One issue with universal free school lunches here in Sweden in recent years has been that it is incredibly easy for schools to reduce the lunch budget if they ever struggle financially. This is because each small successive cut is barely noticed and the main group who suffer can't exactly go anywhere else.
So school lunches get continuously worse nutritionally (schools will most likely excuse this with the environmental impact) and then it begins to defeat the purpose of the project itself.
Free school lunch removes responsibility from parents, placing it with government. It encourages a mindset of dependence on government. It is not “pro-family.”
To be fair though, if you have compulsory education then it seems justifiable to provide for the kids while they’re there, since it’s not like they have a choice in the matter
Why? Most parents are tax-payers, they are just getting some of their own money back in services, not alms.
For most people it is a tax cut and it encourages a customer view of the government: you pay taxes, you expect services, the state is just a huge service provider business.
For those who are net recipients, well I guess they are already in a bad enough situation that the amount of dependency is not the main problem.
>The infrastructure required to means test children could be disappeared, and that infrastructure *is* expensive. The cost of means-testing infrastructure has unfortunately not been itemized for the U.S. as a whole, but it’s not hard to imagine it running into the millions.
For a program whose cost is in the tens of billions, I don't know that "millions" would be particularly expensive.
I don't get why free meals decrease the amount that households spend on non-lunch, non-breakfast food items.
One reason I can think of is that kids are getting more nutritious lunches than they used to, so parents compensate for the free lunch by giving their kids less food for dinner. But that doesn't sound like a success.
If that is because they are less hungry, it is a success. Childhood obesity is a problem anyway, so one has to be carefully navigate between not enough and too much.
One issue with universal free school lunches here in Sweden in recent years has been that it is incredibly easy for schools to reduce the lunch budget if they ever struggle financially. This is because each small successive cut is barely noticed and the main group who suffer can't exactly go anywhere else.
So school lunches get continuously worse nutritionally (schools will most likely excuse this with the environmental impact) and then it begins to defeat the purpose of the project itself.
Free school lunch removes responsibility from parents, placing it with government. It encourages a mindset of dependence on government. It is not “pro-family.”
To be fair though, if you have compulsory education then it seems justifiable to provide for the kids while they’re there, since it’s not like they have a choice in the matter
Oh come on. This is like a caricature of bootstrap mentality.
Why? Most parents are tax-payers, they are just getting some of their own money back in services, not alms.
For most people it is a tax cut and it encourages a customer view of the government: you pay taxes, you expect services, the state is just a huge service provider business.
For those who are net recipients, well I guess they are already in a bad enough situation that the amount of dependency is not the main problem.
Exactly, another socialist program.
Counterpoint: school lunches taste like absolute horsesh*t and I would only ever feed it to someone as a torture method
I live in Sweden (born in 89). Half the pupils by the age of 13 were eating food from outside school because of how bad it is.
>The infrastructure required to means test children could be disappeared, and that infrastructure *is* expensive. The cost of means-testing infrastructure has unfortunately not been itemized for the U.S. as a whole, but it’s not hard to imagine it running into the millions.
For a program whose cost is in the tens of billions, I don't know that "millions" would be particularly expensive.
The school lunch on offer is very low quality, I wouldn’t feed it to my kids.
I don't get why free meals decrease the amount that households spend on non-lunch, non-breakfast food items.
One reason I can think of is that kids are getting more nutritious lunches than they used to, so parents compensate for the free lunch by giving their kids less food for dinner. But that doesn't sound like a success.
Am I missing something obvious?
If that is because they are less hungry, it is a success. Childhood obesity is a problem anyway, so one has to be carefully navigate between not enough and too much.
The benefits would be even greater if the children were also provided with breakfast and dinner and clean, safe housing. Boarding schools for all!
It's a good policy in some senses, but requires removing goyslop and also acknowledging race is more important school lunches for test scores.
They both are loons. This is not a person of wisdom: https://torrancestephensphd.substack.com/p/i-got-5-on-it
Besides, All she has is sexism/racism, which last I heard was not a policy.
Here is a Historical Account of The Negative Impact of Democrat Party Rule, Dominance and Policy on Black America. https://shorturl.at/52NYx