New York State just passed universal free lunch and breakfast for public school students. Of all the things that we spend our tax dollars on, this feels like a no brainer. Making sure children are fed should be at the top of the list.
this is exhibit A of showing that these country sized states are fully capable of handling their own affairs and universal access to things, the same as the 21st century developed nations that do the same thing
You and the other parties actually agree that it isn't controversial, there are many funding sources if its deemed important, keep the federal government out of it
Disaster recovery is also not the topic nor does it provide any introspective ability on this topic.
yes, I agree if something is not within the budget, and there is also no consensus, then it won't happen. I'm not sure that even needed to be said, but I am familiar with people that would try to make programs happen in those situations too. I would vote no on those proposals in those cases.
1. The budget of most Red states is not balanced.
2. States aren't sovereign institutions.
3. Funding being provided without strings attached is practically nonexistent. Money is allocated for a purpose. Allocating money with no string attached is simply not a thing that state or local governments do, so it's bizarre that you'd think states do this any differently from the federal government.
4. If you want the federal budget to be balanced, definitely you should vote for Democrats, because Republican presidents have increased the national debt more than Democratic ones consistently. Republican austerity is a total lie not borne out by any facts.
Frankly, this is a blatant distraction. I don't give a shit whether it's states or the federal government that feeds kids, I just want a government to feed all the kids in my country.
The only reason conservatives give a shit about state's rights is because being in favor of state's rights sounds a lot better than being against feeding children. But the fact is, when states do things like pass gun regulation or refuse to bypass due process to arrest immigrants, suddenly conservatives are against state's rights. And make no mistake, whenever there is any major movement for states to individually provide school lunches, it's conservatives that oppose it.
I don't think this is the gotcha you think it is.
I never mentioned any party or conservatives or democrats.
I don't think this is the gotcha you think it is.
You are bringing up other positions to discredit a position you assumed I have, because you saw something that overlapped with something partisans say, when the only position I have is that the federal government doesn't need to be involved. and this subthread is about the federal government not being involved, because a state did it on their own. the article is about an individual doing it on their own, the article is about a foundation that does it on their own.
that's the whole position the whole time.
and I don't care who does it, the federal government doesn't need to. not everyone that would be against one particular organization doing the action with money is against the actual action occurring. that's what I think gets lost here, and how its masquaraded as controversial to suggest a different organization is capable of doing it. this article and thread is exhibits a, b, and c of different organizations doing it.
If you spout all the verbatim opinions of a neoconservative, you're probably a neoconservative. I don't care if you identify as a libertarian or an attack helicopter. You're in this thread opposing the only proposed solution to feeding children, so it's pretty clear what you are.
I'm not sure how the observation that other places also lacked consensus at the state level discredits anything.
Some people dislike it on the federal level, and are fine with it at the state level, as they are two different organizations. My comment was only about them.
That is not true. Regardless of what NY state did.
You said:
> People generally don't want the Federal government involved, thats where the consensus has been lacking.
So no, your comment was a claim about "people generally".
If you'd like to say you misspoke, fine, but everyone can read what you said, so there's no point lying about what you said.
Say you have no children. Is it an acceptable position to hold that 'those people who have children should also be the ones to look after them'? Shouldn't you have considered these sorts of expenses and being able to meet them, rather than expecting to receive handouts?
Maybe there is room in there to shame the parents or give them a slap on the wrist, but the kids are blameless and denying them food makes you probably a monster.
I want my country to feed and clothe children because it's the right thing to do. The sort of person that wants an ROI to agree to that, is not a good person.
The devil doesn't need an advocate here.
IIRC there are around 20-30 cases, yearly, mostly the product of abuse by a caretaker/guardian.
You wouldn't say that someone who choked on a glass of water to have drowned, or someone who received a momentary shock from frayed cord to have been electrocuted.
Words have meaning, it's not pedantic to comment on the usage of a word that has a different meaning entirely from manner in which it is being used, in what I suspect is an attempt at an appeal to emotion.
What is the outcome of a flame starved of oxygen? A plant starved of light? A person starved of food?
- if a child was born with poor planning from the parents, it’s too late and unhelpful to say “i told you so”. Feeding a disadvantaged child raises their chances of doing well in school and reduces their chance of being a much larger burden on your tax dollars down the line. Are you saying we should save $5 on this child now so we can spend $100 in the future (subsidizing their social security payments, maybe jail time, maybe homeless, etc)? Sounds like a smart business move! (sarcasm) Feeding kids is good ROI.
- it’s possible to get pregnant even when being responsible. No protection is 100% except for abstinence your entire life.
- you can “plan” for these expenses all you want. Sometimes a spouse dies. Sometimes a person needs to spend money to support their aging parents, AFTER their child is born. Or a divorce ruins one’s finances. Or someone loses their good job due to layoffs. Life is not a simple path, not sure what gave you that illusion.
- congrats you don’t have children. Guess what? When you’re old and need a diaper change in a nursing home, who do you think will be wiping your ass? One of the nurses… one of those kids that is not yours. Who will be delivering food to the grocery store? That’s right, one of those other kids. Who will be your doctor? Right again! One of those other kids.
- it’s easy to be smug until you’re unlucky in life. What if tomorrow you’re hit by a drunk driver and you go bankrupt trying to pay for major medical bills. Suddenly it’s not so fun saying nobody deserves a handout. At the end of the day, this mindset is an empathy problem.
It seems like _most_ of my fellow americans have an empathy problem. Are you all dead inside? Anyway…it’s useful to invest in our society. Not everything is about me me me.
Budgets might be cut directly, so can not feed some percent, budgets might be cut indirectly (less tax revenue). Giving out free food might make people feel entitled and less likely to learn to be self sufficient. The "give a man a fish he eats for day, teach him to fish he eats for a lifetime", type of thinking. Some people might believe it encourages parents to be irresponsible. Back to budgets, it might remove money from other school needs. I guess the thinking would be, schools should teach, food is not their responsibility. If it comes their responsibility then they'll do less teaching which is back to not helping make their students able to ultimately fend for themselves but instead makes them dependent.
I'm not saying I buy those arguments but I can see them as valid arguments.
Helping directly is not always helpful. There's plenty of examples of that. Whether that's true in this case I don't know.
To be clear, the subject is still children, right? Refusing to feed children to "teach" them self-sufficiency is, IMO, right up there with a non-ironic "the children yearn for the mines". What could a self-sufficient 6th-grader even do for money? Steal baby food and small electronics from Target for fencing?
Upon first read I thought they would be sword fighting with stolen bluetooth speakers.
Does it not also have that meaning in commonwealth countries?
The legal term since 1968 seems to be "Handling Stolen Goods", which might have made the word "fencing" less common: https://mcgeemcgeeagarlaw.co.uk/criminal-defence/handling-st...
Asked ChatGPT for examples: https://markdownpastebin.com/?id=86c19b00a4ce4ff1aa3d2d5cb47...
Note, I'm not saything this is how it is. Nor am I saying I believe free school lunches are bad. I'm saying the position that they are bad is a valid defendable position to take.
I think the concern about entitlement better applies when looking out for vultures taking advantage of these campaigners' goodwill by trying to wedge themselves into the middle of any cashflow for as-optimizably-marginal-as-possible contribution to those pipelines. Of course, I'm thinking of this more in some context of if there was a sort of centralized campaign to scale up efforts, say, statewide or nationwide (pardon my U.S-centric perspective), to solicit donations to pay off a bunch of schools' lunch debts in a region.
What on earth does this paragraph have to do with the position that school children should receive free lunch?
- economies of scale in feeding an entire school
- recipients of the benefit (children) and delivery mechanism (kitchens) are already at the right place and time
- can guarantee money is spent on food rather than (for example) a parents gambling addiction
- reduces stigma for poor children to have universality
- can (in theory) deliver better food using school cooking facilities
- saves time even for parents who can afford to feed children
- teaching a hungry child is an uphill battle
Whining about lunch when they should be in the mines.
Stop talking as if there's no human actor involved in this. If budgets are cut (less tax revenue) it's because the same people who oppose feeding kids oppose taxing rich people. This is just people saying, "We can't feed kids, because we might decide to not tax rich people instead." I'm not confused about this possibility or missing this possibility: I'm saying "don't be an asshole, collect enough taxes to feed the kids".
> Giving out free food might make people feel entitled and less likely to learn to be self sufficient.
Stop talking about "people" as if you've forgotten these are children. Kids should feel entitled to eat, because children are entitled to receive food. Obviously we should be preparing them to learn to feed themselves as adults--nobody is confused about that--but it's going to be a whole lot harder for a child to learn if they're unsure about their next meal. And again, it's the same people who oppose school lunches who oppose education programs.
Giving a child a fish and teaching the child to fish are not mutually exclusive. And US conservatives oppose both.
> Back to budgets, it might remove money from other school needs. I guess the thinking would be, schools should teach, food is not their responsibility. If it comes their responsibility then they'll do less teaching which is back to not helping make their students able to ultimately fend for themselves but instead makes them dependent.
Again, stop pretending there's no actors doing this. It's conservatives who are creating these artificially constrained budgets. It's conservatives who are not allocating enough money to both feed and educate children.
I'm simply not interested in any argument which involves pretending there isn't enough money to feed children. There is enough money, you simply don't think feeding children is important enough to collect taxes to do it.
I'm simply not interested in arguments about who should be feeding children. I want the federal government to fund schools to feed children because that's the only viable path to all the children in my country being fed on the table at the moment. You haven't presented any alternatives that work, and you won't, because you are more interested in avoiding taxes than you are in feeding children.
And importantly emphasizing "universal", we're not spending a bunch of money on the bureaucracy of figuring out who gets it and who qualifies and hearing people complain about fraud. They're kids, everybody gets it, nobody set up a test as to which gets get free food.
I pay both MN and NY taxes and couldn't be happier about this expenditure.
I know that free breakfast is another thing that Minnesota did, apparently?
It built upon programs during covid that provided food for kids when schools were closed.