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.
Children pay for school lunches, some families can’t afford it and get into debt. It’s part of the orphan crushing machine called laissez-faire capitalism.
Yep. A systemic solution to poverty costs more and thus would probably decrease profits. Allowing poverty to exist is cheaper, plus you can do charitable donations. They won’t fix the root of the issue, but you get some good PR and a tax write-off.
Uplifting would be if a kid learned how to hack so he could hack into the lunch and mainframe and drop the tables so that his friends debts were erased.
Assholes, I don’t have or want kids but would be happy if a portion of my taxes went to feeding children rather than paying some contractor to explode them.
I still am absolutely flabbergasted that these assholes turned down FREE FUCKING MONEY TO FEED HUNGRY CHILDREN!
Republicans are all narcissists. They have zero empathy or compassion unless something happens to someone they know. Strangers are just NPCs to republicans.
I’ve seen a ton of republican voters say they’re against it when ever the subject comes up. The argument being that if they can’t afford kids, they shouldn’t have had kids. And if they can’t afford to feed them, it’s better to have the kids taken away.
And as we all know now: if you can’t afford to have kids AND contraceptives then you can’t afford to have sex… Cause they don’t want you getting abortions either.
Yeah, there’s quite a few contradictions. Like they’re the ones encouraging everyone to start having kids. If people say they can’t afford it, conservatives tell them they will find a way. So if they can’t afford it and do, they’re bad patents. If they can’t afford it and don’t, they’re selfish.
Also we shouldn’t spend other people’s money on these people’s kids for lunches. But we can spend even more of that money putting them on the system? Like it would be cheaper to just give them a breakfast and lunch at school. So even looking at it from a libertarian tax is theft standpoint, it’s still spending money on the kids. But more.
In general, sure. But kids will always have parents working odd shifts. Kids with parents who work in hospitals, for example. Those kids should be provided for with food too.
Even now, many elementary schools offer breakfast to kids who get there early. Although many make them pay for it as well. And no dinner.
Republicans are losing their minds because this could have gone directly into the pockets of the wealthy instead of passing through the accounts of the poor to be dirtied before going into the pockets of the wealthy.
As not a US resident, I do have to point out that school lunch debt is a thing in Blue states as well. I am not going to say one side is the same as the other but this is the major failing with a two party system, after time it all bleeds together.
During the pandemic lunch was free. It’s odd that during that time a lot of these petty issues were all magically solved but then they just came back and now we don’t know how to deal with it somehow. Infuriating
Typical “feel good” story to distract from the fact that there shouldn’t be a lunch debt to begin with, as is expected from a late stage capitalist hellhole.
The weird part for me is that Arby’s would be uniquely and ironically good at feeding kids. Their food is easy, cheap, and packs well (they are sandwiches). As bad as corporate sponsorship of public institutions is they could have likely done more good by directly donating food (they do have the meats after all).
Obviously it’s a complex situation but you do have to feel sorry for the poor families who paid their bills and watch others get theirs cleared - I’d feel so much better about these if it went to a fund which paid into the system so every kid gets x dollars a day on their card.
It’s actually not if you think about it, I’m saying that the system should be fair.
Imagine if Trump and Mr Rodgers both have kids gong to the same school, Trump doesn’t pay his debt because of course he doesn’t but Mr Rogers diligently pays even though he doesn’t earn anywhere near as much a Trump.
We could donate only to Trump using the debt forgiveness option OR we could fund the meals in the first place which would feed both Trump and Mr Roger’s kid equally.
The assumption that the only people who don’t pay are poor and the only people who do pay are rich is clearly foolish, there are probably children who’s parents couldn’t afford to eat properly themselves because they prioritize their children’s lunch bill.
The expectation of debt forgiveness is also a dangerous perverse incentive, if there’s a chance a debt will be forgiven then paying it early is foolish therfore you’re teaching people to keep debt hanging around which isn’t really a great idea. Lowering people’s outgoings by removing a cost such a school lunch however gives a little extra which can be used up clear debt, build up emergency savings, or be reinvested into lifestyle necessities.
I’m very in touch with reality, I think possibly you’re not really upstanding the situation being discussed. I explained in a post to the other person that had a knee-jerk response without considering the matter.
Imagine you have a child and you’re gong to buy clothes to dress them, if you pay cash then there is no debt if you use credit then there is a debt.
Is this the child’s debt? No its the parents’ debt for something they needed to buy for their child. The same is true for ballet lessons, if you’re supposed to pay on the first of the month but don’t then it is a debt incurred for something the child uses but it is legally and morally the parents debt.
In the United States you can’t legally sign any form of loan agreement or credit contract until you’re over 18 years old, before this point you need your parents to take legal responsibility for it. As you correctly assumed a child can not have debt in America.
Is this the child’s debt? No its the parents’ debt for something they needed to buy for their child.
Except for the fact that the child is punished for it via methods such as not being allowed to graduate if there’s any of this debt whatseoever, and in the language of the paperwork & websites used to pay it off it’s generally portrayed as debt belonging to the child.
Kids also used to flat out be refused food if they had lunch debt, but now kids just get a shitty non-nutritious “debt” lunch instead which is better than nothing I guess (but still causes them to be judged by peers). It’s actually not even illegal to prevent stigmatizing/shaming kids who have this debt…
I was nearly prevented from graduating (in Georgia, the same state in this article) because I owed something like $4 or $16 in “debt” to the school, lol. Schools can also prevent you from advancing to the next grade if you have debt.
It’s also completely legal to withhold school records, report cards, etc. from students if debt is unpaid – so even if the student graduates, have fun getting the things you need to go to college… oh wait, they’re not going to college anyways because they definitely can’t afford that. I don’t think they do that here though.
Also your comparison with ballet lessons is bad. Those are outside of the school system, outside any government organization, and it’s completely the parent’s responsibility and choice to even enroll the student in such things. The education system, and basic human needs like lunch, are completely different. Your remark comes off as you commodifying school lunches, treating it like a child’s basic human needs are even remotely comparable to voluntary non-school activities.
If you were to compare it rather to, band or drama or ballet class (extracurriculars) then I would actually say the point still completely stands for those too – such things can be vital to a child’s health, development, and social life, and to assign DEBT to participate in those activities is absurd and directly affects the students negatively. My school was one of the few in my area where it didn’t cost hundreds of dollars just to participate in band in middle and high school. And it still costed a lot of money to do things like marching band, because the program was underfunded! A majority of extracurricular funding goes to sports, specifically football, in most of the south, so programs like band had to have parents of students sponsor them for tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and to do plenty of fundraising events, just to make it so we could function. Students still had to contribute a lot of money if they wanted to do specific things.
That’s just band, but there are many examples. That wasn’t my parent’s debt, that was my debt. When I had the opportunity to take AP tests and the like and potentially get scholarships, I was ashamed to do so in the fear that I might fail and waste my family’s money. And I’m still lucky in this regard, because many other kids can’t afford those things, and they can’t take on the debt because it prevents them from graduating. With the fucked state of financial aid/welfare in the US, many of those kids don’t even qualify to have those kinds of costs covered by the state, so at best they’re left in shame with the only other choice being to beg and hope that the people they go to aren’t dismissive or can help.
It is the student’s debt, practically. They get all the consequences and they’re treated like they’re responsible. If it wasn’t their debt, they wouldn’t be prevented from graduating their grade, or graduating high school, or being given proper nutrition, or doing extracurriculars.
Yeah, I know this is supposed to be “uplifting” news, but the fact that children’s lunch debt is a thing that exists in the richest country on earth is absolutely insane.
It’s freshly roasted and cut roast beef. The biggest difference between that and deli meat is that Arby’s serves the meat as soon as it has come out of the roaster, so they are hot sandwiches. The French Dip is pretty good.
Add comment