Over 7,000 students in Georgia with unpaid lunch balances are getting a helping hand following a $1 million initiative from the Arby’s Foundation, the nonprofit announced Thursday.

  • @[email protected]
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    13910 months ago

    Georgia apparently would rather put 10 year olds into debt than feed children. It’s the best they can do as Christians.

    • @[email protected]
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      3810 months ago

      It is biblical. Charity to people like Paul was freely given out of love vs welfare-taxation system we have now.

      Of course a good person who was a Christian could reason out

      “Paul was in Rome so he must have seen the free donations of food given by the emperor to the city’s poor but didn’t comment on it. Which meant that when he talks about charity he is talking about a supplement, yes a supplement not a first response, to actual effective large scale operations. I should be happy with both. A good government that works hard that I add too. Not a bad government I helped create and stick a bandaid on by throwing a twenty in the collection plate”.

      A pity this doesn’t seem to occur to them. Despite the theological wiggle room.

  • @[email protected]
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    10410 months ago

    Sad that this is even a thing. The richest nation on earth should be able to give its future 2 square meals a day.

    • Drusas
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      3110 months ago

      But that would set them up with unreasonable expectations for adulthood! Gotta prepare them for their future of struggling to get by.

    • @[email protected]
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      2310 months ago

      School lunch debt is the so incredibly dystopian that I hope 20-30 years from now people will have to use an internet search to find out what it meant to people in this decade. Like it’s so unabashedly wrong as a thing, I hope we look at like when Bayer made heroin and bloodletting was in practice.

    • @[email protected]
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      2010 months ago

      Pretty soon it will be the norm that when you graduate high school you take your first bankruptcy and clean your slate before your life really starts to matter. Hell it’s only 7 years, you got 4 years of college so only 3 more till you can start living again! Well I guess after you somehow pay off those new college loans as well.

    • @[email protected]
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      1310 months ago

      Just like in Christianity we are all born with sin, in America we are all born with debt.

  • Billiam
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    7410 months ago

    Yet another dystopic horror disguised as a feel-good story.

  • voxel
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    10 months ago

    what the fuck is a lunch debt???

      • @[email protected]
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        510 months ago

        God damn, they took the kids food back and threw it away.

        What fucking assholes to put a child through that. Embarrassing.

      • @[email protected]
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        210 months ago

        Waitwaitwait excusmethefuckwhat?

        HOW the hell did USA happen into an idea of putting goddamn KIDS into debt?! I mean, I live in EU. In my country, there were school-run lunches…or rather dinners, anyway. These were paid upfront, once per month, at overall small price (still somewhat pricey, but actual alternative for families that didn’t want to pack sandwiches for their kids.)

        But ALSO! Wtf USA? If lunch is such a problem, why not, dunno, make your child lunch for school at home?

        I cannot wrap my head around this. It’s weird. Too weird.

          • @[email protected]
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            210 months ago

            Only meal a day…

            You know what, the more I read the more I believe that ya all live in some sort of dysfunctioning dystopia. First thought was “then why won’t they move somewhere cheaper” but I guess in USA it may be not possible, am I right?

            I mean, in what hellish place both parents have to take more than one job just to survive? One of them wpuld be understandable. One struggling with many while other stays at home too. But both? WTF.

            Anyway, thanks for comment, ot was informative if not depressing.

    • @[email protected]
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      1210 months ago

      “Then he took the seven loaves and the fish, and when he had given thanks, he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and they in turn gave to the people. They all ate and were satisfied. Afterward, they were all given invoices and in his majestic mercy he allowed them all an extra 30 days to pay.”

      Matthew 15:32

    • themeatbridge
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      6510 months ago

      There is a federal lunch subsidy program, and many states also have their own lunch programs. The program even extends through the summer.

      Several caveats.

      First, not every state participates. This is free money that states could use to feed hungry kids, and some states are just like “nah, fuck them kids.”

      Second, parents generally have to apply for the program. You fill out some forms, and the kids get subsidized lunches. That’s a problem, because not every parent knows the programs exist, not every parent speaks English or Spanish or another language the school might be thoughtful enough to have the forms translated into. At my kids’ elementary school, during Covid, we learned that there are 32 different first languages spoken in the homes of students. Sharing information is a problem.

      Third, the subsidized lunch is often a lesser meal than what the paying kids get. It might be a cheese and white bread sandwich, an apple sauce, and some milk. Now, sure, if you’re hungry, food is better than no food. But kids know what the brown bag lunch means. It’s embarrassing, creates division across income levels, and can encourage some hungry kids to choose not to accept the food rather than face ridicule.

      But you know what’s amazing? During Covid, school meal providers were facing financial ruin. They had contracts to provide food for a bunch of kids that weren’t in the schools. Sysco and Aramark and many others were staring at a total loss for all of their school lunch programs, and the government bailed them out. The state and federal governments found a way to pay for all the school lunches and give them away for free to all students in every state. There wasn’t even a debate, and no politicians opposed it.

      The money was just there, no strings or hoops or pork barrel haggling. Major industry is facing crisis, and suddenly we can afford to feed all the kids, no exceptions, no forms or paperwork. Local food banks were overflowing with frozen meals and fresh produce and all the tiny cartons of milk you can imagine.

      Now, you could say that Covid was an emergency, that the collapse of the school lunch industry would have horrible economic ramifications, and that would be true.

      But it wasn’t even expensive, and that was for everybody. There’s no reason we could not afford to provide free lunches to any child in America who asks for it, and I mean a real lunch. The same thing the kid who paid is getting. School cafeterias throw away more food than the value of food given away as part of free lunch programs AND unpaid lunch debts combined. Feeding every child would be a rounding error, and nobody would be stigmatized or penalized because their parents couldn’t afford their lunch.

      Hungry kids don’t learn. Feed them all.

      • @[email protected]
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        3210 months ago

        First, not every state participates. This is free money that states could use to feed hungry kids, and some states are just like “nah, fuck them kids.”

        Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont and Wyoming.

        The program requires states to pay half of the administrative costs - not the benefit itself, just the costs associated with distributing the benefit.

        The federal free lunch program would have brought $18,000,000 to the state, at a total cost of $300,000 to the state. The governor refused the program, saying “I don’t believe in welfare.”

        Nebraska receives $1,100,000,000 per year in agricultural subsidies. He doesn’t have a problem taking federal dollars to feed pigs, but kids are on their own.

        • @[email protected]
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          1110 months ago

          He doesn’t have a problem taking federal dollars to feed pigs,

          Hey, just because they are Nebraska politicians, doesn’t mean they deserve to starve. :P

      • nkat2112
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        510 months ago

        Thank you so much - this was excellently stated and I couldn’t agree with you more.

      • @[email protected]
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        410 months ago

        and the government bailed them out.

        So fucking tired of this.

        Privatize the gains, socialize the losses.

        This is bullshit.

        • themeatbridge
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          110 months ago

          You know, I’m ok with this one. Hungry kids got to eat. The problem is that we stopped so that the lunch programs could go back to the more profitable paid system.

          Government can and should do things to support the economy in times of crisis. But the money should flow through the citizens, not be paid directly to industries. Give the money to schools and communities to pay off their lunch contracts, and let the schools distribute the food. That’s a good bailout. Imagine if, during the housing crash, we had given money to every taxpayer to pay their rent or mortgage. The banks would have been bailed out, prices wouldn’t have crashed as hard, defaults would have dropped dramatically, and we would all be in a little less debt.

    • @[email protected]
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      10 months ago

      Whoa now buddy. Can’t have that socialism in muh murica. How else will these poor for profit institutions keep posting record profits?

      *edit In some places maybe… but that and may other services have been gutted. sadly.

  • @[email protected]
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    2510 months ago

    I hate seeing these articles as if those people should be thankful for the kindness of some random person instead of being angry that school lunch debt is something that actually exists.