Student: "Mrs. K, I don't have lunch money"

[BrianL]

Re: Student: "Mrs. K, I don't have lunch money" - Where does the Money Go..

Again, I am not disagreeing. There is absolutely gut and excess in our lives we can shave away. I assume the teacher figured the kid was buying lunch because they didn't have a lunch with them. Hopefully we can all agree that 11 year old kids should have something for lunch as a starting point.

Look, there is a huge difference between people here talking about educating the parent and throwing insults at a child for not being tougher or at a teacher for wanting to inform others about what she her experiences (and about potential ways to help out)

[ProdigyofZen]

Re: Student: "Mrs. K, I don't have lunch money"

First of all, this is from the Dailykos, which we know is overtly political in the leftwing blogosphere. It is sad but honestly the funniest line was when she said the "treat" for the 7th graders was showing them the documentary "an inconvenient truth" lol hilarious. My children will never go to public school to listen to propoganda.....

[ProdigyofZen]

Re: Student: "Mrs. K, I don't have lunch money"

"compassion" is what destroys the western culture and is used agaisnt us to gain power and influence from non-western cultures.

[Guest]

Re: Student: "Mrs. K, I don't have lunch money"

how much did a 1mb internet connection or a car with abs cost your parents 35 yrs ago? oh, forgot. no internet or abs then. nevermind.

Sorry, I am too lazy to master quoting. But yes, we do have many more things to buy today and many improvements such as ABS, which makes us safer. We do not, however, have to live in homes that are 50% larger and 100% more ornate, which happens to be one of the main precipitating factors of the recent collapse. We do not have to vacation and Disneyworld multiple times when we can't afford to. We don't have to eat restaurant meals every week. I can count on one hand the number of restaurant meals I ate before my late teens, and my parents were upper middle class.

Here's an example illustrating how our idea of things has changed since the early 70's.

My in-laws home which today would be considered a modest "affordable" starter home is located far out in the exhurbs in a neighborhood of "working class" mostly younger family people. They recently purchased it new. It has expansive granite countertops, better cabinets than my house, 5 bedrooms (for two retirees) and an expensively landscaped yard. Meanwhile they're in their 70's and have only about $100,000 saved for retirement. That's why they still work now and then part time. 30 years ago or more, they managed to raise 5 children in a home that was less than half the square footage, had 3 (later expanded to 4) bedrooms, and was located much closer to the city.

That's ok, with social security they'll get by. But what about their much younger neighbors? They have similar homes except no savings, not much chance of receiving nearly as much in social security, plus kids to raise and pay for, plus new cars, plus boats, etc. Meanwhile their back lawns are bare dirt as they neglect them and the type grass used in back lawns here dies if neglected. So the homes are definitely worth less than when purchased 2-3 years ago. And yes, my in-laws are democrats who feel they deserve more benefits and lower taxes. All because the paid for cheaper home wasn't good enough.

The difference of course is that money was simply diverted from savings to (over)consumption on a mass scale. Now we'll see a tidal wave of demands to help these folks out who chose (remember free will as a concept?) to spend instead of save.



high value work = $$$, low value = $

same as always.[/quote]

You say this as if this has always been the case and always should be. 35 years ago the butcher at your local grocery store could raise a family on his pay. A factory worker, however humble, was set for life in a modest but comfortable situation if she did her job well. Actual adults, not teenagers, staffed most stores. You were not considered "a loser" if you did such work. You were considered "normal". Construction work was considered "good pay". Here's another example. In 1979 I made $8/hr as a completely unskilled residential construction laborer working summers and holidays. Today a completely unskilled worker starts at.....$8/hour! IF he's lucky and speaks at least some english! Nearly 30 years later it hasn't even kept pace with inflation. Carpenters were making $35-$45K and today it's not much more.

The only reason these types of work are now "low value" is that we violated our own laws to kick the ladder out from under the supply/demand equation by importing mass unskilled labor to fill those jobs. This allowed the economy to expand in its own "bubble" and "high value" jobs to expand in number beyond what would otherwise be possible. Good for some, bad for many others. It also caused a Peter Principle effect of mega proportions to occur, where we have incompetents in positions all up the chain. The guy who would be a low level functionary in years past is now a VP faking being competent. Does it occur to anyone that this is why we're not competitive? That we cannot be a nation of consultants and "professionals"? Some actual work has to get done. And not by morons and the English language illiterate. We have too many chiefs, too few truely skilled workers (smooth talking and social grace at office politics is not really a skill), and we imported "indians" so we don't have to dirty our effette hands with actual labor. We've created a system more akin to the British empire, where "gentlemen" never soiled their hands and there was little social mobility. And that empire was renowned for having incompetents in charge in many areas. And we all know how that turned out.

And as for "dumb" people, I made this point years ago and now see it regurgitated back in columns by those I wrote to who used to claim mass immigration was great but now are against it, ironically. My point was....dumb people need good jobs too. Less intelligent people cannot be actuaries. They cannot be biologists. They cannot be doctors or lawyers or super slick sales reps or economists. And the fact we all ignored is that there are more of THEM than there are smart people. And they breed faster (check out the first 30 minutes of the movie "idiocracy" ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyVNlvzzSFA

Ignorance of this very simple concept will simply result in socialism. It's irrational to think that these people will sit back and let us earn six figure incomes and not simply walk into the voting booth and vote themselves a nice chunk of our earnings to equal things out. So if anyone is wondering why the public has recently taken a big government socialist turn, it's simple. They are voting themselves what the market won't provide.

It's exactly this predjudice against actual labor (refering to it as low value, despite not meaning anything perjorative) that we have to shed or we are going to fail as a nation. It is NOT low value. It may be lower value than your job, but it is not low value.

But as long as we foster a mentality that an annointed class deserves cheap goods and services provided by a permanent poor underclass, you'll only see more votes for socialism.

We took a system that worked well for most and broke it trying to squeeze out more for a minority at the top by bypassing supply/demand for labor and importing our labor on the cheap. We'd better find a way for the average worker to make a decent living (meaning pays enough to have a home, car, kids, and retirement fund) or socialism seems inevitable.

[BK]

Re: Student: "Mrs. K, I don't have lunch money"

Prodigy has it right.

So, if I send my child to school without a coat - shouldn't the school supply him with a coat.

In fact, my child is really buring thru the knees of all his pants - perhaps I'll send him to school without any pants. Shoes are very expensive - I'll send him without shoes or pants!

I will be outraged if the School doesn't provide him with shoes and pants. How could a School not have compassion for a child sent to school w/o shoes and pants. I'm under a lot of stress and the school should understand that I just couldn't handle clothing my child properly.

And we watch our society slip down the slippery slope of the Nanny state.

So, President Elect Obama will propose a program similiar to the School Milk program called the 'School Pants and Shoes' program. The Tag line for the program "No Child w/o Shoes and Pants'. Any Child that arrives at school without Shoes or Pants deserves proper foot-ware and proper pants.

After all its a bailout Nation - I just hope I can get mine.... ;-)

[raja]

Re: Student: "Mrs. K, I don't have lunch money"

Andrew, if you can stand it, then turn it on and watch it. I stood if for many years, but for the past few, watching the major networks' news, the local news, or CNBC invariably irritate me to the point that to continue would equate to my being being a masochist in the non-sexual sense. Give yourself 30 more years and perhaps you will see my point. I'll leave it to you to look for and assign any real value to the majority of the MSM. I think almost all of it is no-information, disinformation, or misinformation--one of those should be correct.

The main value I derive from MSM, aside from entertainment, is to understand what the masses are thinking.

But my viewing time is limited. I read Bloomberg world news headlines and Google News headlines, and watch ABC Evening News every evening. That's it.

The only thing that disturbs me about the MSM are many of the human interest stories featured at the end of the ABC News broadcast. They are usually about war veterans missing limbs, or cancer victims, most of whom are trying and usually succeeding to overcome the bad luck that life has dealt them. I guess the news people think these stories are somehow uplifting, but I find them sad and depressing. The feeling I walk away with is "these poor people . . . life can be so cruel".

[Penguin]

Re: Student: "Mrs. K, I don't have lunch money"

I agree BrianL, we are talking about kids here.

While I agree there should be consequences and lessons learned galore from this mess there is a certain level of dignity that even the poorest of poor should be afforded in any society worth salvaging. Yes, they should be allowed to learn from their parent's mistakes, and, yes, they should learn to live with dignity when dealing with big losses. But what has that got to do with free lunches and a kind hearted teacher who is helping them to cope?

BK makes a good point about money wasted. I know in high school my football coach insisted that we eat school lunches to avoid the nutrition pitfalls you mention. But out meals were more along the lines of beans, cornbread, and collard greens. Hey, we were in a very small school in a very poor state. :p

My mother has told me many times that when young couples got a home in her day the first things purchased were fruit trees. You planted apple, cherry, pear, peach, etc so that for years to come you had at least ~that~ part of the budget taken care of. Even today everyone who is able seems to have a garden. And much sharing, trading, and giving away is done be neighbors. A more austere lifestyle sometimes can be a step up in quality.

Signs of the times I suppose that lawns are often too small to accommodate much in the way of fruit trees and that you'd have to beg the homeowners association for permission to plant a garden. I guess this hearkens back to a time when a home was a place to raise a family and not an investment.

Will

[Guest]

Re: Student: "Mrs. K, I don't have lunch money"

Wow... just Wow... This is the biggest POS article I have read on here in quite some time. It is so wrong on so many levels I just can't believe it.

First of all I just want to say I grew up dirt poor.

Here are my biggest griefs with this article;

Just because you are poor/down and out/etc. doesn't mean you can't afford to bathe...there are things as $1.00 stores and discount/second hand grocers that sell cheap soap and if its really bad there is always the Y (if there are no soap dispensers at the shower use the one in the bathroom)
Being poor is not an excuse to for being disgusting.

As stated above there are discount grocers for really cheap food, but if you can't afford dented cans of no name soup or split packaging of ramen I suggest you march yourself and your family over to your local church group/soup kitchen/etc. If you are hungry there are always places to find food.
Same for clothes.... I love the part in the article about giving Ambercrombie clothes... thats rich.

I would have loved to focus on school alone, but if you are legally old enough to work and it needs to be done then work. There are jobs out there if you lower your standards enough... even in tough times. I started my first real job at 12 shoveling shit on a farm and never stopped working since..... fortunately I don't shovel shit anymore.... Late 20s now.

JC!!! doesn't anyone save money anymore???

Finally this is the reason why I think public education just plain sucks. This sounds like the stuff I used to do when I was in K through like 3rd grade. I remember bing bored out of my gourd with how easy school was until I got really lucky and received a special "underprivileged" scholarship to receive a private education after my 6th grade year in school. I remember going from bored out of my mind and causing trouble to something like 2-4 hours of homework on topics that a typical public school kid won't learn until HS.

I am not tooting my own horn, and I am not some success story or miracle. I just grew up in a family that had some tough times and we had to do what was needed to be done to get by. Tough times are the things my Great-Grandparents and Grandparents had to do to get by during the depression.

I don't know maybe this is why I hate people... Self-Loathing, Pathetic, Self-Entitlement, and Laziness.

Rant Off.:mad:

I apologize for any poor grammar or misspelled words..... can happen when you get a little too emotional about a topic.

I was lucky and my father made a good living. But I still worked from about age 14 and from age 16 worked a job just about every single day "off" from school through high school and college. No spring break for me. My "christmas break" was spent picking up brickbats in the mud on construction sites or cleaning gutters. I never had more than a 3 day weekend off except attending college until I lost a job at age 27. My first adult "vacation" cost about $500 and occured at age 35. A lovely visit to the beach where I stayed accross the street and out of view of the ocean in a days inn. My PARENTS were upper middle class, not me. Today's kids aren't taught that. So when they get out of school they are dismayed to find that you can't live the same lifestyle. So they borrow to make up the difference. My own personal lifestyle differed little from that of today's "poor". In fact, I probably had less than some. My clothing was hand-me-down thrift store variety for the most part, I played in the woods with a STICK instead of on a playstation or Wii. My bike was an ugly too-small leftover one-speed bought on the cheap, and I saved until age 15 to buy a real bike for $115.

Today, food is relatively cheap and hunger is not a legit complaint. The PARENT(s) are more likely the source of a kid's hunger, not lack of money. Can't afford lunch money? One word. EBAY.

LAZINESS and disdain for old fashioned work is the problem here. The attitude seems to be 'if I can't have my former lifestyle, why bother, I'll get some govn't help and sit home watching my 50" plasma till something comes along".

[BrianL]

Re: Student: "Mrs. K, I don't have lunch money"

I forgot...how does helping a fellow countryman who fell on hard times get back on their feet and become a productive/contributing member of society help non-western societies gain power and influence over us again?

[ProdigyofZen]

Re: Student: "Mrs. K, I don't have lunch money"

Thanks BK, but you won't get yours and any "program" the government puts into place will be to the detriment of the US economy and its people. Just like all the programs they have already implemented. What they should have done is let ALL the institutions fail and the world fall into a depression. The biggest problem with that is all the socialists/communists would try to take over saying capitalism has failed but then again thats what they are trying to do now. With every action there is an equal and opposite reaction and that applies to not only the sciences but the economy as well. The only action they havent considered is inaction, to do nothing and let everything work its way out. Nash has already described this in the problem of prisoners dilemma, the Nash equilibrium theory and after all that is what everyone wants is equilibrium, in markets, in politics etc.

[ProdigyofZen]

Re: Student: "Mrs. K, I don't have lunch money"

I forgot, how does helping a fellow american citizen by giving him money and providing him a safety net allow him to get back on his feet and be a productive member of society? or does it cause laziness and complacency?

Anyway aside from that, you don't understand what I am saying with that remark. People who are non western use our value system agaisnt us to gain political power and influence while they do whatever they want with no repurcussions. Feel sorry for us because of this, because of that, then they gain power and stab the westerners in the back. Case in point is South Africa. They use our fear of racism agaisnt us. But I am sure that just like obama "this is above your pay grade" to understand. Just to let you know i am neither a pro obama or mccain supporter, they both are bad for america.

[BrianL]

Re: Student: "Mrs. K, I don't have lunch money"

Compassion shouldn't imply new government programs or a government mandated support. You and I have the same goal, just different strategies. I believe individuals donating unused resources (ie blankets, etc), donating money to a soup kitchen or giving someone an environment to clean up before a job interview can help someone become self sustaining again. Your view, as I understand it, is that any form of charity feeds laziness.

The truth is highly individual and probably somewhere between our views. I do take issue with people insulting others who are simply trying to figure out how to help - how to individually help others using their own resources. Insulting the author of the article for advocating individuals within the community reach out and help others seems totally unproductive and misguided. Lashing out at an 11 year old? Indefensible in my opinion.

I understand your point with respect to foreign interests leveraging our emotions and values against us. That is absolutely valid. I just wasn't clear on how that related to showing compassion towards a child of a fellow citizen who was just knocked down and still figuring out how to recover.

[tree]

Re: Student: "Mrs. K, I don't have lunch money"

Sometimes the casual cruelty here--e.g. "sappy c***" teacher and making fun of freaked-out children--does concern me and makes me want to stay away. Not to mention the casual misogyny, of course--that's a given. Life is harsh enough. Do I have to read it at iTulip too? Ick.

[Guinnesstime]

Re: Student: "Mrs. K, I don't have lunch money"

Sometimes the casual cruelty here--e.g. "sappy c***" teacher and making fun of freaked-out children--does concern me and makes me want to stay away. Not to mention the casual misogyny, of course--that's a given. Life is harsh enough. Do I have to read it at iTulip too? Ick.

Maybe I am lost in the text translation, but I don't see where anyone has made fun of the children. I believe most people have been critical of the parents if anything.

However the comment about the teacher was uncalled for.

Our life i.e. American Life is not that harsh. Sorry its just not.

[phirang]

Re: Student: "Mrs. K, I don't have lunch money"

Famine is deflationary.

Great for core CPI.