It’s an old libertarian phrase, which means “THERE AIN’T NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH.” In other words, when something is free, someone has to pay. How true that is. Look at what free lunches have given us, and who has and is paying. It boggles the mind!
It’s the free lunch welfare of all types and sizes, which has destroyed America. Welfare, such as food stamps, Section Eight housing for the poor, and public housing, just to name three out of many, have destroyed American cities. Before HUD and related bureaucracies, neighborhoods came and went as their economic and racial situations dictated, and no one was harmed. Working class people built and bought row houses, went to work, came home, usually on a streetcar, tended their kids, cut their lawns, went to church, and knew that they could pass their homes down to their kids, and nothing would be changed. Small neighborhood bars and restaurants existed for generations, as did churches, schools, gas stations, and grocery stores. South Philly and West Philly were classics. I bought a row home in West Philly in 1962, and subsequently owned 17 buildings in Philly, selling the whole bunch to save an old hotel in Colorado from being demolished.
Working class neighborhoods in all cities were similar, as were the cities themselves. Philly factories employed hundreds of thousands, and made such things as Palm Beach men’s suits, Philco radios and TVs, Disston Saws, Stetson Hats, Brill streetcars, and lots of others. All were on streetcar lines, which made getting to work simple, cheap, and safe. The row homes mostly had single car garages, so the family car could be stored for occasional use. Neighbors knew each other, doors were rarely locked, and block parties were common. All is gone now in Philly. A huge public housing project was built in the East Falls section of Philly, which destroyed the neighborhood, as just one example. The same thing happened in thousands of other American neighborhoods. Naturally, this fostered racism. I never had a racist bone on my body till I moved to Philadelphia, and watched it disintegrate, thanks to government meddling and bureaucracy. The recipients of the ’free lunches’ (welfare) did well, but those who paid for it, were the home owners, taxpayers, cities, air quality, and tax bases.
I grew up in a working class neighborhood in D.C. with a typical single car garage. It was a large row house, with six bedrooms on three floors, with 3 1/2 bathrooms, living room, dining room, big hall which held my Mom’s Mason-Hamlin piano. I had a great childhood in that row house, as did millions and millions of Americans, who went on to build wonderful lives. I’m just touching on homes and neighborhoods, not the rest of the mess in America, which various free lunch programs have generated, and paid for not by recipients, but everyone else that works and pays taxes..
When you give anyone something for nothing, they will rarely appreciate it, and will always wonder why there isn’t more. If you don’t have to buy a home or pay market rent for a place to live, and then you get free food too, it isn’t difficult to think of what to do with your spare time. How about raising hell? How about destroying things, setting fires, and spraying graffiti on walls and buildings? Got to keep busy! Something for nothing, is perhaps the greatest method of generating votes for politicians who shouldn’t hold office in the first place.
Thanks then to the FHA, HUD, and a host of worthless bureaucracies, entire neighborhoods have been destroyed, values crushed, and people being forced to move. Think about the economic damage which has been wrought. Formerly, the man of the house (wives didn’t need to work) could catch a streetcar on the corner, and for a dime or less ride to work, without fighting traffic, in a city with clean air. (No freeways). Being forced to move to a suburb, caused huge gasoline bills, extra car purchases, plus payments for them, long hours driving to work, pollution, high property taxes, wives being forced to work, and of course the resulting juvenile delinquency caused by little parental supervision. Economic disaster writ large. Whole cities crumbling, as well as families, and thanks to neighborhood disintegration, caused by government.
Then, to try to counteract what they caused, government built freeways, which became choked with rush hour traffic. Former wonderful neighborhood residents, being forced to move at huge expense, trying to get to work, and paying dearly for it in time, fuel, high taxes, and of course the wife had to go to work to pay for the huge bills. America began to buy foreign oil, because everywhere, people had moved to get away from the disintegrated neighborhoods. Los Angeles used to have the Pacific Electric Lines, which every day ran thousands of clean, pollution free, quiet, electric trains, on routes which roughly parallel the current freeways. Los Angeles had no air problems before the freeways. It was so very easy to build a freeway next to a Pacific Electric line, which caused the line to go bankrupt. Private enterprise cannot compete with taxpayer gouging government, which makes the rules for its own benefit.
The old neighborhoods in Philly, are now full of abandoned cars, wrecked houses, and empty lots, where the former house was probably arsoned after being abandoned. The theatres, restaurants, and bars are long gone too, with their former owners losing their economic stability, when they walked away from a business. The streetcar lines in West Philly are still there, but are operated at a huge loss by a governmental agency, (SEPTA) after the privately owned Philadelphia Transportation Co (PTC), could no longer show a profit when neighborhoods they served, no longer went to work, and whose residents took great delight in vandalizing everything they touched. I remember the Byrd and Ambassador theatres on Baltimore Ave. and the restaurants and churches which used to be so fine…now empty, vandalized, torched, or ruined in some way.
This only deals with housing. TANSTAAFL, or the free lunch in housing alone, has destroyed the major cities, and their neighborhoods. Before public housing in all its varieties, and welfare in equal varieties, people had to work for what they got, and nothing was given to them. Neighborhoods were stable, friendly, and well maintained. Not because of governmental force, but because of individual pride, which existed everywhere. No one was forced to sell to or rent to anyone. There was no governmental force, which destroyed neighborhoods, and ruined the economies of millions of families who were displaced by government meddling and force.
In Washington D.C. there were neighborhoods which were populated by negroes, and they owned their own homes and shopped at their own shopping areas. There were no slums! Some neighborhoods were better than others, but there were no slums, and no force. All worked well. U St. N.W. was a glorious negro shopping area, with its own theatres and shops, and restaurants. There was no race hatred until it was fostered by governmental force. My parents bought a 40 acre retirement farm in Southern Md. when I was fourteen, and there were colored families and farmers everywhere. They were wonderful people, who worked, farmed, had nice kids with whom I associated gladly, and there was no racism. I grew up in D.C. and rode streetcars everywhere, (I love streetcars, but by an act of Congress in 1962, they were all torn up!), and never felt threatened by anyone of any color. My favorite ride was to Seat Pleasant, Md., which was a black community, and it was a great ride the cars on private right of way (PRW).
Not to bore you, but young people who have never experienced wonderful row house neighborhoods in American cities, (there were many millions of wonderful row houses), nor known when both parents didn’t have to work, and can’t remember when freeways didn’t exist, have not only missed a lot, but are incapable of realizing what government has done to America. Next we’ll find out where all the factories went, and jobs overseas. More government.
P.S. As much as I intensely dislike Obama, and know that he is Constitutionally unqualified to be President, and also a far left wing socialist, we must never forget that George Bush created “No child left behind,” which is a total bureaucratic absurdity, created TARP, allowed Freddie and Fanny to go wild, and got us into Iraq and Afghanistan. just to name a few of his blunders. The Republican party cannot be proud of Bush in his second term, nor his father who raised taxes after saying he wouldn’t. Under Republicans, government also grew and grew. The Democrats must be removed, but the Republican party must be cleansed and reformed as well. The Tea Party Movement could do this, and we hope it will, beginning in November.