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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday April 09 2017, @06:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the no-soup-for-you dept.

What is “lunch shaming?” It happens when a child can’t pay a school lunch bill.

In Alabama, a child short on funds was stamped on the arm with “I Need Lunch Money.” In some schools, children are forced to clean cafeteria tables in front of their peers to pay the debt. Other schools require cafeteria workers to take a child’s hot food and throw it in the trash if he doesn’t have the money to pay for it.

In what its supporters say is the first such legislation in the country, New Mexico has outlawed shaming children whose parents are behind on school lunch payments.

Source: The New York Times


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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09 2017, @08:50PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09 2017, @08:50PM (#491310)

    > or there would be a vast influx of immigrants which doesn't sound like a popular solution.

    We fucking have that too! Who do you think is taking up a good percentage of those free lunches and not paying taxes on them?

    Oh, and for all the bleeding hearts - most schools still do give the kids a free lunch when they can't pay. It just isn't a nice hot one. They get a cold sandwich.

    We've had the War on Poverty for 50 years now. Every year the budget goes up and up, yet there's a higher percentage of the population on welfare than ever before. POVERTY IS WINNING, yet you idiots never seem interested in changing the game plan.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09 2017, @10:08PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09 2017, @10:08PM (#491348)

    POVERTY IS WINNING, yet you idiots never seem interested in changing the game plan.

    Poverty is winning in the US. In the civilized world we seem to be doing OK.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @01:20AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @01:20AM (#491415)

    We've had the War on Poverty for 50 years now. Every year the budget goes up and up, yet there's a higher percentage of the population on welfare than ever before. POVERTY IS WINNING, yet you idiots never seem interested in changing the game plan.

    That is a lie. [washingtonpost.com]

    In 1965 the national poverty rate was 17.3%, in 2010 it was 15% and in 2013 it was 14.5%.

    And that's just based on cash income, and ignores non-cash benefits like medicaid and public housing which have reduced the effective poverty rate even further.
    Using the SPM (supplemental poverty measure [ucdavis.edu]) which tries to take into account not only regional differences in cost-of-living but also changes in family budget allocations (for example, food as a percentage of a typical family budget has dropped from ~30% in 1960s to ~15%) the percentage of households living in poverty has dropped from 25.8% in 1965 to 14.3% in 2015. [census.gov]

    Even with all the setbacks of the Clinton-era "welfare reform" in the 90s, American anti-poverty programs have, and continue to make an enormous difference in the lives of millions of people. We obviously can do better, but that doesn't mean we haven't done a lot of good already.

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @03:05AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @03:05AM (#491478)

    For school lunch in the USA, nobody ever gets "a nice hot one". Here are the two possibilities:

    1. The non-paying student gets grape jelly, peanut butter, and white bread. The glycemic index is sky high, so causing hyperactivity followed by sleepiness. All three ingredients are yucky, but nothing is really horrible. Well, I would have vomited from the peanut butter, but that's just me.

    2. The paying student gets a hot lunch. The heat ensures that everybody can experience the vile smell. It's something like overcooked pasta with soy-based fake burger, 6 grapes, skim milk, and lettuce covered with a dressing made from various soy and corn chemicals.

    Also, nobody washes hands before the meal. You might not be allowed, there is no time, and you'd certainly have to touch dirty doors before getting back to your food. Nobody flosses or brushes their teeth afterward.

    • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday April 10 2017, @05:58PM

      by DeathMonkey (1380) on Monday April 10 2017, @05:58PM (#491779) Journal

      Except in this case the non-paying student get a bigs helping of STFU.

      And the paying student gets, you know, food.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Monday April 10 2017, @03:30PM

    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Monday April 10 2017, @03:30PM (#491664) Homepage Journal

    there's a higher percentage of the population on welfare than ever before.

    The AC above is either ignorant or a liar. Welfare ended in the US in 1996 with the passage of the Personal Work and Responsibility Act, which ended Aid to Families with Dependent Children and replaced it with Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. TANF has a two year limit for benefits, with a five year lifetime maximum.

    There are also no more foof stamps. There is now LINK, and all thos people working at McDonald's has a LINK card. If you want to end poverty, raise the minimum wage. In 1971 when a candy bar was a nickle and a pack of cigarettes or a gallon of gasoline was a quarter, the minimum wage was $1.40. It should be $14 today, because prices have increased ten times.

    --
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