$8 lunch

Meh, it started out halfway there.

We just gave it a nudge off the cliff.

 

What is current minimum wage there?

Seattle currently at $16/hour for the big employers, $15 for small. $12 statewide.

 

Which is not enough to live on in Seattle.....

 

That is right now, 2019 rate. Statewide will move up to $15 in a few years.

I found a separate source, from three months ago:

"Since Illinois last raised its minimum wage, Chicago has increased its minimum wage to $12 per hour, and Cook County’s is now $11. The city and county minimums each will increase by $1 per hour July 1."

Gov. J.B. Pritzker signs law raising Illinois' minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025

 

Sugar...sugar....carbs.
Holy crap.

According to that picture $8 doesn't buy much up in the Northeast...does it?

I lost a years-long battle to keep my kid out of public schools back in the day, and you know what?
I'm not that sad at how things turned out....BUT(!!) my kid and my CFO are both radicalized converts now that grandchildren are graduating from day care to big kid's school.
This thread is one of ten thousand reasons for why this is so.
Caveats: I'm against school vouchers and would happily pay double my ad-valorem taxes if they gave our local teachers the money in pay raises and promised to immediately fire 1/3 of the school administrators and place a hiring freeze on admin weenies until the other 2/3 aged out.

Interestingly enough, the school district that I fought so hard to eschew is now so vastly improved that they are warping the local real-estate market to the extent that we're now living in a neighborhood that we never would have afforded 15 years ago, and they're getting phenomenally high prices for debilitated dumps out in the county, and the number of private schools in our county have shot from two to over 10.

We have a genuine 30-year veteran 'lunch lady' in my family and I recently pumped her for information about whether or not they actually cook food in the cafeteria, various county breakfast/after school programs, and summer feeding, and how school lunches have changed even from the time that my kid went to school. Her two (FCEP) schools now completely offer breakfast and lunch free of charge, and they have a program where kids take backpack food home for supper.
Kids that go to the more affluent schools now pay $1.50 for breakfast and $2.50 for lunch - non-subsidized.
If someone wants to go through the indignities of sighing a hunk of paper, those prices are slashed to about 50 cents...or free.
However (comma!)
The hardest part of feeding our local kids (according to two teachers and the lunch lady) is actually getting them to eat the food.
Somebody, somewhere decided BOTH that kids should eat healthy AND that you cannot do anything productive with the resulting leftovers like take them to the senior center or (GOD forbid!) let a local church operate a food charity.

Whole wheat hamburger buns and soy-infused "mystery meat" (they used to do it for cost reasons!) it turns out...tastes like crap, and they have to bake things since if somebody actually tried to fire up one of the deep fat fryers, then that person would be immediately jailed for child endangerment or (worse!) outted on social media.

So....
Hungry?

Methinks not.
At least not locally.
This is more of a 'big city' problem, and my finely honed feces detector is telling me that in larger cities it's more about local "leaders" growling at each other than kid's stomachs growling in their classrooms.

 

yeah, that's an odd one. lebanon, nh. not a place i'd think of for food problems like springfield or lowell, ma.

also, it seems like it was an accounting problem by the childs eco, not a funds shortage.

still, my parents wouldn't allow me to buy lunch unless i earned the money. it was brown bag for me. even at 30 cents, a sandwich from home was much cheaper, and healthier.

 

My mom worked when I was growing up, so I had the option of taking my lunch that I made and pocketing the $2.25 lunch card money for the week - or eating lunch the stuff that the lunch ladies dolled out, and I did both on occasion.
If I could go back in time and shake the young me by the shoulders and talk about investments and such, I wouldn't be working now....but then I would have missed out on a childhood of baseball cards, stickers, saving up for a minibike.....etc.

Our local schools still 'allow' their little darlins to take their lunch, if they so choose, even the FCEP schools, which tells you EVERYTHING you need to know about why families are on years-long waiting lists to get to pay thousands of dollars a year to send their kids to private schools - or moving out of town to go to a school that "sucks less."

 

Actually, I respectfully say that giving away food is exactly what they are doing.

You may think I am a hard-hearted conservative, etal. But, most of my friends consider me very liberal. I support Bernie, voted for Obama, hell I supported McGovern when I was a young teen and would support him now.

But, I am also a bit of a realist. It would be nice if we were all one big commune on a lazy river in California, but, I do not think that is going to happen. Everyone needs to learn -- and learn early -- that if you learn to pull your own weight, it is sort of a big deal "insurance system," because you never know when this or that "program" is going to fade and you are going to find yourself royally left out in the cold.

Yes, I wish income equality did not exist. I also wish that people would take responsibility for themselves.

Yep, a pretty much bigtime liberal, but still think people should fend for themselves.

 

Hey knock me down for views, -- et al. FINE.

But writing!!!!???

I spent some 40 years as a writer, editor -- et al. And, I may not hit it all according to HOYLE, BUT DO not presume TO TELL ME OR SOME ONE ELSE how to speak in a car forum. It all comes down to viewpoint ---as long as we are not profane -- ET AL. Making sense is the only sense.

This is all "off the cuff stuff" not MLA writing. Lighten up.

Once again, the subject is "free food" and there is no such thing. It takes a cost to the citizens as well as to the receivers -- having NOT been one, I think I know.And I think the cost to the receivers is the most hurtful.

Hoo, $8 lunch. I could do at least four healthy lunches for that price -- opps forgot to add in my $15 an hour labor --et al.

 

I looked at the "article" that prompted this "discussion" and was not very surprised to find that it's not even as 'fair and balanced' as fake news is....because the site (Daily KOS) is: "...a group blog and internet forum focused on the Democratic Party and liberal American politics. The site features a participatory political encyclopedia, glossaries, and other content. It is sometimes considered an example of "netroots" activism."

I then asked around locally about why a child would have an $8 defect in their lunch account, since this would indicate that either the lunches were horribly over priced -or- the child passed through the line on more than one occasion and got fed on credit.
My local peeps inform me that in some high schools, like.....the Mascoma Valley Regional High School in the original story, kids are allowed to buy items outside of the basic school lunch fare such as candy, chips, fries with their school lunch accounts....(they, perhaps, properly french fry their french fries!)

So....
This social warrior lunch lady wasn't culled from an impoverished inner-city school for defying a system that forces children to go hungry at all!
It's a hack story ginned up by a hack internet forum.
MORE IMPORTANTLY
It also points to a non-existent problem in a properly administered school system!!!

In case somebody is interested in learning something about REAL school lunch type stuff, as I did, by talking to real school lunch ladies in a real school system (I'm not being misogynistic, that's what they are and that's what they call themselves!)
Start here:
Community Eligibility Provision | USDA-FNS
Locally....AND I'LL BET IN NEW HAMSTER, NO CHILD IS EVER sent through a lunch line without being given a lunch.

Also locally, they get breakfast and in some cases portable backpack food for later.

FOOD INSECURITY IS A REAL THING.
My church has a large and thriving food pantry program.
Our local schools provide 2-1/2 meals each day to children - and have a summer lunch program.

So....
Why the food insecurity issues in a nation where 15-percent of its citizens are eligible for food assistance?
THAT's the question that REAL activists SHOULD be asking.
Just make sure that you're prepared for all of the possible answers because people in MY tribe migh simply say that liberal food assistance programs are a process of taking somebody else's money and loading up credit cards without bothering to see what the recipients spent the money on....so that they can look down on other people who aren't as 'woke' as THEY are.


That's not entirely accurate and it's political rhetoric.....JUST LIKE the story that started off this thread!

Giving away food is giving away food.
Some people would say that it's an earned benefit, and there's some merit to that distinction.....and I'm sure that maybe somebody out there will illuminate those points BOTH with heat and light in due time.

See you at the polls!

 

No apologies needed.
People in this forum shamelessly slag on Fox without apologizing all the time.
Own it man!

The source for article in the OP should not meet ANYONE'S standards for a new service, not even their own.
That's why they call themselves "...a group blog and internet forum focused on the Democratic Party and liberal American politics."

That means that, perhaps like your source, you're not that familiar with the story or with my previous post, which means that you're also not paying attention to THIS post.
Either way?
We'll have to leave it there, excepting with two final thoughts for anyone reading this who is not merely trying to sling feces at people they've never even met:

1. School employees are 'mandatory reporters.' If the child in question needed something other than some easy credit for a side order of nachos, or a daily Snickers bar then a properly administered school system would report that up the....ah....'food chain.'
2. Most real school lunch ladies are real state employees, not minimum wage earners for some heartless company. If New Hampster cannot properly feed their younguns in school then this perhaps points to a money management problem rather than a money problem.
As a citizen of Illi-noise I'm sure that you can relate.

Again....there are perhaps some facets of this story that probably didn't make the editorial cut.

Shareholders are people.

Sure did!
To give due credit though, I didn't start it....,

https://priuschat.com/search/121033394/?q=new+hampster&o=relevance

 

I happened to be in a local senior high school recently, we'd found a rugby ball, about a mile from the school, with their ID on it, so I was just in there, returning the goods. And happened to notice: yup there was a full-blown cafeteria in there.

Still, when I was a kid, you went to school to get an "education". I can say I never had much call to use the quadratic equations, ancient Greek lore, and so on, but that's another story. Anyway: neither the elementary, junior high nor senior high schools had any sort of "feeding mechanism". You brought a lunch.

Seems like whenever there's a handout, there's gonna be bickering?

 

Seems as if my friends in high school and I did not much care for lunch. Breakfast or dinner, either. Not that we had any of the serious eating disorders or anything -- unless you count being a teenager.

Lunchtime, we mostly spent in a group under a tree unless the weather was absolutely unbearable -- and that takes a lot for a teen. Seems we fed more on gossip and rumor than actual edibles.

Of course, if you saw me now, the above would probably not surprise you. And while I am scrawny, I am wiry. Or used to be -- slowly getting back -- lifted a 30-pound bag of dog food the other day. Of course, I had to rest for the remainder of the afternoon.
kris

 

@Mendel Leisk , is that a canadian thing? i can't speak for the whole country, but we've had full blown cafeterias at least since the 50's.

as fas as humanitarian programs go, i thought it was just because you couldn't go home for lunch.

never gave any thought to why most kids didn't bring there own.

 

Parents whom never had the time or the inclination and did not teach their children to prepare their own (actually, we were supposed to prepare our own, but reference my earlier post and see where that got me)>

Or, in the less happy cases, parents that could not afford to supply food.