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this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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The stigma is the point.
Conservatives believe receiving charity should be shameful.
Because conservatives (and neoliberals) think poverty is a personal moral failure - if you're poor, it's not because society and capitalism and racism and structural inequality screwed you over, it's because you, personally, were lazy or wasted your money or broke the law or didn't work hard enough.
So if a child can't afford a school lunch, it's because their parents are bad people. And shaming that child with an obvious "free lunch" (I remember having a bright red card that I had to show in the cafeteria, and the lunch lady would sneer at me and loudly proclaim "here is your FREE LUNCH" and hand me a cheese sandwich and an apple when the other kids were getting pizza just to make sure everybody knew my parents were poor) teaches the child to be ashamed of their parents and be ashamed of their poverty so they'll work harder to avoid poverty as adults.
And if schools give every child free lunch, not only do they lose that "teaching opportunity", they teach children that food is a right and that everybody, no matter their economic status, should have enough to eat, which is a direct attack on the fundamental principles of capitalism and American society.
Go into a conservative space and tell them people have a right to food and shelter and medical care and watch them froth in rage.
Wow I never put it together before but you are right, the free lunch was a lesson to work hard and not be poor, and I have to say it worked on me. We had our free lunches provided in a very distinct white paper bag and you had to walk to the office to get it, then walk back down to the cafeteria after everyone was already sitting down. So everyone got to see the white bag lunch as you walked in, and everyone knew what it meant. Would it have killed the school to use the standard brown paper bag, or give it to us on a lunch tray with the hot lunch kids? No but if the reason was to embarrass me into not being poor it worked. I promised myself that my kids would never have to deal with that embarrassment, and so far I've kept that promise.
It's crazy how different things can be in different places. When I was in school, it didn't matter whether you paid or not, everyone got the same thing the same way. Actually, we had no way of knowing what other students paid for their lunch, as we would have an account with the school that you would put money on, and when you went through the line, you would give the person at the end the last 4 digits of your ssn and it would charge you the correct amount and take it out of your account.
Now if you didn't have enough money in your account to cover whatever you owed, then there would be an issue, but I don't remember ever seeing that.
But if you specifically say that they have a right to those things, they'll wholeheartedly agree.
It's a lot simpler. Conservatives want to funnel all tax money to the ultra wealthy. It's just wealth worship.
By their twisted logic the rich people deserve all the money, because they’re rich and therefore god’s chosen people
Prosperity gospel
Basic, and higher education should be on that list. I'd aslo argue for utilities, and AFAIC utilities should be public, and include telecommunications companies, not just water, electric, and mass transit.
Oh man, that is so fucked up. The UK has its own problems around attitudes towards the poor, but I never saw anything like this in school. My school had cards that you had to load credit onto, and people with free school meals had a standard amount automatically added on each day.