Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
A buddy notes the insidious lure of Somebody Else’s Money:
The old Federal rule was that you can’t get food stamps unless you qualify under income guidelines. OR if you get at least $1.00 of heat share relief. So of course the various state programs freely handed out the $1.00 because they could leverage that dollar into 50 times as much in food stamps for their citizens.
Congress, in an effort to curtail the cheating, raised the cut-off to require $20.00 in heat share assistance, thereby avoiding the token assistance cheating. Well, except that the states now simply raised the payment to $20.00. The heat share comes out of federal funding also, and in another article the funding was described as block share grants that typically have left-over funding at the end anyway. So there is no incentive not to hand out more of one welfare to qualify for more of another welfare.
Right back to the typical hamster wheel. The voters would never vote to raise their own taxes to build a street car, or refrigerate an outdoor ice rink, or put art on $50,000 drinking fountains for the bums. We only go along with it because it’s paid for with magic federal money that doesn’t come from OUR taxes. So if we now need to kick in a small portion of the total wasted cost in order to get someone else to pay for the rest, we’ll gladly do it.
This is akin to what is taught at the college level, of course. For one easy example: Housing on campus routinely costs double or triple what housing on the local economy will cost. (And of course either costs more than housing at the parental home but that comparison would ignore the value of NOT living at home while in school–the value of actually being part of the school environment.) Although it costs double or triple to live on campus, the financial aid office is geared to get you more in loans and grants to subsidize (short term) that inflated cost. Of course the same is true for any other cost on campus. Books that are used one day but cost $200/e. Lab fees for history class, things like that. Since it all gets hidden into the grants and loans the kid is taught that it isn’t worth discussion or worry. Just run up the tab and go with the flow.
Joe Doakes
If you haven’t read “The End Is Near (And It’s Going To Be Awesome)” by Kevin Williamson, you need to.
Fascinating article by Williams on Appalachia:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/367903/white-ghetto-kevin-d-williamson
The comments are worth reading as well. This is what a slow growth/ no growth economy looks like. The only opportunity to increase your wealth comes from reducing the wealth of others.
Continuing the Appalachian analogy, the on-campus overly inflated pricing practice, coupled with easily accessed loans to pay them sounds quite like the old “company stores” of coal mining and country/ folk song fame.
Don’t forget the “free” Parks Department kid feeding stations that are open to everyone in the summer, regardless of aid already received, or the kid’s familial socioeconomic background.
I suppose once-a-week menu featuring loaves and fishes might be offensive to some child of indeterminate age (birthdays are such a Western, privileged concept) and background, regardless of it’s appropriateness …