I have 1 son in kindergarten and his lunch is $3. They don’t accept cash. So you have to either give them a check for his account or go to a website and add it that way. The website of course is through a third party and charges a fee of $2.50 per transaction. We’re literally taking money from children in order to eat. We’re well off, so we don’t have to worry about it, but to someone out there, that matters!
My son also has a college fund, and the company handling that now allows you to set up a link to give to folks to donate money into his college fund. That link, when it’s used, will cost, $2.50 fee each time it’s used. They’re literally taking money from children’s college funds as well!
We’re charging for children’s health and well being and education. It’s insane.
We’re charging for children’s health and well being and education. It’s insane.
yeah. there are more impactful and more sweepingly bad policies in the world, but blanket opposition to the idea of free school meals for everyone is one of the policies that best highlights how flagrantly immoral modern conservative politics tend to be. there is literally no downside. it’s not even expensive in any sense of that word. we did it without issue for years during COVID and nobody complained!
Oh yeah, I wish we could be focused on the difficult things, but apparently some folks think that children shouldn’t be able to eat. I don’t get it. Let’s tackle these easy things so we can move on to others.
The website of course is through a third party and charges a fee of $2.50 per transaction.
If I understand that right you pay 2.50 for every transaction of 3. That’s 83%.
This is not completely related to school meals, but it is a good example imo which explains why big tech and banks have been lobbying for a long time to shut down and ban crypto money and other community currencies. There are many decentralized currency solutions available which parents could use at costs next to nothing, but lawmakers claim to ‘protect’ people by shutting them down or introduce regulations that trigger a similar effect.
(To also say that: There are many crypto scams and of course there should be strong consumer protections, but using complementary currency systems as a means of payment -not as a means of value storage- would be a great benefit for the society. The monetary policy and financial regulations we have in any country are increasingly causing trouble for the society imo.)
Reading it back now, I think how I said it was confusing. So we have to put money into his account. Say $50 put into his account. When we refill his account that charges us a fee of $2.50.
I am not a crypto fan, but just because of all the scams, the fact it’s unregulated, the fact that every start up was pushing crypto in ways it didn’t need to be used, NFTs, etc. I think there could be a valid use for it, as you’re saying, but it’d need a lot ore regulation, oversight, etc.
I don’t reject crypto regulation, but the way how this is done across the world is bad for innovation and prevents competition.
To give an idea what I mean: One of the more prominent crypto scams of late has been the FTX case. Back in the fall I read FTX’s bankruptcy declaration. As far ax I remember, it said that 2 out of the 4 FTX companies never had an audited report, they never had a cashflow forecast, major decision about cash reimbursements were made via chat, budget responsibilities were unclear, assets bought were not on the books, and many other points. But none of the things had anything to do specifically with crypto. They simply had no investor reporting and the investors -with big names among them like Sequoia Capital, Tudor Investment or Robert Kraft- apparently didn’t ask questions.
With a proper reporting and by applying and enforcing the existing laws, though, the FTX case would never have happened. And this is also true for many other crypto scams imho. But, again, I’m not at all against regulation, it should just done wisely without preventing technical and social innovation.
Wisely is the difficult part, especially because most lawmakers are seniors.
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It’s frankly insane that you have to pay for lunch at school, a place you must be. Growing up we made slightly too much to get free or reduced lunch and not enough for my parents to regularly give me a lunch, so most days did not eat anything at all.
Honestly, it should be put into the bill of rights that no child is to be denied water or food in this country. Having not done that is just cruelty especially if children are required to go to school too.
