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Comment by freehorse | Hacker News Reader

I feel like this has already been discussed before one million times more than the simplicity of the issue should require.

Any income etc based coupon system is inefficient and automatically excludes a big portion of children that such measures are supposed to be for, eg because a lot of them come from families that are too dysfunctional to apply for those, ignorant of them due to language and other barriers, or because of (perceived or not) social stigma. And while adults are considered responsible for their own lives, it is a total moral bankruptcy for a society to have their children starve for their parents dysfunction. At the same time, providing free lunch to children at school solves/eases a lot of social, health and other issues all at once, for a cost that is basically peanuts compared to how impactful it can be.

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We can't keep pretending that punishing kids for their parents' circumstances is anything but cruel

"it is a total moral bankruptcy for a society to have their children starve for their parents dysfunction."

Sounds like child services should take those children then? If they can't apply for the lunches, then surely they aren't getting food at home, nor the proper medical care.

Yes, and while waiting for the child services to intervene then those children would still be starving.

I think you underestimate how quickly they can get involved (not always a good thing).

> Sounds like child services should take those children then?

This is a HUGE, dangerous leap.

> If they can't apply for the lunches, then surely they aren't getting food at home, nor the proper medical care.

Plenty of parents (and plenty of people generally) just aren't aware of social services but are quite aware that they're supposed to feed and care for their children. Plenty more forget to fill out paperwork and return phone calls. Many states' governments actively make applying for welfare and support difficult or inconvenient - plenty of parents can't take the time to return paperwork in person, make phone calls during the workday, etc. Needing support - either welfare or just kindness and assistance - is not a moral failure and not a sign of a bad parent.

Beyond that, CPS wouldn't necessarily provide a great life for the child. There is a lot of difference between an imperfect parent and a danger to a child. Oh, and of course, CPS is a lot more expensive to run than a few meals. Giving out free meals at school is a lot easier if we want kids to be fed.

As an anecdote, I was laid off from my job once, and someone asked me if I applied for unemployment within my state. I didn't know it existed, nor that I was eligible until months later when a barista told me during small talk. The whole time I managed to remember to feed myself (and my family). I sure hope no internet commenter would look at that and decide to take my children away!

"This is a HUGE, dangerous leap."

If you're telling me they are "starving" then it isn't.

My wife was one of these kids. She knew then (and I know now) how and why she tried desperately to get into a state program and away from her drug addict parents. Living in the desert, in a broken trailer, 2 adults and 2 children, only a water tank (reuse that bath water), miles of flat hard (or wet slick) brown dirt in 120 degree heat in every direction. No money, no radio, sometimes TV rabbit ears.

Begging for food from grocery store clerks as her parents bought beer and toilet paper inside, drugs outside. She grew up thinking they were derelict because of the drugs. As they got older and had to quit the drugs or die, she found they were just unfit people.

Lots of people in the world are unfit to care for the children, but the children often persevere and society absorbs the damaged alongside the deaths.

This colors my views of the world, as much as anything I experienced.

It's disappointing that there is such an automatic response to cover up for the parents who starve their children that people automatically dismissed your argument.

I have a problem with government stepping in to remove children from their parents but parents should definitely be blamed for their own child starving. I think all empathy should go to the child who is starving and significantly less to the parent who caused it (even if they are starving too, they are an adult and they have significantly more choices then a starving child)

It's a reductive one-liner from someone obviously unfamiliar with and disinterested in the problem space, and it's the kind of statement people familiar with and interested in the problem space hear so frequently that it sounds intentionally ignorant.

When you're reasoning outside of your own domain it's easy to get stuck in a "yeah, but why male models?" loop unless you listen to feedback.

That's very judgemental, assuming he's unfamiliar and disinterested.

A lot of people have their own detailed reasons for why things are happening that don't make sense when you zoom out and ask basic questions. E.g the children are already starving, all the nuance you are describing is based on the assumption that the children aren't already starving.

I got reduced price lunch for a significant part of my childhood.

My parents weren't bad. My mom was just impoverished. Our society does not pay people what they deserve. Our society pays people as little as possible. That leads to good, well meaning, and talented people who are nevertheless poor.

Lose your job, lose your children. Great policy ideas from the thoughtful HN crowd, as always.

That's not a real argument. There are plenty of assistance programs, including free school lunches.

How many assistance programs have you applied for? Frankly, if you haven't applied for any, your opinion is uninformed. Even people who are told how difficult it is, underestimate how difficult it is to apply for many programs.

I've helped a bunch of homeless folks apply to assistance programs (not for school lunches, but for a lot of other aid) and almost universally, applying for aid is extremely difficult. I've walked at least 30 people through the process of applying for housing aid and I'm pretty sure exactly none of them have actually received aid. The only program's I've seen people actually successfully apply for were medicaid and SNAP. It is the norm for it to take over a month to receive medicaid, and it's the norm for it to take over 6 months to receive SNAP. Meanwhile people are dying of medical conditions and starving.

Now add in all the reasons people are in this position in the first place--these people are struggling. It's hard to apply for these programs, and it's harder when everything else in your life is going poorly as well.

And after all that, you might discover that you don't qualify even though you clearly have need. In the OP the author notes that many families with lunch debt were right above the income line for receiving aid.

Some political forces are concerned that people will take advantage of these programs who shouldn't, and others simply don't want these programs to work so that they can have an excuse to cut them, and as a result there are numerous hurdles set up before you can obtain any sort of aid.

That's also in the heart of the issue, having arbitrary thresholds and obscure bureaucracy here makes it easier also to restrict or even close down such a subsidised program, which can be harder when a permanent program of free school lunches has been established.

The NSLP has been around for more than 50 years. It doesn't seem to be going anywhere. It serves about 4.5 billion lunches annually with 70% of them being free or reduced. It seems there isn't a problem here.

As it stands today, making sure that all children who need them are provided with healthy school lunches is far from a solved problem.

There are problems and inefficiencies in the NSLP. Making free lunches available to every child would solve some of them. That's unlikely to happen any time soon though. The current administration has repeatedly threatened and chipped away at the program while also making it harder to provide safe and healthy food to the children who are currently enrolled.

At the rate things are going I wouldn't have so much faith that the program will continue or, if it is to continue, that it wont continue to be made worse and leave an increasing number of children going hungry.

It's abundantly clear that you didn't read the article.

Yes, I'm familiar with medicaid and some other stuff. Your complaint about SNAP ignores foodbanks. They usually don't check anything and it starts immediately. This can cover the gap. Medicaid may take months to recieve but it can cover costs incurred since applying retroactively once it is approved. Most hospitals even have case workers that will help patients apply.

It's abundantly clear you're looking for evidence for what you already believe instead of educating yourself and forming an opinion.

> Yes, I'm familiar with medicaid and some other stuff.

...and you're notably not disagreeing with anything I said about them.

> Your complaint about SNAP ignores foodbanks.

Food banks can safely be ignored. The nearest food bank to where I am currently located is a 20 minute drive, with no public transit that goes there, so you're SOL without a car, and it's run by a church which is extremely conservative (i.e. gay and trans people need to put up with hearing how they're going to hell if they'll be served at all). They're also open 1 day a week.

Food banks are great--but they should not be necessary.

> Medicaid may take months to recieve but it can cover costs incurred since applying retroactively once it is approved.

Do you even know what a poor person is, or do you simply lack all empathy?

Poor people don't get to "incur costs". They simply can't pay for care and then therefore don't receive it. So getting reimbursed for care they didn't receive because they couldn't pay for it, isn't really all that helpful.

Applying for school lunches is pretty simple compared to most any other programs. The schools in general really want as many as possible on free lunches, not only does it give students free lunch, but it is used to calculate all sorts of grants.

Applying for medicaid and SNAP is quite a bit more difficult, especially for a homeless person. But school lunches is really as simple as it could be, excepting just making it free for everyone.

Wait a second, didn't you say such programs are false solutions a comment or two above?

The world is not black or white, there are many reasons that parents may not apply for that, and deciding how child services should intervene in each case is much harder and time consuming problem than just providing free lunch to kids. It makes no sense to not solve the easy problem first.

Except that's a false solution. That does nothing to fix the neglect at home, especially over weekends and summers.

"Sorry Timmy, I know you're hungry but giving you a school lunch portion would actually be a false solution. It would do nothing to fix the neglect you experience at home, especially over weekends and summers."

The reasons that lead to these situations are extremely complex socially and they are not the same for every family, region, population group etc. It is not (just) about isolated families with shitty parents. I am not saying that there should be no child service intervening etc (which also should not always be just about taking children away), but that thinking that there is a fast, easy solution ignores the complexity. If child services intervene, it is often hard to actually change living situations. Taking children away is not always better for children, and often there is no good system in place for taking care of them, to put it mildly. There is no way to just "take children away" at scale in a way that is not making the situation shitty for many of them, like how it worked for aboriginal people in australia and greenland, and in general there is an important specificity problem when such approaches scale (which also is highly affected by cultural, racial, socioeconomic and other biases). In the best case (hypothetical) scenario that there is actually good will by the state to solve these, it would still take years if not decades. So I don't see that as a good argument for not giving free school lunch to kids.

Yes weekends and summer is a still problem in terms of food, I am not sure how it could be solved, but it is definitely not solved by not giving food the rest of the year too.

What do you propose to do with these children, once they have been taken away from their families?

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