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[wierd]

That is a suggestion I would approve of-- the problem is that it creates a situation rife for abuse-- namely, the "I feed my kids using school lunches exclusively, so I dont have to buy any other than for myself" problem. (and yes, it does in fact happen. Normally with neglectful parents, but does happen.)

[Reelya]

But that's fine as far as I'm concerned. The meals are bought at cost with your tax dollars, if you could afford the tax, or they're provided to level the playing field if you can't afford the tax. Either way you are in fact entitled to utilize the meal to save money.

It's bulk purchasing basically, even if that's not what the thought process is. And that frees up capital for other spending.

[Neonivek]

That is a suggestion I would approve of-- the problem is that it creates a situation rife for abuse-- namely, the "I feed my kids using school lunches exclusively, so I dont have to buy any other than for myself" problem. (and yes, it does in fact happen. Normally with neglectful parents, but does happen.)

Issue is... they are also typically the parents who don't give their kids lunches or breakfasts

[wierd]

That assumes everyone pays the taxes in a fair flat rate, with only minimal and necessary adjustment for means.  It is not so. Our tax system is the very poster child of needlessly complex, and stacked.

[chaoticag]

That is a suggestion I would approve of-- the problem is that it creates a situation rife for abuse-- namely, the "I feed my kids using school lunches exclusively, so I dont have to buy any other than for myself" problem. (and yes, it does in fact happen. Normally with neglectful parents, but does happen.)

Okay, why is this abuse even bad? The kid is still being fed. And free school lunches meaning food for all might be phrased as inefficiency if the kid is not eating that food.

Are we talking like, abuse on the level of CPS would get involved if this happened? Then uh, well, there's CPS for that, and I doubt free school lunches are going to cause even more instances of this.

That assumes everyone pays the taxes in a fair flat rate, with only minimal and necessary adjustment for means.  It is not so. Our tax system is the very poster child of needlessly complex, and stacked.

The amount of efficiency you can drag out of this system is going to pale in comparrison to the military industrial complex.

[wierd]

chaotica: Dont get me started on the US's needlessly excessive military expenditure.  Sacred cows need to be slaughtered.

In terms of neglectful parenting-- PROVE that the parent cannot provide more for the child. It is harder than you think, and getting into that mode is how children get taken from poor, but loving homes-- and put into wealthier, but horrible ones.

[Reelya]

A few reasons someone on eg. $10000 income pays no tax:

#1 there are high set costs to tax auditing. How many man-hours are they going to dedicate to checking this guys taxes? What does a qualified auditor cost per hour? IRS Keeping track of small amounts isn't cost-effective.

#2 it's hard enough to live on that money already, so if you e.g. tax 5 of these guys $2000 each, you've taken $10000 out of consumer spending, thus putting one out of every 6 guys like this straight on welfare. So a 20% tax on minimum wage would on average destroy 1 out of 6 minimum wage jobs.

#3 even if he's paying his share of taxes, that's not a lot of money now.

[chaoticag]

In terms of neglectful parenting-- PROVE that the parent cannot provide more for the child. It is harder than you think, and getting into that mode is how children get taken from poor, but loving homes-- and put into wealthier, but horrible ones.

There is really only one case of CPS moving a child from one house to another that I am aware of on a personal level, and it didn't take all that much to prove the child was abused. There's plenty of stories out there, but in general, there an actual order of events to how CPS tends to handle these cases. They don't just slap them into the first accepting house without many followups in general.

Also this gets considerably easier to prove if every child gets free lunches.

[Reelya]

Also with the school lunches for everyone idea, it also doesn't matter so much.

The fact is as I said before either you paid the taxes and the meal's from that, or you weren't required to pay the taxes and the meal's a hand up for your family.

Sure, some people might do tax avoidance and thus not have paid the tax, but still have a kid get the free meal, but this is kind of a tangent as well. The meal is for the kid, not the parent. And it's those kids doing well that will be an economic benefit for society as a whole later. When a kids succeeds instead of fails, we're basically gaining two kids. We get the economic benefit of another productive person, and we avoid the economic costs of providing for another dropout/prisoner. What the parents paid for is irrelevant, because it's society, not their parents, who pay for prison and adult welfare later.

[muldrake]

Also this gets considerably easier to prove if every child gets free lunches.

I am unaware of what catastrophe would befall the country if every single child in America got a free lunch every day.  Other than the bizarre ancap type argument that taxing anyone even a penny is the worst thing that can ever possibly happen and condemns the entire society to doom.  Which is so obviously idiotic it barely merits notice.

[wierd]

I can see how that would be so chaotica.  A child in a home where the folks are forced to pay for food, (when they clearly dont want to) is not any better off than in one where the parent can get away with not feeding them, even though they are able. (because they are not in a loving home either way.)

But proving that there is no love is harder than you realize. Yeah, CPS does take a lot of kids from loveless homes-- but they also take kids from loving ones that cannot provide as well. I have personal experience with that latter, as such a kid lived next door.

[wierd]

In other "interesting times" type news---

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-travel-ban-legal-analysis-20170206-story.html

Looks like the Supreme Court might have to decide on exactly what limits on presidential power there are, and how and when to apply them.

If they seriously curtail the president's powers, and return that power back to congress where it belongs, I will be a very happy man. Executive over-reach has been a SERIOUS problem for the past few decades.

Sad it took a raging IDIOT to force people to see it though.

[Sergarr]

I don't know Putin, have no deals in Russia, and the haters are going crazy - yet Obama can make a deal with Iran, #1 in terror, no problem!

cool

[TempAcc]

REMOVE EXECUTIVE remove executive

*accordion solo*

[Frumple]

... man, it's from yesterday and the conversation has moved on and all sort of shit, but I didn't notice anyone saying anything about it in the interim and it's something that honestly needs saying so.

Welfare might do more than just feed people and reduce work incentives a little (though the vast majority of people still work even in countries with decent welfare).

Welfare reduces incentives to make money any other way, so not just in the way we say is "good", but it also reduces incentives to make money in ways we say are "bad". i.e. crime.

Welfare does not reduce incentives to make money any other way. Most of the bloody point of welfare is the exact opposite of reducing incentive to work, and most that I've seen actually goddamn manages that to one extent or another. If someone is seeing welfare as something that makes people want to work less, they are completely ignoring what the damned stuff is implemented for, near to the point of it having to be intentional to miss that badly.

The point of welfare is to address glaring disincentives to work and live. When you're one major problem from exposure or starvation, have to skimp on healthcare for yourself and/or your family, have significantly limited transportation options, are incapable of building capital to pretty much any extent, and on, and on, and on, you cannot find good work, do a good job, improve your life, or frankly do bloody anything but suffer nearly as well as someone that's not being persistently sodomized with varying degrees of literalness by such issues. Meaningfully contributing to society from an economic standpoint or otherwise becomes both significantly more difficult, and less effective to the extent it is possible.

Really, people need to stop thinking that misery or bad conditions improve someone's incentive to function in any way beneficial to themselves or society. People that succeed in those situations do so in spite of them, not because. The whole thing about starving artists somehow doing better is complete goddamn bullshit, and just about every other iteration of the concept applied to other walks of life just as much so. Most -- the vast friggin' majority of -- people do not need to be beaten (however metaphorical) until they stop being lazy. They need obstacles to them doing things they want to do (or just could be doing, that's a net gain to themselves and others) removed, and then let loose. The point of welfare, among a great many other things, is exactly that. Get the bullshit out of the way so people can do more than whatever it was they were previously limited to.