Today I Learned

It's OK, we're dealing with this by repealing our child labor laws, so kids can work at the meat processing plant instead of some immigrant. Two birds, one stone.

There are some states that feed kids as a matter of routine state budgeting. Those kids get a lunch paid for by taxpayers. A damn fine investment of tax dollars, if you ask me.

In California, school lunch is paid by the state. It's awesome and solves this problem. All the kids get the same lunch for free. Some kids still bring their lunch, but it's rare.

I pay thousands per year in school taxes and the vast majority goes to school administrators making 6 figures. We can't just toss more money at schools to fix this - we need legislation stating how the money is used. The money needs to go to the kids and teachers instead of clueless rich people.

You watched the John Oliver episode, didn't you?

america are you ok?

No. We are not OK. Thanks for asking.

Not only are we not OK, we need your help. Please issue sanctions until we stop funding genocides and torturing folks

Red states are not okay, because all they have left in their value system is cruelty toward people they see as not "pulling their weight," as if we still live in some resource-scarce era of yore where if you don't work, you don't eat (and even if you do work, eating is not guaranteed, better work harder!).

Blue states are increasingly providing lunches, and sometimes even breakfast, for all students free of charge. It used to be income-based (you'd get free or half-priced lunch based on your family's income), but even that system is getting ditched because of the associated stigma and the problem of some needy students falling between the cracks.

When has America ever been okay? It went from land of the free while enslaving people and restricting voting ability, to then freeing slaves but continuing to oppress entire groups to minimize their allowable impact on society, until they it became oppress people financially every way possible.

No we're not OK

I remember in grade school my district had a system where everyone who bought anything at the cafeteria went through an internal "type in your ID to the pin pad" system. Internally, the computer would decide whether the student was charged against their account or if it did a discount/free. This was how they dealt with that.

We are so not okay.

The elementary school I taught at offered free lunches to all students. Still, parents who packed food for their kids would give them Flamin' Hot Cheetos and Takis and a huge can of Arizona Ice Tea daily. These students looked down on hot lunch kids. I remember seeing a student that had a lunchable everyday, but clearly their parent got it from a 7/11 or something because there was a price tag on it and it was for $5. There were also parents that dropped of fast food EVERY SINGLE DAY to their student. These were low income families too.

When lunch food is a status symbol, the system has failed you.