TINSTAAFL

My freshman year of college, first semester Economics 101 the professor walked in the very first day of class and wrote that on the blackboard (yes, with chalk). He asked if anyone knew what it meant. No one did. He explained that it is the fundamental principle of all economics. There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Even if you did get your lunch for free, someone somewhere paid for it. Stuff does not materialize out of thin air. Except maybe air, and God provided that. In this current debate over health care, and anything else that the government 'provides' we would be well served to remember TINSTAAFL. The federal government cannot give you anything for free. If they say that they will, remember the family down the street will actually be paying for it out of their milk and bread budget. If someone gets something for nothing then someone else always must get nothing for something. The government cannot give anything that it does not have, and technically speaking it has nothing. It can only take or steal things from those who do have stuff or money. One way is taxation. Or, it can print money, but that just artificially inflates the money supply, decreasing the value of goods and services by the amount of new money, driving up the price and at the end of the day everything is a wash. We can borrow money from China to pay to give you stuff (well, they used to be willing to loan to us), but we still have to tax your neighbor to service the debt: pay the interest and eventually pay back the principal (yeah, right). The old saw goes that a government that has the power to give you everything that you want will also have the power to take everything that you have. Think about it, they must have the power to take everything that you and your neighbors have if they are going to give other people things for free. If they don't have that power and exercise it then they cannot give other people stuff for free. Remember, they don't create stuff or wealth, they only redistribute it. That is the process of socialism and it by necessity results in the equal sharing of poverty. It brings everyone down to the lowest common level of existence. Because it creates a climate of disincentives for business and private wealth creation due to high taxation/confiscation, the amount of overall wealth in a society declines. Over time there is less and less to redistribute. Business is driven off-shore and overseas. Taxes continue to rise as service levels fall. Scarce goods and services now must be rationed. Look around the world. Every country that has tried this has come to ruin or is in decline. By contrast, things such as private health insurance are voluntary agreements between citizens to pool their money and pay for major medical expenses incurred by those in the pool. Participants can drop out at any time and are not forced to participate if they choose not to. You have no constitutional or natural right to the money or stuff that your neighbors have acquired or created. You can provide for yourself or ask your neighbors for a handout, but don't beseech the government to go to your neighbors with a gun and demand that they give you stuff. That's immoral. If people are truly disadvantaged through no fault of their own, we have always and will always help these folks out. But still, it is much more efficient to do that through private charity than government fiat. In this debate we able-bodied Americans must focus not on what we can wrest from our neighbors but on how we can best provide for ourselves and families and then give what we can to help the really needy among us.