Our local school board recently offered to let parents have their kids get weekly COVID tests at school ‘for free.’ Why? Because ‘it doesn’t cost the district anything.
I continue to be amazed at how people seem to be incapable of understanding that something that is subsidized is not free. In this case, the bill is being footed by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).
But where is DHHS getting the money? From the people of New Hampshire. Including the ones in our school district.
With subsidies, the most you can say is that ‘someone else’ is paying for what you’re getting. Who wouldn’t like that? But guess what? You’re also paying for what someone else is getting.
Of course, this happens at the federal level, too. Look, the federal government is going to give the state money! (For starting charter schools, or boosting COVID vaccination rates, or whatever.) It’s free! Well, no, it was either collected from the people in the states; or it was borrowed, to be paid back later by the people in the states.
As Frédéric Bastiat noted, government is the fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.
Here’s a thought: What if we all pay for what we use, and leave the government out of it? Instead, we pay bureaucrats to take our money, mix it up in a big pot, and give us back less than we gave them.
Why would even conservatives support a system like this? Ultimately, it’s because although they claim to fear Marxism — ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ — they actually like it when they think it’s working in their favor.
That is, if they’re going to pay $5 to get $1 in services, Marxism is bad. But if they’re going to pay $1 to get $5 in services, Marxism is good… as long as we call it something else. Like ‘public school‘.
