Would they get free housing and nutritious meals in the poor houses?

So Hitler is a 128 year old man living in Argentina?

lol

Meh people spending food stamps on things clearly not intended for them (red bull, steam cards, lottery tickets, etc) is pretty reasonable for someone to question. Whether you believe "poor people" should get discretionary income or not to do with whatever they want is a different debate entirely.

Suzzer,

You seem in favor of UBI generally.

I think it's important that we don't increase the overall consumption of Redbull and if a poor person wants some they should steal a rich person's Redbull and they should be able to buy guillotines with food stamps.

As one of the resident far-left loony liberals, I actually agree with all of this in principle.

In practice? You're going to need a pencil-necked bureaucrat to consult with the USDA to compile a list of acceptable foods and then you're going to need a small army of pencil-necked bureaucrats to drive around and make sure all the grocery stores out there are complying with the law and at the end of the day enforcing these rules is going to be an order of magnitude more expensive than whatever damage comes from having poors buy the occasional Red Bull on the taxpayer's dime.

It's just breakage, man. Let it go.

I think they should make Food Not Bombs a cabinet level department and everyone who needs it will get non-Redbull food.

It's not really about the tax payer's dime so much as it is about steering poors to better nutritional choices. It's an incentive, not a mandate. Bananas are free, but you have to pay for Red Bull. Like if we're having this argument, the better argument would be why have food stamps at all? It costs the same to simply give them the money.

Instead of giving school kids free lunch, we should just hand them $3 when they enter the cafeteria and put in a few vending machines in the hallway.

Unless someone has some evidence that some large portion of food stamp money is going to Redbull I'm thinking Trolly is very right about adding more administration to the program is not called for.

This is not a complete solution, but when I'm POTUS I'm establishing a grant program for public schools to provide free breakfast, lunch and dinner to any student and maybe parent who wants it no questions asked, no means testing.

You got my vote.

Free school lunches for all students should be one of the easiest things to pass but its not.

Its not abusable. It removes the stigma of only a subset of kids getting free lunch. It removes the disaster of kids forgetting lunch money and dumb administrators throwing their lunch away.

Like, everything else in school ftom textbooks to computers to desks are provided for equally to all kids. Why should lunch be different?

And it probably wouldn't really cost that much extra considering the administrative expenses and outsourced expenses involved with collecting money and administering existing assistance programs. (adding breakfast and anything else would cost more of course)

It would cost more but would be a pittance in terms of total budget.

You should check if there is a local charity that aims specifically to fund school lunches. I donated to one last year that aimed to wipe out all unpaid school lunch accounts and I remember the total amount being fairly low. Granted, thats a fraction of funding all school lunches but I remember the fully funded sum being much lower than I expected.

What about a charity that transports "unsellable" day old bread from local bakeries to schools?

What? What point are you trying to address?

rumor on twit is Flynn gets charged Friday but I think they just like the alliteration of #flynnfriday. I hope Mueller does another move to make all the guilty scumbags sweat

Just that some produce or foods that are no longer considered marketable could be donated to schools or soup kitchens and such.

That already happens at least for packaged food items. Volunteering at a food bank, we had to sort the donations of food from grocery stores and various food drives. So cereal boxes that are dented but the inner bag is sealed are ok. Cans with small dents are ok but large dents are not. Canned tomato products cannot be dented at all due to acidity in tomatoes causing chemical reaction in can which seeps in to the product and is toxic.

I dont think unpackaged and perishable food should be donated as there just isnt a good way to maintain safety.

I also encourage volunteering at a food bank. You quickly realize that just having the food is only a first step. Just sorting everything and rejecting potential health hazards is alot of work.

You also get real mad at whoever donated sprouting onions and candy corn.

I remember when Reagan gave my grandparents a 5lb block of cheese.

They should make the school lunches great again by not paying huge corporations big profits to produce them. my kids school lunch is ****ing gross.

Most mass produced, reheated food is going to be gross.

Airline food and hospital food are also really gross and there is more of a profit incentive there to make it tastier.

Not sure how you're going to find enough cooks that can crank out 500 tasty nutritious meals with a changing menu at happy meal costs unfortunately considering there is a dearth of cooks in the restaurant industry currently. Consistency will also be an issue.

I do agree that nutritional guidelines should at least not be influenced by the contract companies that bid on supplying the lunches.

I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying why don't we put all of that bucket of money towards useful items. Either that or just give money.

There's also a tenable argument to be made that imo if we're going to try to help people, we might want to nudge them towards healthier behaviors which will also wind up costing the state a lot less money in the long run. I have no problem with that concept on a moral or practical level. Obviously it all comes down to threading the needle of doing it right - which govt is generally pretty bad at. So I dunno.

Kid shaming imo.

The program already has administration defining what can an can't be bought. Candy and gum is ok. A hot rotisserie chicken is not. Toilet paper is not. Tweaking the allowed items is not adding more admin costs. It's just a political hot potato no one wants to deal with right now.

And yes of course all kids should eat for free.

Isn't lunch free at all public elementary schools? Breakfast is the controversial one (for idiotic reasons).