Walz passed the Free Meals for School Kids Program[^1] at my elementary school, no less! about two years ago.
I’m happy that other states are finally realizing, gee, this is such a straightforward issue we could actually solve.
Shifting the cost from the parents who had the kids onto the taxpayers is not solving the problem.
It's making people who didn't cause the problem subsidize the people who did cause the problem.
That's not solving the problem.
It's making sure there will be more problems.
You are shooting everyone including yourself in the foot because you personally don't need to walk places.
It's possible that's not a bad thing considering they're built on excessive consumption and an ever expanding population.
Child labor was legal until 1930. It has been a part of society for longer than it hasn't. I think your calculus is a little off.
> your lifestyle would not exist
Because /some/ children struggle to eat enough? Which, again, has been a norm in our society for longer than it hasn't. We didn't fully get rid of horses as beasts of burden in agriculture until the 1950s.
> you personally don't need to walk places.
Carrying everyone who can't walk is not a universal good. Particularly when some of those people can't walk because of a tiny, temporary, and highly solvable problem.
Now you have people who make it their career to carry people. Their motivations are to carry as many people as is possible. If we actually made it so no one had to be carried they would be out a job.
We live in a world of odd incentives. There is no point at which abandoning the middle way will benefit you, regardless of how pretty those ideas sound.
Are you serious.
> Because /some/ children struggle to eat enough?
They said "without kids", not without this particular program.
> Carrying everyone who can't walk is not a universal good. Particularly when some of those people can't walk because of a tiny, temporary, and highly solvable problem.
> Now you have people who make it their career to carry people. Their motivations are to carry as many people as is possible. If we actually made it so no one had to be carried they would be out a job.
These are children. Someone is carrying them no matter what.
Yes. I'm calling into question the idea that modern treatment of children is responsible for the world we live in. Clearly it is not given the relative scarcity of it in our history. I'm not saying we shouldn't give children a free lunch just that the OPs reasoning was rather lofty and detached from history.
> They said "without kids", not without this particular program.
They're replying to someone with the obvious implication that this program is in some way critical to children "learning and becoming productive members of society."
> Someone is carrying them no matter what.
Now are you serious? Do parents consider it their career to raise their own children? Does this career have the effect of increasing the number of children they care for in exchange for greater profits?
Which is why I invoked incentives. The tragedy here being that schools consider their primary obligation to the child and not to the family. So when parents are in a situation where they cannot care for their children successfully, for whatever reason, we completely ignore the core problem and instead patch over it. Worse it can sometimes create negative stigma for the child and work to further destabilize their living situation.
They have been taking similar role before the industrial revolution.
> They're replying to someone with the obvious implication that this program is in some way critical to children "learning and becoming productive members of society."
They were not saying it's "critical" or that the specific treatment of children is responsible for anything.
It was a very simple argument that everyone should care about children growing up well because we need them.
> Does this career have the effect of increasing the number of children they care for in exchange for greater profits?
This doesn't make any sense. I understand your incentive argument but what is Big Lunch going to do, make pro-birthrate propaganda? We're already sending children to schools and expecting them to eat the school lunch by default. It doesn't matter who pays as long as the school has motivation to reduce costs.
> The tragedy here being that schools consider their primary obligation to the child and not to the family. So when parents are in a situation where they cannot care for their children successfully, for whatever reason, we completely ignore the core problem and instead patch over it.
It would cost so so much more to do that, and while I agree that it would be good, fixing poverty is super far outside the scope of a school's job.
> Worse it can sometimes create negative stigma for the child and work to further destabilize their living situation.
This is an argument for giving all students free meals. No stigma.
Having not-starving kids is beneficial to literally everyone in the community, not just the kids who use the program.
No, but it's well documented that students who eat lunches generally perform better.
> It's making people who didn't cause the problem subsidize the people who did cause the problem.
Sorry buddy, but you won't find a lot of sympathy from people who actually care. School lunches *are not expensive*, and there are plenty of parents who are in poverty and literally cannot afford to pay for their child's lunch.
Should the child starve? No. I strongly believe that anyone who thinks a child should starve, for whatever reason, does not belong in civilized society.
> That's not solving the problem.
You're right, it's not. But you also don't offer a different suggestion. How will you solve poverty? How will you solve neglect?
Until you offer suggestions for that, your comment strikes me as coming from someone who (at best) is sociopathic in a bad way and (possibly) someone who does not belong in civilization.
> It's making sure there will be more problems.
Perhaps.
But you could also consider it as several different types of investments in the future.
An investment, at the mere cost of one child's meal per day, is an investment whose return is in the form of that child's future taxes; the lack of investment is instead the death-by-starvation of that child and loss of that child's future income and/or business taxes.
An investment, at the mere cost of one child's meal per day, is an investment in that child's care for their fellow person. Children who have been there (in poverty and starving); who have literally had only one meal per day, are more likely to be more empathetic to the plights of the people (not just children) around them in similar situations. You should hope that, if you're in such a situation, that you could find someone who would be willing to help you.
An investment, at the mere cost of one child's meal per day, does solve problems. Most parents are happy to be able to afford that investment themselves, but some parents -- through pride or neglect or other reasons -- are unable to afford that much. Why do you think you shouldn't help them?
Hate to turn into Helen Lovejoy here, but won't you please think of the children? The victims of the problem are the children. You're trying to punish the parents, and the kids get caught in the crossfire.
The entire economic future of you and all the taxpayers depends on those kids growing up.
Our entire economic structure is a ponzi scheme at global scale. It depends on kids growing up and cashing into the stock market so people can cash out of their 401ks.
So why not ensure those little gremlins and nice and plump when they grow up so we can retire more easily.
Let it fall. No more ponzi schemes.
Take Finland as an example. Schools are paid for by taxpayers, costing around 8,000 euros per student per year [1] (the numbers don't change much regardless of which level of education you look at). Of that just 570 euro pay for balanced and healthy meals (mostly labor costs).[2] That works out to roughly 3 euro per meal.
The benefit of a good meal probably outweigh many other things you could do with that money when it comes to educating children that are your future taxpayers.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1134054/finland-regular-... [2] https://www.schoolmealscoalition.org/sites/default/files/202...