What you're saying is that we should provided more robust child protective services. Those services would have the authority to determine if dependents were ma

What you're saying is that we should provided more robust child protective services. Those services would have the authority to determine if dependents were malnourished. If found to be malnourished those dependents would be forcefully relocated into a state (or private) run system that would feed, clothe, and educate them in the interim before they were placed into an adequate adoptive or foster home. At which point the state would pay the foster parent(s) a daily stipend which would be used to continue to feed and clothe the dependent until the point at which they reached adulthood. The state would also provide healthcare and continue to send child protective workers to the foster home to evaluate the home and verify that it meets the standards of an adequate home. I agree that the solution you presented has the potential to help "break the cycle" so to speak. But inherently the cost of a program the magnitude of which was described is likely to be a large investment. Which, would suffer from the same perspective of economic unfairness as society would end up paying even more than now to raise other people's children. Due to the economic impact, those opposed would likely spin it as a government program to "Steal away and indoctrinate your children with agenda of the state." A subset of the population gets angry when any mention of taking their guns away occurs. How do you think people would act if it was their children? It doesn't matter if you're a responsible guardian, any talk of the state increasing its power to "remove your children from your home" is bound to strike an instinctual part of your brain. Proposing "free breakfast and lunch" to solve the immediate small term problem of hunger within the school system to help reduce behavioral problems has a direct positive impact. The only real negative is the cost.