"Something else, on Iowa Public Radio the other day they talked about the steady rise of free and reduced price school lunches for students of low income households. Something else to think about. "
I suspect that if you were to compare today's figures against the figures from the 1970s, we're nowhere near what we were back then in terms of kids receiving school lunch assistance. Even worse, in the 1970s, there were large numbers of qualified children who weren't entered into the program because their school districts screwed the pooch on the reporting requirements.
The collapse of the oil, steel, and coal industries in the US, the general global recession, and a litany of other events made the 1970s through the early 1980s a complete and total shitshow economically in the US. In a lot of ways it was a lot worse than 2007-2010 because it went on for almost 15 years and was accompanied by very high inflation.
My entire school district received funds from the school lunch program that applied to every student, regardless of income. Our lunches were 25 cents, and there was still a significant number of students who qualified for reduced price or free lunches because their parents couldn't meet that. The next county over, Cumberland, charged $1.75 for a school lunch at the same time. It didn't receive the same grants.
My school district, right across the river from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, also received Appalachia Improvement Corporation grants every year.
My point is, these little *expletive deleted*ers think that they have it tough. Yeah, they're coming out with high student loan debt. But as a percentage of starting income, I'm wondering if the disparity is as great as what's claimed.
I came out of college with, IIRC, $12,500 in student loan debt, and my first full time job out of school I made $11,500 a year as a newspaper reporter. I cleared $111.40 a freaking week.