First, food should be a right.
Second, conservatives and neoliberals love to scream about fraud and abuse of welfare programs, with or without justification, so when I hear somebody claiming that the eeeeeevil public school system is collaborating with eeeeeevil poor people to defraud honest American taxpayers, and I know that conservatives loathe the public school system as much as they loathe poor people, I just roll my eyes.
Third, means testing is not just spiteful and evil, it’s routinely used as a weapon to destroy welfare programs, entitlement programs, and social services in general. It’s why Republicans keep bringing up means testing social security. When you impose means testing to limit the number of people who directly benefit from a program, you create a division between “us” (the people who pay for a program with taxes) and “them” (poor people who benefit from the program and presumably don’t pay taxes). And when a program only benefits poor people it’s much easier to stigmatize and ultimately eliminate it.
Fourth, food should be a right.
Fifth, when it comes to what people can actually afford, total income on paper is only one factor - plenty of people with high total income still struggle to buy food for their kids. And frankly I’m not going to second guess people who say they need help paying for their kids’ food.
Sixth, you realize I’m posting this on an anarchist instance, right? I suspect very few users here think lying to the government to feed your kids is particularly heinous.
Finally, in case you didn’t hear me before, food should be a right.
You are welcome to smear children eating lunch as welfare cheats wasting taxpayer money all you like. And you wouldn’t be alone in doing that. But I would ask you to spend some time thinking about the moral implications of making that argument before you distribute it further.
No, I didn’t realize that slrpnk was an anarchist instance. I’m commenting from a general instance known as lemmy.today. I am curious though why anarchists are supporting a Government, isn’t that kind of against your political beliefs?
Otherwise you can take the personal shots at me and toss them out the window. They can lie their there on the ground next to your reading comprehension.
Frankly, when you say you support universal school lunches, but then write paragraphs about how greedy parents are abusing the system to get their kids free lunches, how public schools are complicit in this fraud because increasing the number of kids getting free lunches increases their lunch budget, and how surprised you are by how much the school lunch program costs taxpayers - basically all the standard Republican talking points for abolishing school lunches - and one of your links goes back to a ultraconservative website that calls for abolishing the Department of Education entirely, it makes me doubt that your support for universal school lunches is sincere.
I mean, look, what you’re complaining about is fraud in means testing. People claiming free lunches when they have too much income to be eligible for free lunches. But what we’re talking about is schools where means testing does not happen because everyone gets free lunch. Republicans are looking at schools where universal free lunches are currently implemented. And they’re saying they want to go back to means testing so that parents with higher incomes can’t defraud the system. But if there is no income requirement for free school lunches then nobody is lying about their income to get free school lunches. All your “studies” about parents lying about their income and public schools encouraging parents to lie about their income to get more federal funding are completely irrelevant to the universal programs that the Republicans are trying to cancel. You can’t have fraud in means testing when there’s no means testing. You can’t have public schools padding their free lunch enrollment when everyone is in free lunch by default.
You get it? Let’s assume there’s lots of fraud when free school lunches are means tested. I don’t believe it, but let’s assume it. But if free school lunches are universal and not means tested, there can’t be any fraud. So Republicans are saying “look, let’s add income requirements to a program that doesn’t have income requirements, because then we can do means testing and find lots of fraud”. And why do they want to find lots of fraud? So then they can point at “objective” studies like the ones you cited and use them as excuses to abolish free school lunch programs.
I may be too hair trigger and not giving you the benefit of the doubt. I admit my own biases. I went for entire weeks at a time where those free school breakfasts and lunches were the only thing I had to eat and I react poorly to attempts to abolish them or further penalize their recipients.
And for your part, however, you should recognize that giving Republicans the benefit of the doubt when it comes to welfare programs - specifically, accepting their claims that they’re just trying to fight fraud and abuse in the system - is not typically warranted.
I went for entire weeks at a time where those free school breakfasts and lunches were the only thing I had to eat and I react poorly to attempts to abolish them or further penalize their recipients.
I spent most of Junior High on Free Lunches and eating Government Cheese at home. I get it.
