Interesting thing to me is: This is a story about a supermarket doing this on their own, not with government assistance or for a tax break and not with tax dollars.
The comments here are focused on how the US government should do more.
In the US we have churches and other religious institutions that would help with problems like this locally but as time has gone on, their membership has dwindled. Perhaps we should take a look at this article and try to get our companies to emulate what is being done here?
This is a very libertarian mindset. The government exists (should exist) to serve its population. We shouldn't rely on private charity for the basics of a functioning society.
I do think the government purpose is to serve it's population and society.
But I also think that it is business's purpose to serve society as well. At some point we moved away from that.
We used to have companies that would donate to the school library or to fund school technology programs. Now, some of that was rooted in the idea that they would need workers in the future so this was part of the pipeline but it was also building society. (You still do see companies donating money to sports programs, for their banner to be displayed)
Currently companies are all complaining about the lack of X, yet are they funding training for X? No, we expect workers to come in fully trained and ready to go.
Looking beyond that, companies are willing to up and shift counties in order to save money but that has effects on the local economy.
Its a prisoners dilemma if you expect business to contribute towards infrastructure that benefits everybody. education and infrastructure has to rely on the government for this reason.
even the most liberal parts of US will not go anywhere near doing such thing. As the name might suggest, I live in such area and the attitude towards such things will not get any backing anywhere (government or private businesses)
I mean, food stamps are a thing. Free school lunches are a thing/are becoming a thing. Public housing is a thing. Medicare/Medicaid is a thing. There's a lot more we could do to make these systems more efficient, less expensive for tax payers, and also provide them much more widely. Clearly there's public support for them, by most, in some capacity.
The comments here are focused on how the US government should do more.
In the US we have churches and other religious institutions that would help with problems like this locally but as time has gone on, their membership has dwindled. Perhaps we should take a look at this article and try to get our companies to emulate what is being done here?