4 ms·

I agree that a big flaw in the welfare state idea is that even if at first it’s really “universal”, eventually governments and people look at it like they are “

• schwartzworld 1y ago
  > It’s easy to find talk, for example from people who think universal healthcare should be applied differently to people who live an unhealthy lifestyle. Brought to you by the same people who oppose healthy free school lunches.
  • mothballed 1y ago
    If the lunch were actually free no one would probably oppose it. It's that they oppose throwing grandma to the street when she can't come up with the property tax to pay some lunch-co megacorp to give the kids lunches. If you literally go to the grocery store on your own dime, bag lunches, and donate them for poor kids to eat I don't see how anyone could rationally oppose that.
    • Retric 1y ago
      Schools aren’t going to accept lunches from some random person for hopefully obvious reasons. That said, the random person buying grocery is paying a corp here.
      • mothballed 1y ago
        My kid's school will let kids bring their own lunch, if you hand it to the parent they can accept it.
        • Retric 1y ago
          Handing families food isn’t specifically going to result in that food being taken to school.
          • potato3732842 1y ago
            Dollar for dollar it probably results in more food being taken to school than paying more taxes to have an N-step government process do it.
            • Retric 1y ago
              Economies of scale are huge here, so no government is going to win in any reasonably functioning government. Government would also reduce overhead from not collecting money for school lunches, thus making such a program more than 100% efficient here if scaled to every child.
              • potato3732842 1y ago
                Your assertion is underpinned by a false equivalence between scale and efficiency that does not hold in reality. A few old ladies working in a church kitchen (the typical form these sorts of volunteer endeavors take) to slap PB and J (or deli meat and cheese) on wonder-bread and pairing these with apples and single serving bags of potato chips are going to run circles around the government when it comes to lunches provided per dollar. The government is incurring similar input and labor costs (let's assume the volunteers are paid for the sake of comparison) to do comparable work (i.e. what happens in every school kitchen) but there are entire categories of overhead that the latter has to pay for, and furthermore, these categories of overhead apply constraints that increase costs. The government provides meals that meet more specific criteria. It does not provide them more efficiently on an resources in vs "output of thing we want" produced basis.
                • Retric 1y ago
                  You’re describing an inferior product (cold PB and J, apples, unhealthy chips ? drink) that also has higher costs due to packaging to get to those lunch ladies and more packaging to families as you can’t use lunch trays. That product also needs to then be distributed to individual families vs being prepared inside a school. So in terms of "output of thing we want" per dollar it’s a massive failure here. PS: Deli meats and jelly are also terrible health wise, but I get that’s not really your point.
    • potato3732842 1y ago
      >If you literally go to the grocery store on your own dime, bag lunches, and donate them for poor kids to eat I don't see how anyone could rationally oppose that. The health department will accuse you of running an unlicensed food pantry and threaten you with hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. The useful idiots will endorse this action becase "it's not ideal, but we can't have unlicensed restaurants can we". Source: happened in a city near me.
      • cindyllm 1y ago
        [dead]
      • tastyfreeze 1y ago
        Restaurant licensing and "health inspections" always seemed so absurd to me. If somebody makes shitty food or their place is gross people just won't go there. We don't need daddy government saying which places are safe.
    • schwartzworld 1y ago
      > It's that they oppose throwing grandma to the street when she can't come up with the property tax to pay some lunch-co megacorp to give the kids lunches. Jesus, talk about a strawman
    • account42 1y ago
      How do you feel about throwing grandma to the street in order to bail out banks? If your can't afford to feed your kids in school you don't deserve to be called a first world country.
• pjc50 1y ago
  > vetting immigration Immigrants are nearly always not eligible for public funds, and are excluded from almost all kinds of welfare until their citizenship process is complete, at which point they become citizens and not immgrants.
  • DocTomoe 1y ago
    This is a very America-centric idea. Most of Europe works on a 'human dignity is inalienable' principle that gives everyone, even immigrants, access to public welfare if the circumstances necessitate it.
    • CalRobert 1y ago
      My experience as an immigrant to Europe (Ireland, specifically) was that I had no recourse to public funds, and when I first arrived, needed to pay for my own private health insurance. In addition, while you _can_ avail of public welfare (if you're on stamp 4, which you can get after 2 years of employment on a critical skills employment permit), doing so will negatively impact any application for naturalisation or permanent residency.
      • moominpapa 1y ago
        If I decided to move to another country, I would feel it the height of bad manners to expect anything from a state I had paid nothing in to.
        • CalRobert 1y ago
          I agree, I just wanted to clear a misconception.
          • moominpapa 1y ago
            You have also made a comment in this thread that the Irish policy of building in the countryside is xenophobic, which considering the major changes to the demography of Ireland in recent times feels quite ungracious.