Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

What percent of public school children in the US get free lunch?

AI Overview

About 69% of U.S. public school students (33.9 million children) were eligible for free or reduced-price meals through individual eligibility or community-wide provisions. Furthermore, the USDA Economic Research Service reports that roughly 72.4% of all individual school lunches served through the National School Lunch Program are provided free or at a reduced price.

Program Details

Free Meal Threshold: Households at or below 130% of the federal poverty line qualify for free meals.
Reduced-Price Threshold: Households between 130% and 185% of the poverty line qualify for reduced-price meals.

What is 130% of the federal poverty line for a family of 4?

AI Overview

For 2026 in the 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C., 130% of the federal poverty guideline for a family of 4 is $42,900 per year, which equals $3,575 per month.

Common Uses for 130% FPL

SNAP Eligibility: The gross income limit for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP / food stamps) is typically set at 130% of the federal poverty level for most households.

tim wrote: Thu Aug 13, 2026 9:33 am https://charleshughsmith.substack.com/p ... otted-away

That's an incredible concentration of the gains in two overlapping cohorts: the top 10% of households and those 55 and older.

FOX 13 Tampa Bay

Baby boomers flock to fastest-growing city known as the ‘cruise ship on land’
By Taylor Penley
FOX News
Published July 10, 2024 2:07 PM EDT

Georgetown, Texas, is the place to be, at least if you're of a certain age. Thanks to a surge in baby boomers moving into the city just 40 miles north of Austin, it's the fastest-growing city in America.

A new Wall Street Journal report stated that boomers are driving the local population boom as they move into an age-restricted community association known as Sun City Texas, mostly reserved for buyers 55 and older.

That wave of newcomers to the community dubbed by Georgetown Mayor Josh Schroeder as the "cruise ship on land," the report says, is also driving an economic boom.

The town has been the top city for population growth for three straight years, according to Census Bureau data of cities with populations over 50,000, the WSJ reported. It grew 11% last year, 14% in 2022, and 11% in 2021.

BABY BOOMERS ARE BECOMING WEALTHIER, WHILE YOUNGER GENERATIONS LAG BEHIND, FED REPORT FINDS

"It’s like they’re at college except they don’t have to go to class and they have $3 million in the bank," Schroeder told the outlet.

Baby boomers are generally considered the wealthiest generation in the U.S. today, with Federal Reserve data from Q3 2023 indicating those over 55 own 72% of wealth in America, with those over 70 holding 30% of all wealth.

That money, combined with the lack of need to care for younger children and more time to do fun or leisurely post-retirement activities, signals a better opportunity to stimulate the local economy.

That's where Sun City comes in. According to the WSJ report, seniors have the opportunity to party, complete with a Mardi Gras parade and a ball, compelling 70-year-old Sun City resident Suzanne Herndon to comment on the fun by saying, "We're not dead yet."

"Sun City residents have turned out to be the best economic stimulus Georgetown could ask for. The city’s operating budget is flush. Its rainy day fund is brimming. Stores, restaurants, hospitals and health clinics add hundreds of jobs every year," it states in part, adding that Sun City residents make up approximately 17,000 of the city's 96,000 residents.

Most of the residents are unburdened by student loans and have paid off their houses.

While seniors are more likely to harbor wealth, younger generations are lagging behind, with the Fed data from Q3 2023 showing 25% of American households aged 40 to 54 own just 20% of the nation's wealth, while those under 40 have under 7%.

Our Foundations Have Rotted Away While the Bubble Benefited the Top 10%

If you want to argue, argue with the data. Sorry, the data won.

I narrate key points in my post “While We Focused on Fripperies, the Foundations Have Rotted Away”

That's an incredible concentration of the gains in two overlapping cohorts: the top 10% of households and those 55 and older.

Actually, for the bottom 90% of American households, overseas travel is at best optional. Nobody seems to be asking questions such as: what kind of society do we end up with if young people no longer have an interest in raising families or buying homes while devoting their earnings to visiting the Stans? What kind of society celebrates luxury travel while 92% of households forego medical care because they can't afford it?

The obvious answer is a society whose foundations have completely rotted away while we focused on fripperies funded by asset bubbles. If you want to argue, argue with the data. Sorry, the data won.

Business
H-E-B produce supplier shutters San Antonio production, cutting 166 local jobs
A failed buyout is forcing the national produce grower to shut down.
By Zachary-Taylor Wright,
Trending Digital Reporter
Aug 11, 2026

Mike Zelkind, co-founder of 80 Acres Farms, stands in front of a row of crops in the facility in Cincinnati in 2018. The company was considered a leader in this field of vertical farming", but is now shutting down across the country.

'We might as well not bother growing things'
25 July 2026

Becky Yeomans
North West

Olly Harrison says this year is the driest he has ever known (photograph caption from article)

"We might as well not bother growing things and leave the farms empty."

That is the bleak position facing arable farmer Olly Harrison following three heatwaves already this year.

Some of his colleagues fear increasingly extreme weather, including prolonged dry spells and flooding, is forcing them to seriously question whether their industry is sustainable.

After a dry spring, the north-west of England continues to have extremely low rainfall.

Harrison, from Tarbock, near Prescot on Merseyside, told the BBC the recent hot weather had reduced his crop yield.

"We have up to a half less to sell and we have to process it in the yard to make it sellable, like wetting them up and increasing the quality," he explained.

These additional processes all cost time and money - reducing profit margins.

Harrison continued: "Last year it was really dry, 2024 was ridiculously wet, there's no clear pattern other than extremes.

Higgenbotham wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2026 2:45 pm The other aspect of this, besides soil, is weather extremes. This year it was in the upper 90s on March 15. During the early morning hours of March 17, it was 29 degrees. As the cold air came in, winds were brisk, which didn't help. Many gardeners in this area lost all of their cold sensitive crops or they were badly damaged.

This is when it can be advantageous to be working on a small scale. I covered my tomatoes with blankets (they had to be put over stakes so that the blankets wouldn't touch the plants). Only 3 were damaged out of 28. In an open field, everything would have been lost.

AI companies are bulk-buying rare books, scanning them through high-speed machines that cut the spines off, and shredding the originals. A service called ISBNdb facilitates orders of up to a million books and keeps buyers anonymous. Pre-2022 books are premium because they're free of AI-generated text. A federal judge ruled the practice is fair use because eliminating the original means only one copy exists at a time. Anthropic hired the former head of Google Books partnerships to obtain "all the books in the world."

My Take
This got to me. A bookseller told 404 Media that rare books with almost no surviving copies are being fed into this pipeline. Books that survived wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an AI can learn to write a better marketing email.
ISBNdb's website literally says "'AI company destroys two million books' is not a headline that generates sympathy," and they still built an entire business around making it happen quietly. They offer NDAs as a feature. They coach clients to call it "digital preservation."

I've covered AI companies scraping the internet, torrenting libraries, and stealing music. This is worse because it's irreversible. You can re-upload a website. You can reprint a bestseller. You can't replace the last three copies of an 18th-century botanical text once someone shreds them for training data. And the judge said it's legal. So it's going to accelerate.
"We shred rare books and offer NDAs so nobody finds out" is a legitimate business model in 2026. What a timeline.

​I was born and raised in the rural South, around Louisiana and the Carolinas. To be honest, some of these places feel like the third world now, no good jobs, terrible schools, crime, and awful healthcare. It wasn't always like this, though. I remember the early '80s when there were still plenty of factory jobs that paid a decent living. When they shut down and moved away, it left entire communities completely destitute, right before the crack epidemic hit. Enlisting in the military was my ticket out, giving me the chance to travel and see the world as both a service member and a civilian. Sure, US poverty might not look exactly like Haiti or a Brazilian favela, but in truth, it really isn't that far off.