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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

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!

oulipo 1y ago
"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
- mtnGoat 1y ago
  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.
- baq 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  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?
  - redwall_hp 1y ago
    I would accept one fewer aircraft carrier to fund school lunches for the foreseeable future. Also, food cost is effectively artificial. We literally pay farmers not to farm to keep prices viable for market games. Instead of doing that, the government could buy a fraction of athe excess for school systems. And yes, I'd accept taxes on par with non-trashfire countries if they resulted in the society and services of those countries.
mlyle 1y ago
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.
- mtnGoat 1y ago
  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.
  - gopalv 1y ago
    > Just roll it into property taxes and call it a day. It's what my district does and the benefits are obvious - there's no "gimme your lunch money" kids who have it hard at home & trying to supplement their diets. The school even hands out a free breakfast, which serves as monitored childcare for the parents who need to drop their kids off before 8 AM, to get to work. The highschool also gives out double servings for kids who come off the morning sports practice sessions. The cynic in me says the biggest beneficiary will be the US Army, who can reliably look for a stream of well fed kids from families which aren't doing well enough to pay for college.
- hiddencost 1y ago
  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.
aembleton 1y ago
Couldn't you have taken a packed lunch in? Make a sandwich and take it with you.
- mtnGoat 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  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.
  - ljf 1y ago
    Agree - if my 10yo son was in charge of getting his own food for school from our well stocked fridge, I know he'd struggle to get any kind of balance. I know from friends in education who see kids come to school who have had to try to find food to bring in. I live in a relatively well off area but kids still come to school with stuff like just dry bread or a single cereal bar as there just isn't anything to hand for them to bring in for school - looking after their kids welfare isn't a given for a sad and sizeable minority.
- Zanfa 1y ago
  So let them eat cake?
askonomm 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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!
  - bgnn 1y ago
    Yeah, dry bread and cheese..
    - mettamage 1y ago
      Read the HN guidelines. I didn't downvote you, as I am giving you the benefit of the doubt, but it reads as a sarcastic snarky comment [1]. It's bread, butter and cheese. Not dry bread and cheese. I didn't eat that as a kid though, I hated cheese when I was young. The quality of the bread varies, depending on the views of the household. The way I grew up everyone favored white bread but me. I always ate brown bread. Nowadays, I come to the US quite often and it frustrates me that there's almost no supermarket that sells a good loaf of bread. A lot of bread has added sugar and I don't even want to know what other stuff they add to it. I'm not a fan of the bakeries either as the bread they make tastes alright, but not for $8. So whenever I'm in the US, I make my own bread, because even after a first try, it was better [2] (by an American baker. It's not that they can't - it's just that affordable nice bread is not a pervasive thing in the US). And if you genuinely think it's dry bread and cheese. You're wrong, I know what dry bread tastes like. Done well, it's called toast. My school lunch was bread with butter and a fried egg. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdoP33KPYtY&ab_channel=BrianLagerstrom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdoP33KPYtY&ab_channel=Brian...
renewiltord 1y ago
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.
snkzxbs 1y ago
[flagged]
- madeofpalk 1y ago
  I'm confused - you think kids should go hungry?
  - gsck 1y ago
    I'm confused - where did they say that?
    - MadcapJake 1y ago
      They said that implicitly by choosing to debate a trivial sentence designed to impart the reader with the sense of importance that this principle holds for the OP. This kind of tone policing is a tactic designed to pull you away from the original argument.
      - gsck 1y ago
        Or maybe they just don't think wishing ill upon someone for having a different world view than you or I is an reasonable thought? I think school meals should be free, I do not wish harm to anyone who disagrees on that. People disagree all the time, I don't start calling them subhuman
- thrance 1y ago
  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.
  - gonzobonzo 1y ago
    The OP wouldn't have starved. There appears to have been food in the house the OP could have taken, but the OP didn't because he wanted his father to, in his words, "buy lunch food." You'll note that he says his family could afford food, but that he dad wouldn't pay for school lunch specifically because he thought the government should pay for it. The previous poster didn't want to bring the food that was in his home because it wasn't "lunch food," so he justifies how he stole from his father, his classmates, and local businesses. And now he's going to judge other people's humanity by whether or not they agree with his stance that he was entitled to the kind of lunch he wanted, and call people subhuman if they disagree. I'm someone who's in favor of the government providing free lunches, but this discussion shows why caution is needed. To many people will ignore the actually events that happened and start manufacturing catastrophes, then say that because of their fabricated scenario anyone who isn't in favor of what they want is a horrible human being, or that they were justified for harming others.
LandR 1y ago
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 1y ago
  "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.
  - pmg101 1y ago
    It could do but only for the kids that would be competing closely with your own children, so of a similar socioeconomic status. For children from much poorer backgrounds it's more likely that making their prospects even worse will just create later negative impacts on society, such as crime, drug addiction, prostitution, gang violence and so on.
  - mistersquid 1y ago
    > "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? Some may think and behave along these lines. Their problem is that they conceive economic activity as zero-sum, which it is not. Good educational outcomes generate wealth for everyone.
- brainzap 1y ago
  This. It also creates peace
mobtrain 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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.
  - notnaut 1y ago
    This, and there’s something all-too human about ignoring or even basking in the suffering of others, including children. Pretending it’s somehow less than human to be on that side of things feels a bit head-in-sand.
    - sneak 1y ago
      A certain amount of ignoring human suffering is positively required to exist in the modern world, otherwise it would be an impossible-to-defend-against exploit to walk up to happy people in the first world and say “ten thousand children die every day from lack of access to clean water”, because then you would permanently alter or ruin their life. FWIW this is true on Earth today. It is required to turn a blind eye to slavery and oppression and hunger and thirst and preventable death and disease otherwise it would be impossible to have any semblance of a happy life in the good parts of the world, because the scale of preventable human suffering is both epic and, thus far, neverending.
- amelius 1y ago
pif 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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.
veunes 1y ago
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 1y ago
  It sticks with you for a while and creates interesting views on things throughout life.
smeeger 1y ago
[flagged]
chronid 1y ago
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.
theoreticalmal 1y ago
One should not view others as subhuman because of the ideas they hold.
pc86 1y ago
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 1y ago
  You are entitled to your opinion, despite throwing an insult in to point out an insult. lol, nice hypocrisy. ;)
  - pc86 1y ago
    hypocrisy /hĭ-pŏk′rĭ-sē/ noun 1. The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness. 2. An act or instance of such falseness. Sorry no hypocrisy detected.
1970-01-01 1y ago
>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-in-public-school-cafeterias https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/expired-food-served-... https://wchsinsight.org/33581/opinion/school-food-causes-complaints-among-students/ https://wchsinsight.org/33581/opinion/school-food-causes-com... https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/childhood-obesity-facts/childhood-obesity-facts.html https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/childhood-obesity-facts/childhoo...
- Capricorn2481 1y ago
  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.
smileysteve 1y ago
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)
casey2 1y ago
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.
asdf6969 1y ago
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.

oulipo 1y ago

"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

mtnGoat 1y ago
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.
baq 1y ago
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 1y ago
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?
- redwall_hp 1y ago
  I would accept one fewer aircraft carrier to fund school lunches for the foreseeable future. Also, food cost is effectively artificial. We literally pay farmers not to farm to keep prices viable for market games. Instead of doing that, the government could buy a fraction of athe excess for school systems. And yes, I'd accept taxes on par with non-trashfire countries if they resulted in the society and services of those countries.

mlyle 1y ago

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.

mtnGoat 1y ago
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.
- gopalv 1y ago
  > Just roll it into property taxes and call it a day. It's what my district does and the benefits are obvious - there's no "gimme your lunch money" kids who have it hard at home & trying to supplement their diets. The school even hands out a free breakfast, which serves as monitored childcare for the parents who need to drop their kids off before 8 AM, to get to work. The highschool also gives out double servings for kids who come off the morning sports practice sessions. The cynic in me says the biggest beneficiary will be the US Army, who can reliably look for a stream of well fed kids from families which aren't doing well enough to pay for college.
hiddencost 1y ago
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.

aembleton 1y ago

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

mtnGoat 1y ago
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 1y ago
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.
- ljf 1y ago
  Agree - if my 10yo son was in charge of getting his own food for school from our well stocked fridge, I know he'd struggle to get any kind of balance. I know from friends in education who see kids come to school who have had to try to find food to bring in. I live in a relatively well off area but kids still come to school with stuff like just dry bread or a single cereal bar as there just isn't anything to hand for them to bring in for school - looking after their kids welfare isn't a given for a sad and sizeable minority.
Zanfa 1y ago
So let them eat cake?

askonomm 1y ago

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 1y ago
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!
- bgnn 1y ago
  Yeah, dry bread and cheese..
  - mettamage 1y ago
    Read the HN guidelines. I didn't downvote you, as I am giving you the benefit of the doubt, but it reads as a sarcastic snarky comment [1]. It's bread, butter and cheese. Not dry bread and cheese. I didn't eat that as a kid though, I hated cheese when I was young. The quality of the bread varies, depending on the views of the household. The way I grew up everyone favored white bread but me. I always ate brown bread. Nowadays, I come to the US quite often and it frustrates me that there's almost no supermarket that sells a good loaf of bread. A lot of bread has added sugar and I don't even want to know what other stuff they add to it. I'm not a fan of the bakeries either as the bread they make tastes alright, but not for $8. So whenever I'm in the US, I make my own bread, because even after a first try, it was better [2] (by an American baker. It's not that they can't - it's just that affordable nice bread is not a pervasive thing in the US). And if you genuinely think it's dry bread and cheese. You're wrong, I know what dry bread tastes like. Done well, it's called toast. My school lunch was bread with butter and a fried egg. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdoP33KPYtY&ab_channel=BrianLagerstrom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdoP33KPYtY&ab_channel=Brian...

renewiltord 1y ago

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.

snkzxbs 1y ago

[flagged]

madeofpalk 1y ago
I'm confused - you think kids should go hungry?
- gsck 1y ago
  I'm confused - where did they say that?
  - MadcapJake 1y ago
    They said that implicitly by choosing to debate a trivial sentence designed to impart the reader with the sense of importance that this principle holds for the OP. This kind of tone policing is a tactic designed to pull you away from the original argument.
    - gsck 1y ago
      Or maybe they just don't think wishing ill upon someone for having a different world view than you or I is an reasonable thought? I think school meals should be free, I do not wish harm to anyone who disagrees on that. People disagree all the time, I don't start calling them subhuman
thrance 1y ago
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.
- gonzobonzo 1y ago
  The OP wouldn't have starved. There appears to have been food in the house the OP could have taken, but the OP didn't because he wanted his father to, in his words, "buy lunch food." You'll note that he says his family could afford food, but that he dad wouldn't pay for school lunch specifically because he thought the government should pay for it. The previous poster didn't want to bring the food that was in his home because it wasn't "lunch food," so he justifies how he stole from his father, his classmates, and local businesses. And now he's going to judge other people's humanity by whether or not they agree with his stance that he was entitled to the kind of lunch he wanted, and call people subhuman if they disagree. I'm someone who's in favor of the government providing free lunches, but this discussion shows why caution is needed. To many people will ignore the actually events that happened and start manufacturing catastrophes, then say that because of their fabricated scenario anyone who isn't in favor of what they want is a horrible human being, or that they were justified for harming others.

LandR 1y ago

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 1y ago
"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.
- pmg101 1y ago
  It could do but only for the kids that would be competing closely with your own children, so of a similar socioeconomic status. For children from much poorer backgrounds it's more likely that making their prospects even worse will just create later negative impacts on society, such as crime, drug addiction, prostitution, gang violence and so on.
- mistersquid 1y ago
  > "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? Some may think and behave along these lines. Their problem is that they conceive economic activity as zero-sum, which it is not. Good educational outcomes generate wealth for everyone.
brainzap 1y ago
This. It also creates peace

mobtrain 1y ago

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 1y ago
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.
- notnaut 1y ago
  This, and there’s something all-too human about ignoring or even basking in the suffering of others, including children. Pretending it’s somehow less than human to be on that side of things feels a bit head-in-sand.
  - sneak 1y ago
    A certain amount of ignoring human suffering is positively required to exist in the modern world, otherwise it would be an impossible-to-defend-against exploit to walk up to happy people in the first world and say “ten thousand children die every day from lack of access to clean water”, because then you would permanently alter or ruin their life. FWIW this is true on Earth today. It is required to turn a blind eye to slavery and oppression and hunger and thirst and preventable death and disease otherwise it would be impossible to have any semblance of a happy life in the good parts of the world, because the scale of preventable human suffering is both epic and, thus far, neverending.
amelius 1y ago

pif 1y ago

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 1y ago
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.

veunes 1y ago

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 1y ago
It sticks with you for a while and creates interesting views on things throughout life.

smeeger 1y ago

[flagged]

chronid 1y ago

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.

theoreticalmal 1y ago

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

pc86 1y ago

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 1y ago
You are entitled to your opinion, despite throwing an insult in to point out an insult. lol, nice hypocrisy. ;)
- pc86 1y ago
  hypocrisy /hĭ-pŏk′rĭ-sē/ noun 1. The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness. 2. An act or instance of such falseness. Sorry no hypocrisy detected.

1970-01-01 1y ago

>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-in-public-school-cafeterias https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/expired-food-served-... https://wchsinsight.org/33581/opinion/school-food-causes-complaints-among-students/ https://wchsinsight.org/33581/opinion/school-food-causes-com... https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/childhood-obesity-facts/childhood-obesity-facts.html https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/childhood-obesity-facts/childhoo...

Capricorn2481 1y ago
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.

smileysteve 1y ago

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)

casey2 1y ago

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.

asdf6969 1y ago

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.