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Donations Versus Taxes: On the topic of School Lunch

An older Latina reaches toward the camera with one hand waaato place a mini cheese pizza onto a child's lunch tray, her expression businesslike as she addresses a second child. She is holding a rack in her other hand that contains one more mini cheese pizza, and a rack in front of her contains multiple mini pepperoni pizzas.
USDA Photo by Lance Cheung, Flickr

Christine Johnson said, on Quora:

I love hearing about someone donating to children, instead of animals. I love animals, but I feel like it’s so sad that people seem to care more for a dog than for a child in our era. Thanks for reminding me there is some human love still out there—as a mom in a very childless area, it is a nice (and a needed) reminder❤️

Children definitely are the future, and making sure they have secure food, housing, and healthcare does so much to make sure they grow up educated and able to think critically. But individual organizations can only do so much - they have such a limited reach - it's not as helpful to give a child a burger if he already has a sandwich, but the child who hasn't eaten since they left school the day before will benefit from either option. Instead, a single-payer system can redistribute funds from one area of the country to somewhere completely different based on area need.

If you frame payment for things like section 8 housing and SNAP as a civic duty, you know, dues for being in the “private club” that is the 3rd most populous country on this planet, then of course it is only natural for every member of this society to support the health and welfare of even the smallest hungry child. We have to start enforcing public control of the government in order to stop letting big business lobbyists redirect our tax money and legislation away from the people who actually need it. The provision of school lunch, regular medical services, and basic general college education to all citizens needs to join K-12 schooling as a civic duty, a patriotic commitment to the country's future growth.

A white hand in a white sleeve reaches toward a pin that says 'Vote' in bold blue letters, with white stars in a red field above and a blue field beneath the text. It is surrounded by round pins that display part of the USA flag, and several small decorative flags lay on the surface to the right.
Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

(Note: I would say that we could simply add more material to college prerequisite courses like high school, but unfortunately public school is already so overwhelmingly loaded with material that teenagers are already experiencing burnout at continuously increasing rates. It would help if history and science classes taught the correct thing the first time, so you didn't spend so much effort re-learning everything in later classes, but it would also help if we taught concepts and critical thinking skills rather than test questions. I have had the entirety of Wikipedia downloaded onto an ebook reader, and before that, a PC, for the last fifteen years. I don't need to have memorized the day of the month that Julius Caesar was killed, but it is of far greater importance to me, at this time, to remember, that Rome fell because of the gap between the rich and poor classes inherent in capitalism, lack of financial support from the upper classes for infrastructure like roads and water pipes, and military overspending inherent in militaristic imperialism - and this is not something I learned in school.)

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