solarpunk memes

And it eliminates the stigma of only the poor kids getting free lunches.

The stigma is the point.

Conservatives believe receiving charity should be shameful.

Because conservatives (and neoliberals) think poverty is a personal moral failure - if you're poor, it's not because society and capitalism and racism and structural inequality screwed you over, it's because you, personally, were lazy or wasted your money or broke the law or didn't work hard enough.

So if a child can't afford a school lunch, it's because their parents are bad people. And shaming that child with an obvious "free lunch" (I remember having a bright red card that I had to show in the cafeteria, and the lunch lady would sneer at me and loudly proclaim "here is your FREE LUNCH" and hand me a cheese sandwich and an apple when the other kids were getting pizza just to make sure everybody knew my parents were poor) teaches the child to be ashamed of their parents and be ashamed of their poverty so they'll work harder to avoid poverty as adults.

And if schools give every child free lunch, not only do they lose that "teaching opportunity", they teach children that food is a right and that everybody, no matter their economic status, should have enough to eat, which is a direct attack on the fundamental principles of capitalism and American society.

Go into a conservative space and tell them people have a right to food and shelter and medical care and watch them froth in rage.

Any parent can tell you that a hungry child isn’t capable of doing any complex activity.

Neither is a hungry adult. Free access to food should be a constitutional right.

Keep them hungry, keep them dumb. Make it so only the already rich have access to education. Keep the power in the hand of the wealthy few.

Ohhh, they're opposing universal free meals while wanting to keep the free meals for students from poor families. That makes way more sense than opposing both. Not cartoonishly evil. It's possible that it's for purely utilitarian reasons.

Typical politics taking things out of context and extrapolating.

(No, I am not endorsing the republican party or saying that universal free meals for students should be blocked.)

Republicans.

Well, rightists in general. Unfortunately there is a non-zero percentage of rightist Democrats, as well.

“Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren't they? They're all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn. But once you're born, you're on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don't want to know about you. They don't want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you're preborn, you're fine; if you're preschool, you're fucked.”

• George Carlin literally decades ago

We're addicted to tearing one another down to feel better about ourselves. Our country has become the national embodiment of schadenfreude.

Help.

I'd prefer if you asked what the fuck is right with America so the answer can be two sentences rather than the length of a novel.

There’s always a group of people or party that want to tear others down. From slavery and seceding, to wanting segregation laws and harassing minorities. In other countries you had apartheid and Nazis. It’s a constant battle/struggle against evil and those wanting to dismantle and control others.

On the one hand, Biden is mostly anti-union and pro-corporate. On the other hand Republicans want your kids to starve to death.

Honestly who can choose these days?! /s

Solution: Eliminate the means test and give every kid lunch and breakfast.

Also, your source for fraud in the school lunch program comes from a site that advocates canceling all federal food aid programs, including WIC, food stamps, etc, as well as shutting down the Department of Education entirely, so, yeah, a little bit of a bias there. 🤮

what is the amount of money you think is appropriate to spend on ensuring children don't starve in school?

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.