Universal Free School Lunches: A Critical Perspective

I want to first start this article off by stating the point that I am not against free school lunches for children whose families cannot afford them. However, I do want to call attention to the absolute absurdity of universal free school lunch systems that provide taxpayer-funded meals to students who can clearly afford them.

Currently, the threshold to get free lunch in the United States is families earning at or below 130% of the federal poverty line. This equates to around an income of $40,560 for a family of four. In the year 2022, over 60% of public-school students received free or reduced-price lunch. To be noted, a lot of the students received a free lunch due to pandemic-related waivers.

I can speak firsthand as I was a high school graduate in the class of 2021, and our school went to a universal free lunch system due to policies related to the pandemic. This inflates the statistics to make it seem like more people need it than do, when only 21% of children in the United States live at an income level that would qualify them for free lunch.

Personal Experience With the Universal Lunch System

Now I want to go back to my time under the free lunch system and voice my concerns and the flaws that I experienced firsthand.

For a little context, I was a high school football player at the time who was constantly trying to gain weight. Throughout my time in high school, when the lunch system was normal, I would routinely buy two to three lunches a day from the school to meet my weight goals.

They decided to change the system my senior year, and with that the school limited my ability to obtain the adequate calories I needed. The policy was one lunch per kid through the line. I had the means to pay and even offered to buy extra food, but they had completely scrapped the old system, and the administration told me that I would only receive the single lunch.

Broader Policy Implications

I understand that some people might be thinking that this is not a big issue and that my problem is more amusing than serious—and it is kind of funny to hear me, an already big guy, complain about not getting enough food. Nevertheless, if you take a close look at the system, it provides insight into many of the flaws in these government one-size-fits-all solutions.

On the surface, universal free lunch sounds like a compassionate policy, but when you strip away the feel-good rhetoric, at its core it is another example of government overreach. This creates unnecessary inefficiency, rationing, and dependency.

Historically, centralized food distribution has been a staple of communist regimes, ranging from the Soviet Union’s breadlines to Mao’s failed policies—both of which led to mass starvation.

Conclusion

My experience was a small-scale example of such communist policies. Under our school’s system, I was rationed to one meal a day, even though I possessed the means to pay for more food. The government replaced an already functioning system where students in need got proper assistance.

Again, this is the problem with many nice-sounding socialist or communist policies. They claim to help, but they punish self-reliance and generate more inefficiency. Universal free lunch is another example of government control disguised as good intentions.

References

USAFacts. (2023). How many US children receive a free or reduced-price school lunch?
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-us-children-receive-a-free-or-reduced-price-school-lunch/

Section 2: Today’s Low-income America. (2022). https://justicegap.lsc.gov/resource/section-2-todays-low-income-america/