Can't think of a thing with a better benefit to cost ratio for a than providing school children a free meal. It's very cheap and it sucks very much if isn't done.
This applies on society, government, municipality, village, family - so many levels.
This applies on society, government, municipality, village, family - so many levels.
The public schools here don't even seem to operate real kitchens anymore like they did when I was a kid, and aren't equipped to actually cook at all, but just to heat up frozen stuff. Instead of even assembling sandwiches from ingredients, they serve those might-as-well-be-a-candy-bar "uncrustables". That's the degree to which they don't function as a real kitchen anymore. Not-coincidentally, I expect, I'm pretty sure most "kitchen" staff isn't even employed by the schools anymore, but by companies they contract to handle lunch for them.
In England, the cost of a school lunch is about ~£2.35. In the US, it's about ~$3.80.
When I go out to eat in the US for lunch, a typical take-away place to get something like a sandwich is maybe around $12. In the US, if we increased school lunch funding equivalent to that, the increase would be something like $8 per student per day. There are 50 million K-12 students in the US, so that would cost $400 million per day.
The per-pupil cost would be $1,472 per year. In a classroom of 20 students, that would be nearly $30,000/year -- enough to substantially increase teacher salaries, and nearly enough to pay for a teaching assistant in every classroom.
Obviously, there's nothing saying we couldn't increase funding by $1 or $2. But my point is simply that there are indeed trade-offs.
I really love a library near me that has near the door a load of nice paper shopping bags, labelled up - that anyone can take. Each will have different things in but contain stuff like wash kits and deodorant, tampons and sanitary towels, socks, gloves and even warm jumpers in winter. Anyone who needs one can just grab one. It is sad that we have to give out stuff like this, but equally, if we need to provide these things for people, let's do it in the lowest drama way of doing it, and that doesn't cause stigma or shame.
The key is that you can help 99.9% and then existing services will be able to help the few remaining. The alternative is to help nobody.
But it also can be harmful if you cancel some great good because some small fraction of the population can't avail themselves of it.
Something like this would need an accessibility plan to be available where needed. It would be a little more expensive at first but then workflows can be improved.
The military and schools already provide food for large groups. As do private companies like Aramark (although to be fair Aramark reported often provides _spoiled_ food to prisons). The point is, these logistics are all well established with most of the hangups worked out in general principle.
Now if everyone did avail themselves of the free lunch slop each day, we'd clearly see a downturn in lunch business at many restaurants, so there would be other effects, but it does not seem entirely impossible.
And certainly not impossible to start with the students at schools, then expand to all children, and then to the children and elderly, and then to all.
So low quality places, like McDonalds (consistent, but low, quality -- I'll not concede this point) would be impacted. But better quality food providers would not. So you would have crowding out on the low end. Does that make society as a whole worse off? Maybe not completely first-order pareto improving (people would pay taxes), but imagine how much better society is if kids can get fed and then focus on their educations? I think the second order knock-on effects are huge.
Now apply that world-wide. I am getting the Kurzgesagt warm fuzzies.
On the other hand, in prison I would want there to be an option that satisfy each religions requirements, because I don't want the state to dictate peoples belief.
That said, I think if you were creative with the menu - serving food staples known for low cost and decent nutrition it would be comparable. But this is beans and rice, lentils, PB&J sandwiches, etc. But I personally think this is fine. For me, the goal is to ensure no one starves it's not to provide a complete nutrition for every single person. Since the offerings are slim and not exactly desirable, the impact to McDonald's lunch business would likely be small. Pretty much anyone with the means to do so would rather eat something they paid for. It depends on if you view it as a general public service or if you view it as a safety net I suppose.
All that said, I think this has no chance of actually gaining momentum. Not in the US anyway. It sounds like something a Nordic country could pull off.
Something like this: https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2013/11/17/in-pictures-kit...
It's the cheapest & easy way to help these kids get nutrition. It benefits society more than the cost.
It also prevents the need to waste money on lunch cards, payment systems & some poor lady having to manage & collect payments.
A universal benefit guarantees 100% utilization. If you put in bureaucracy and/or a token payment, people will fail to navigate it (and downstream bureaucracies with their own budgets can make it more difficult to navigate), so like magic the program becomes a lot cheaper (by leaving children hungry.)
Not necessarily, I know a lot of progress has been made since I left school but back in my day there were some seriously low grade meals served at the cafeteria. It was not uncommon for other kids to bring lunchables and homemade meals to eat instead and we'd throw out the tray of food provided to us. I'm not anti-free school meals for all, however. I just wanted to add the caveat that the 100% utilization metric is not quite as it seems.
The government have just cut taxes so they're heading in the opposite direction.
With that said, it doesn't address the underlying problem of kids being allowed to go hungry. If free school meals were universal (and they should be), that's still only 5 / 21 weekly meals provided for.
It's not the best food but it's calories with some nutrition & easy for kids to make.
During my time volunteering I learned that the challenges are not getting enough funding or food but getting the food to the people who need it. From elderly to babies.
That said, it is ridiculous to have hungry children in a country that also has national health care. It is much, much cheaper to feed a child than to deal with health issues from hunger.