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Historically, one reason that US conservatives turned so heavily against public services is — narrowly & specifically — racism; or rather a willingness to share facilities with other white people but not with black people.
When they were told they had to desegregate town swimming pools and let the black kids learn to swim too, they shut down the swimming pools instead.
it’s not just racism. it’s classism too.
rich whites love public services that benefit them, but not when poor people get them too.
The UK remembers when Margaret Thatcher took their kindergarteners’ free milk. Shortly before she fucked up their parents’ not-free housing market.
Yep a theater company in my town recently put on a play dramatizing the closing of the city’s pools. Instead of integrating they filled the pools frequented by white patrons with concrete and the one frequented by black patrons with garbage. It also touched on the fact that the lack of availability for safe public swimming locations has led to needless deaths of hundreds and hundreds of black people who opted to swim in fast moving creeks and waters connected to industrial facilities. All because racists were unwilling to share a body of water with someone with a different color of skin.
it’s easy to say “let’s feed the kids!”, and it’s not a bad opinion to have - but I was curious when I looked at the bill mentioned in the article - added all up, its between $8 and $12 per child per day.
cursory searches indicate that there’s ~55.4 million children, K - 12, attending school in 2023. if that estimate is accurate, that’s $443,200,000 to $664,800,000 per day.
the number of days in a school year varies by State - between 160 and 180 - this means that for a “school year” the cost of feeding the children is between $70,912,000,000 - $79,776,000,000 (160 days) to $106,368,000,000 - $119,664,000,000 (180 days)
so, between $70.9 billion and $119.6 billion, every year. not really surprised that the bill is getting no traction in Congress.
Exactly. “Feed all the children” is nice until you have to pay for it. This debate is about allocating money to fund lunches for kids whose parents can afford it already.
I’m not saying I’m against it. I’m saying we should take a sober look at it. Not “WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN” clickbait bullshit.
