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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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New Mexico Outlaws School ‘Lunch Shaming’
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If the thunder don't get you, then the lightning will.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @01:20AM (1 child)
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, @02:29PM
Have you heard of relative poverty? It's what matters in developed countries. (counting US as one here...)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Wealth_Inequality_-_v2.png [wikimedia.org]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:If-us-land-mass-were-distributed-like-us-wealth.png [wikimedia.org]
Looks pretty damn ugly to me.