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stinkcat_14
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I think Social Security already gives people a sense of entitlement beginning at a young age.
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Bobby_Jim
Guest
Really? I’m under 40 and I have no sense that I will ever collect on Social Security.
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markomalley
Guest
Since when is it the government’s responsibility to feed a couple’s child?
Will the government then provide all children with proper clothing? After all, it’s not fair that some parents buy their children nice clothes, while others have hand-me-downs.
How about the government providing children with appropriate shelter and an appropriate, government-issued bed? How can we assure equal outcomes if some children have all the advantages of a nice, warm home with nice, fast Internet connectivity, and a nice, soft bed (with no cockroaches crawling into ears when the little darlings sleep)…and others must deal with leaky, cold, rat-infested squalor. How can any of you call that fair?
Perhaps the government could then change the child’s nappies, as well…That way they could make sure to minimize the carbon footprint…and recycle their contents into fertilizer for the local hope and change garden that the children will be required to tend.
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stinkcat_14
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And you are fine with the fact that the government confiscates part of your income to give to other able bodied people who don’t work?
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freeRadical
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How would it be free? Don’t you mean you are in favor of full subsidization of state university education?
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bben15
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My state has done this also. I think they are doing this because it is cheaper to give everyone free lunches than to interview everyone who applies to determine if they qualify for a free or reduced lunch.
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CrossBro
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This is a good idea, make sure all the students eat with no social stigma attached.
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CrossBro
Guest
If 25% or more of my earnings are being withheld from each paycheck, why should the fact I expect to receive services in return from my government label me or anyone else as a flawed person with a sense of entitlement ?
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triumphguy
Guest
The government doesn’t confiscate your money.
They collect taxes. As is their legal and moral right.
I for one am entirely OK with able bodied people collecting their legal benefits under the law.
There is an aide at our school, a wonderfual and hard working lady, who could lose her home since her husband has been laid off. He has applied for unemployment insurance. I hope he gets it for the sake of his family.
The last thing our society needs is another family on the street. It’s much more costly.
When I was a kid in England all kids ate cooked lunches at school. They were free for some kids and others had to pay a nominal amount.
It was a great program. No-one got fat on it. The scraps WERE collected for pigs. No-one grew up with a sense of entitlement.
You can just as much foster a sense of entitlement by REFUSING as by GIVING.
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stinkcat_14
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Because you have no right to ask anyone else to sacrifice for you. If you give too much to the government that is your problem because you elect politicians who overtax and overspend. But working people have no moral obligation to sacrifice for current social security recipients, and social security recipients have no moral right to demand that they do.If 25% or more of my earnings are being withheld from each paycheck, why should the fact I expect to receive services in return from my government label me or anyone else as a flawed person with a sense of entitlement ?
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pensmama87
Guest
This reminds me of my very first day of kindergarten. I had eaten breakfast at home, but after we got to school the teacher made all of us get in line for breakfast. I got something because I thought I was supposed to, then the cashier asked me for money and I started to cry because I didn’t have any - because my mom had packed my lunch that day. It was really, really humiliating (I was a really sensitive kid and continue to be a rather sensitive adult.
)In middle school I remember you could buy tickets for lunches and just get them punched. You wouldn’t be able to tell who had free/reduced or not. When I taught, there was a balance that could be debited from student IDs. Or you could bring your lunch. And I never learned how to buy lunch in high school because it seemed like everyone only bought cheese fries.
And my lunch always seemed to be scheduled at 10am.
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Allegra
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These are my thoughts on the subject, and I work in a school that does this for breakfasts.
Unless the food is healthy, there’s no point.
Unless the parents are not allowed to load their kids’ lunch boxes with candy, soda, and junk to bring on their own, (and share with their exclusive special friends) there’s no point.
Most schools have already figured out a method to make it unknown in the lunch line as to whether or not the student gets their lunch for free. Do people actually think that schools are stupid enough to ring a bell everytime a kid gets a government subsidized lunch? In elementary school, the kids themselves probably don’t even know!
News flash! ALL kids get a free lunch! With the exception of some high school students who might be working part time jobs, every kid is getting a lunch for free from someone. I never met a kindergartener wth gainful employment. They don’t know the difference. They ALL feel entitled to their chicken nuggets once lunchtime hits. To kids, adults magically make food appear at their appointed meal times and they give little to no thought as to how it actually gets there.
Unless the food is healthy, there’s no point.
Unless the parents are not allowed to load their kids’ lunch boxes with candy, soda, and junk to bring on their own, (and share with their exclusive special friends) there’s no point.
Most schools have already figured out a method to make it unknown in the lunch line as to whether or not the student gets their lunch for free. Do people actually think that schools are stupid enough to ring a bell everytime a kid gets a government subsidized lunch? In elementary school, the kids themselves probably don’t even know!
News flash! ALL kids get a free lunch! With the exception of some high school students who might be working part time jobs, every kid is getting a lunch for free from someone. I never met a kindergartener wth gainful employment. They don’t know the difference. They ALL feel entitled to their chicken nuggets once lunchtime hits. To kids, adults magically make food appear at their appointed meal times and they give little to no thought as to how it actually gets there.
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CrossBro
Guest
I disagree with you on this one. They paid in too. When you get your first SSI check are you going to cash it or just throw it into the garbage can on principle ?
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Mrs_Sally
Guest
I agree. Every public school I know of has some system like a swipe card. The kids don’t know - and probably don’t care - who is “free and reduced” and who is not. Nobody is paying for their milk with actual coins anymore. I have no trouble with the schools giving lunch or breakfast to all the students. Schools used to do that all the time and in many places still do. If a child eats breakfast at home or wants to bring extra food for lunch that can be allowed. There is nothing socialist about the school feeding the students. My mother went to all catholic schools and they all ate lunch there.
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TheresaLS
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I am sorry but I am for parent responsibility. Yes, help should be there but school districts are finding ways to “raise our kids”.
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Mrs_Sally
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What is irresponsible about sending your child to a school that happens to include lunch as part of the program? If my child’s school has a cafeteria where he buys lunch every day is that better or the same. Is it only the parents who send lunch from home who are responsible? Why?
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triumphguy
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Many kids come to school hungry. It is detrimental to their learning. And so it is detrimental to society at large in the long run.
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rayne89
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At my daughter’s school lunches were prepaid (I sent her with a check every few months to turn in the office). Students gave their student ID number at the register -nobody knew who had free lunches and who didn’t.
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markomalley
Guest
There is nothing wrong with sending your kids to a Catholic school where the cost of lunch is factored into the tuition for the school…and for kids who are on scholarship, for that scholarship to include those costs.
(I personally think sending your kids to a public school is tantamount to child abuse, but that’s a different thread)
With the above parenthetical caveat, if the taxpayers who reside within the borders of a particular school district approve the use of property and/or other local taxes the inclusion of lunch as part of the school district’s budget, I don’t have a problem with that either.
The issue is the Federal Government paying for it.
The federal government policy is that if 40% or more of the students in a school district are in households that receive SNAP (formerly known as food stamps), the school can just give everybody lunch for free…if the money they get from USDA is sufficient to do that, it’s all on the federal dime. If not, then somebody other than USDA has to pony up the money (but a note in the FAQ attached to the memo explicitly states: Please note that, similar to Provision 2 and 3, the use of non‐Federal funds is only necessary if the total amount of Federal reimbursement through the CEO does not cover the costs of serving free meals to all students. It goes on to cite examples of non-federal sources as state matching funds, proceeds from a la carte sales, and donations)
With 27% of the families in this country receiving some sort of means-tested assistance from the federal government, that means that a large (a huge) number of school districts can opt for this policy.
And when the government provides the means, the government can dictate the terms…how would you like it if the government forbade you from providing your own kids’ lunches…
Think the above is hyperbole? See Chicago. See Oahu Head Start. Connecticut. Even a private school in Texas has the following note: ***The school is enrolled in the Federal Food Program and as a result there is no outside food allowed at the center. ***
So at these schools (and, I’m sure, more to follow), the schools have gone from subsidized food for those who can’t afford…to subsidized food for everybody…to “only eat what the government mandates you eat.”
Sorry, folks, that’s a little too much influence for my taste.
As Leo XIII pointed out many years ago:
…the foundation of this society rests first of all in the indissoluble union of man and wife according to the necessity of natural law, and is completed in the mutual rights and duties of parents and children, masters and servants. You know also that the doctrines of socialism strive almost completely to dissolve this union; since, that stability which is imparted to it by religious wedlock being lost, it follows that the power of the father over his own children, and the duties of the children toward their parents, must be greatly weakened
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