you for a while and creates interesting views on things throughout life.

[renewiltord]

It is classically American to say "I pay taxes. They should use that to solve the problem" while paying so few taxes that it could not possibly solve the problem.

[pif]

I mean, you are right.

But your father was an a*, too!

It was his responsibility to make sure you did not go hungry, and he chose to ignore it.

[mtnGoat]

Yes, he was an interesting guy. Not a good dad, which is why I can’t help but feel the way I do about others that would do the same to a child.

[amelius]

Contemporary politics is turning every proposition into the most polarized argument conceivable. Which is exactly what this comment is doing. And it is in fact against the HN rules of conduct.

[mtnGoat]

Except this isn’t a political issue, it’s humanitarian and basic empathy. Never said anyone should be removed from earth, that’s quite the projection, but go on.

[sigkill]

I appreciate your observation. What point are you trying to convey?

[madeofpalk]

I'm confused - you think kids should go hungry?

[pertymcpert]

Chiming in here: I've thought this for a long time, well before contemporary politics. Fuck these people.

[thrance]

When the other side is advocating for children to starve, then yeah, fuck them. There is no point in being charitable to people incapable of the most basic decency.

[cess11]

Yeah, some people need to be fought, they can't be reasoned with. One clear sign that they aren't open to reason is that they want other children to suffer while they and their children don't.

We don't necessarily have to kill them, we could fight them by other means, like general strike or by destroying their property. Disowning them of their privileges or social status typically causes them to change their positions on policy.

[casey2]

Or you could just have gotten a job? I think your anger is misdirected here. Be mad at the politician and their supporters who decided that you shouldn't be allowed to work. Despite what they may believe, kids need to eat too and as we all can plain well see living on either the government or parent teat for too long turns them into layabouts.