It's actively more efficient to just give free food to everyone, qualifying it just adds administrative overhead and gives space for already at-risk people to fall through the cracks because holy shit guess what, they don't tend to have the time or energy to spend on filling in 500 pages of paperwork to apply for welfare!
Yes, fucking give billionaires potatoes, i think society can survive that terrible terrible expense.
Hang on. Are you saying government bureaucracies are inefficient and wasteful. You need to be careful expressing opinions like that round here you'll get down voted.
Food should be a basic right. So, yes. I would argue that it should be the government's job.
In fact, I would argue that all the basic survival needs should just be provided to us free of charge. Leave money and income and working as such for earning yourself luxuries.
Anything less and you're just forcing people to work under the threat of starvation and homelessness. And is that right?
...also were talking about literal children here. It's not like they have a choice exactly.
I agree. We need a federal lawsuit to enforce this. The federal government has been completely ignoring homelessness and the complete lack of a social safety net throughout the US and it's just killing the country.
100% wrong. Anything that can run out can never be a "right". Freedom of speech can be, freedom from unjust search and seizure can be.
What happens when the money, or the food, or the houses run out?
I'm in the UK. It doesn't matter that we have an NHS (which I am a huge fan of btw), I have zero hope of being able to use it in anything like a timely manner because it's falling to bits. Not even healthcare can be a "right"
NHS is a government service you explicitly pay for (unless you are exempt from NI). It is not a right, it is something you purchase. You can be exempt from paying due to your personal circumstances, but if all is well - you pay.
The fact that our beloved government does not deliver what you pay for is another topic, but it certainly should.
Thin ice. I believe there must be a balance between free capitalism and a moderately strong government with a safety net. People do fail in life, that should not necessarily lead to death. Children in particular are hungry not because they failed, but because their parents did. And there is a role for the government to support the children in need. This was a role of a tribe in the early days, or community slightly later; then governments took over.
This safety net has to exist for other categories of people in need, the extent of this support is to be debated in a healthy society.
Personally I do see a merit even in the universal income. Not because this is everyone's birthright, but because it may soon become a necessity.
To feed children? Step back, take a look in the mirror, and ask yourself where you went wrong that you're talking about taking away food from children's mouths. You are a monster.
If you also think abortion should be illegal in addition to not feeding them, you aren't just a monster, you're an indescribably awful evil.
Who says I'm against free school meals. Just not distributing them in a wasteful way. Tell you what, we have the school meals, but it has one control, you have to apply. That's it, no means testing. That would reduce the number of meals severed to wealthy children straight away.
In the UK we have a similar thing with heating bills. Old people get a heating allowance if they need it or not. You can't chose to not have it. Let's put the same control on there
I can afford £2 a day, happily, but my youngest gets meals regardless. In fact, these meals were a huge problem for lots of schools that were not equipment to feed the first 3 years of school entrants.
Why don't you take a look in the mirror and ask how you can be happy garisnhig the wages of low I come workers to feed my children?
You do realize taxes are not the same amount taken from everyone? And if you're poor enough you don't pay anything on taxes. If you're a step above that, you get back everything you paid on taxes at the end of the year. I'm not really sure why you think tax funded lunches would garnish wages from the poor.
No, it's not a straw man at all. It's a logical thing to bring up when you are stating that children don't deserve to be fed by taxpayer money. The state forces chosen to exist and then makes it illegal for taxes to pay for their food thereby proving that they don't give a damn about the kids at all.
To put ovide an environment of personal safety and property rights so people can be independently prosperus. I have no issue with a welfare state, but that is not the primary function of government.
What happens when you run out of other peoples money?
In my opinion, yes. But even if you disagree with that.
This is the federal government attempting to undo states choosing to feed children. So this is even worse, this is them actively taking away the ability for states to choose to feed children.
It literally is, by the doctrine on parens patriae. It is the duty of the state to act in the best interests of its citizens who unable to pursue those interests themselves, whether it’s because they are incapacitated, or minors. This goes back centuries, to the time of monarchy. Our ancestors resolved the question of “who should care for the orphans?” with the simple answer, “it is the king’s duty.”
It is the government’s job, in its role as sovereign, to feed kids who don’t get enough to eat. And if it’s not, we should just burn it all to the fucking ground, because why else even have a society?
It's easier for everyone to have free meals than a select few, I feel. It would also get rid of an easy target on lower income kids being bullied for having the "free lunch".
Probably also much cheaper per. Trying to set up a meals program for the fee underprivileged - probably should just order Panera delivered. But if you go through the overhead of setting up a program, the cost of more meals is probably marginal.
Also, how about when kids forget. Why does it always seem to be the teacher who has to buy emergency food?
To me, it’s like prison: kids always compare school to prison, so let’s go with that. The government is forcing them to be there past meal times, and not letting them out. The school is claiming parental authority to watch out for their needs. One of them is food, dammit
Yes, the government is wasteful and bureaucratic I agree. Is my solution anyone can have the free meals if they apply for it they're simple to apply for through the school.
That would immediately eliminate a huge number of unnecessary lunches to purchase. I would happily have been buying my kids their school lunches through their first three years of school, but that was not a choice offered to me.
When I went to school half the kids are on preschool dinners literally nobody cared.
Incidentally my family were dirt poor when I was a little but we weren't poor enough to qualify for free school lunches but we may do with sandwiches. Presuming the poor are incapable and requiring of constant charity is the soft bigotry of low expectation
Presuming the poor are a monolith is problematic. There's also a huge difference between being broke and being broke in a poverty-defined culture. There are folks who are broke and still have a big view of the world, and folks who are broke and have a very narrow view of a very small world. That said, I don't understand the hostility to a hand out.
It's a major failure of a society when people don't have access to the basics. Basic food, water, shelter, and basic healthcare. America fails quite badly on this.
Wendy's is luxury food however. If you want it, go earn money and buy it yourself.
I'm pretty sure we're saying the opposite... We want to tax THE RICH. You know, the guys with billions and paying almost no taxes because of loopholes only they can use.
How about they pay their FUCKING FAIR SHARE so the rest of us aren't left picking up the damn tab every time.
Quit using bad faith strawman arguments you absolute monster.
You guys will make up ANY ridiculous straw man argument to screw yourself and everyone over won't you? You just are desperate to make everyone except the 1% stay suffering.
I swear everyone in this thread is having a hallucination that I'm somebody I'm not. I presume you think I'm sort of some of red that wearing uber conservative?
Do people's actual opinions matter at all.
Perhaps I should think you're a communist or something and then accuse you of it?
Again, do you understand what putting quotes around a word means? It doesn't sound like you do. And no feelings were hurt, that's a lie. I'm not sure why you're lying.
In the Declaration of the Independence it states thusly:
"that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
Since you cannot have Life without food, it would logically follow that it is the government's job to (secure these rights) food for people. If it does not, then the Declaration of Independence states that we can overthrow the government.
The Constitution doesn't say anything about who produces what. It just says that you have the right to those things, and that the states sole purpose is to ensure that.
Wow, the smooth brain takines of this sub would down vote me out of existence and "banish" me if they had the chance. Great advert for the society you would run.
None of you have any inquiry as to why I would say that.