Over 7,000 students in Georgia with unpaid lunch balances are getting a helping hand following a $1 million initiative from the Arby’s Foundation, the nonprofit announced Thursday.
It is biblical. Charity to people like Paul was freely given out of love vs welfare-taxation system we have now.
Of course a good person who was a Christian could reason out
“Paul was in Rome so he must have seen the free donations of food given by the emperor to the city’s poor but didn’t comment on it. Which meant that when he talks about charity he is talking about a supplement, yes a supplement not a first response, to actual effective large scale operations. I should be happy with both. A good government that works hard that I add too. Not a bad government I helped create and stick a bandaid on by throwing a twenty in the collection plate”.
A pity this doesn’t seem to occur to them. Despite the theological wiggle room.
That's the reasoning that I used to hear from Florida retirees when they griped about paying taxes that supported the local schools. Some people are so self-centered.
There are many many programs and places for parents to get food to feed their children, why dont they use one of those instead of being enabled by the state to not feed their children?
This with their slogan “we’ve got the meats” and there is a good cannibalism joke somewhere in there.
Yes, charity is great. Fixing society level problems with society level solutions is better. We need to get salaries higher and limit the cost of living increases. For food the best way is to stop paying farmers to under produce and instead work on getting the price to move food down. Let the price for food rush to the bottom and at the same time increase the salaries of everyone on the bottom.
Yeah, I was thinking for what arby’s pays lobbyists to avoid taxes and wage increases, they could lobby once more for higher wages, higher taxes on wealthy and corporations, lower retail cost, and more government dollars for free, comprehensive, quality food, education and healthcare and just fix the problem. The C employees and board wouldn’t even have to do without another yacht to do it, just budget better.
children having lunch debt isnt a thing that should exist in the supposedly richest country in the world.
and it shouldnt be reliant upon kind and generous donations for them to be fed.
for fucks sake, I’m tired of these stories made to look as feel good stories when they are nothing but documentation of the decline of our civilization.
“Oh, yes, children. You can’t eat today because you are poor, lest some generous noble allows it with a meager donation of a fraction of their wealth”
Malnutrition leads to all kinds of cognitive problems or developmental issues, which just increases the burden on society later from medical or social issues developed by such people. Lunch debt is a shitty, gross concept and I hate living in a world where it exists.
Even as a tax right-off it costs money. For instance about ⅓ of my income goes to taxes, so every $100 I donate to charity results in me saving about $33 in taxes. So a $100 donation only costs me about $67. It still costs me, and it still costs companies real money who make charitable contributions. They should be recognized for it.
It also does a lot to help them keep their “meager” profit margins that they artificially keep low to avoid paying taxes in the first place.
How about we get all the extra money that taxing would give us and then charity can be given out afterwards. Yes it costs them money but they already aren’t paying their fair share.
States that opted out of federal funding for school lunches (because fuck them poor kids) let hungry children run up a tab on cafeteria lunches. Then they punish and publicly shame them for not paying. Why? FREEDOM. 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸
HOW the hell did USA happen into an idea of putting goddamn KIDS into debt?! I mean, I live in EU. In my country, there were school-run lunches…or rather dinners, anyway. These were paid upfront, once per month, at overall small price (still somewhat pricey, but actual alternative for families that didn’t want to pack sandwiches for their kids.)
But ALSO! Wtf USA? If lunch is such a problem, why not, dunno, make your child lunch for school at home?
I cannot wrap my head around this. It’s weird. Too weird.
The families in question don’t have the time or money to serve breakfast and pack lunches, both parents work multiple jobs to make ends not quite meet, type of situation. School meals are a convenience for middle/upper class families and a life preserver for low income/food insecure families. For a lot of those kids it’s the only meals they get that day.
At my school growing up we had the pre paid lunch cards in a file at the start of the lunch line, the lunch card lady would find and punch your card when you went through. The “free lunch” cards were a different color than the “pre paid lunch” cards, which some of the parents worried was causing embarrassment for the children on food assistance. So the PTA voted to make them all the same color, with no way for kids to see if other kids qualified for free lunches.
That’s the difference between conservative and progressive states. As of last year in California all schools are required to offer breakfast and lunch to all children regardless of ability to pay. In my area (of California) there are stations set up daily through out the summer break to distribute sack lunches for kids who don’t eat when they don’t go to school.
Conservative states literally refuse free money from the federal government for these programs (the states do have to put up some money for it too) because they don’t think that anyone should get “something for nothing” including hungry children. To the point that these kids get their food thrown in the trash after they’ve been served, by grown up bullies who work for the school. Because that’s what Jesus would do.
You know what, the more I read the more I believe that ya all live in some sort of dysfunctioning dystopia. First thought was “then why won’t they move somewhere cheaper” but I guess in USA it may be not possible, am I right?
I mean, in what hellish place both parents have to take more than one job just to survive? One of them wpuld be understandable. One struggling with many while other stays at home too. But both? WTF.
Anyway, thanks for comment, ot was informative if not depressing.
There is a federal lunch subsidy program, and many states also have their own lunch programs. The program even extends through the summer.
Several caveats.
First, not every state participates. This is free money that states could use to feed hungry kids, and some states are just like “nah, fuck them kids.”
Second, parents generally have to apply for the program. You fill out some forms, and the kids get subsidized lunches. That’s a problem, because not every parent knows the programs exist, not every parent speaks English or Spanish or another language the school might be thoughtful enough to have the forms translated into. At my kids’ elementary school, during Covid, we learned that there are 32 different first languages spoken in the homes of students. Sharing information is a problem.
Third, the subsidized lunch is often a lesser meal than what the paying kids get. It might be a cheese and white bread sandwich, an apple sauce, and some milk. Now, sure, if you’re hungry, food is better than no food. But kids know what the brown bag lunch means. It’s embarrassing, creates division across income levels, and can encourage some hungry kids to choose not to accept the food rather than face ridicule.
But you know what’s amazing? During Covid, school meal providers were facing financial ruin. They had contracts to provide food for a bunch of kids that weren’t in the schools. Sysco and Aramark and many others were staring at a total loss for all of their school lunch programs, and the government bailed them out. The state and federal governments found a way to pay for all the school lunches and give them away for free to all students in every state. There wasn’t even a debate, and no politicians opposed it.
The money was just there, no strings or hoops or pork barrel haggling. Major industry is facing crisis, and suddenly we can afford to feed all the kids, no exceptions, no forms or paperwork. Local food banks were overflowing with frozen meals and fresh produce and all the tiny cartons of milk you can imagine.
Now, you could say that Covid was an emergency, that the collapse of the school lunch industry would have horrible economic ramifications, and that would be true.
But it wasn’t even expensive, and that was for everybody. There’s no reason we could not afford to provide free lunches to any child in America who asks for it, and I mean a real lunch. The same thing the kid who paid is getting. School cafeterias throw away more food than the value of food given away as part of free lunch programs AND unpaid lunch debts combined. Feeding every child would be a rounding error, and nobody would be stigmatized or penalized because their parents couldn’t afford their lunch.
First, not every state participates. This is free money that states could use to feed hungry kids, and some states are just like “nah, fuck them kids.”
Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont and Wyoming.
The program requires states to pay half of the administrative costs - not the benefit itself, just the costs associated with distributing the benefit.
The federal free lunch program would have brought $18,000,000 to the state, at a total cost of $300,000 to the state. The governor refused the program, saying “I don’t believe in welfare.”
Nebraska receives $1,100,000,000 per year in agricultural subsidies. He doesn’t have a problem taking federal dollars to feed pigs, but kids are on their own.
You know, I’m ok with this one. Hungry kids got to eat. The problem is that we stopped so that the lunch programs could go back to the more profitable paid system.
Government can and should do things to support the economy in times of crisis. But the money should flow through the citizens, not be paid directly to industries. Give the money to schools and communities to pay off their lunch contracts, and let the schools distribute the food. That’s a good bailout. Imagine if, during the housing crash, we had given money to every taxpayer to pay their rent or mortgage. The banks would have been bailed out, prices wouldn’t have crashed as hard, defaults would have dropped dramatically, and we would all be in a little less debt.
It’s a clash of two worldviews. The purest form of capitalism believes that the individual is selfish and thinks only of himself. Therefore, it’s up to the individual to succeed no matter what, relying only on himself.
On the other hand, we have the Scandinavian system, where the individual is not inherently selfish, but selfless, it’s all about reciprocity, helping each other.
To me, the purest form of capitalism is pure evil. It sees the world as half empty instead of half full.
I highly disagree, because the purest form of capitalism expects there to be rules and safeguards against exactly that. I may be biased, because to me Rhine Capitalism is the purest form, as the markets itself are completely free to define prices and have open and fair competitions, leading to egalitarian distribution of goods.
However, as society grows more selfish, sadly it doesn’t work anymore. Like democracy and various other forms or organisation.
Um, bullshit. Pure capitalism is entirely unregulated. Regulation, fair trade, prohibitions against monopolies and anticompetitive practices, labor rights, those are all socialist additions.
The US does regulate the hell out of unions though. Right to Work is a regulation twisting the free market. So is the prohibition on solidarity strikes.
Pretty soon it will be the norm that when you graduate high school you take your first bankruptcy and clean your slate before your life really starts to matter. Hell it’s only 7 years, you got 4 years of college so only 3 more till you can start living again! Well I guess after you somehow pay off those new college loans as well.
“Then he took the seven loaves and the fish, and when he had given thanks, he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and they in turn gave to the people. They all ate and were satisfied. Afterward, they were all given invoices and in his majestic mercy he allowed them all an extra 30 days to pay.”
Add comment