TANSTAAFL

There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

Liberals (and that means you who run about calling yourselves "Progressives", as if a name changed a thing) are fond of promising a free lunch. They never call it a Free Lunch, but use terms like "compassion" and "fairness", for who is against compassion and fairness? But a Free Lunch is always promised, and a Free Lunch never is.

• Tax the rich their "fair share" while "real people" need not pay taxes, and half the country doesn't. There is no pain directly associated with a tax increase, so government grows in its taxing power.
• Punish Big Oil companies who will pass on their costs to consumers, or who will not have incentive to invest in new sources and new technology, reward their investors, or grow in other ways.
  
• Free health care will cost more to deliver than private care does, and will be of inferior quality. While those using free health care will suffer the consequences first, eventually everyone will suffer. By competing with the private sector (or outlawing it), the government health care will decrease the quality and increase the cost of care.
  
• Free health insurance, also known as insurance company welfare. Health insurance is the biggest scam ever, except maybe for Global Warming Carbon Offsets. Why do you need insurance? Because health care is expensive. But do the insurance companies make a profit? Yes, a huge profit. If they make a profit, then it stands to reason that the money you pay for insurance does not all pay for health care. For the government to pay insurance premiums, or even to become an insurance provider itself, is merely to suck money away from health care and toward the bureaucracy.
  
• Free housing should be subsistence-level, at most: a way to keep out the elements and lock the door, but not much more. Instead, public housing competes with private landlords, forcing them off the bottom two rungs of the ladder.
  
• The Minimum Wage is an exercise in tail-chasing, which also outlaws certain kinds of work. Jobs which a person could perform that would be helpful, but are not profitable enough, can not be done, or must be done by volunteers. If a volunteer cannot be found, the task must be handled by employees who would otherwise be doing more profitable work, thereby decreasing their productivity, their value, and their wages.
  
• Broadband Internet is not a right, contrary to what you may have heard. If you want the government to ruin the Internet experience, have them regulate it. Once they start, there will be no limit on their control, either in the technology to be used or the content to be found.
  

Now comes Hillary Clinton with he free plan for mortgage bailouts. Rather than allow people to face the consequences of their decisions and fail, learning a lesson for next time, she wants to allow people to live inconsequential lives.

All of these promised free things come at a cost. The cost is hidden, and the person promising it may see that cost as a benefit, but that doesn't mean that it is actually a benefit, at least not to the one on the consuming end of the supposed free lunch.

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