They can never meet the 'demand' for free sandwiches
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED AUG. 5, 2001
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
They can never meet the 'demand' for free sandwiches
There's been much piteous mewling of late about an ongoing "teacher shortage" in the government schools.
Additionally, the collectivists moan we're not doing enough to "meet the demand" for new youth propaganda camps, or for "homeless facilities," either.
These statements are nearly devoid of discernible meaning. However, it is apparently no longer safe to merely ignore them, since some guy who earned a doctorate in education by writing a slim report on the benefits of air conditioning (many know him as Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn) now actually proposes to squeeze more money from the productive classes in order to meet these "needs" and "demands."
What's going on here is that words which have real use in analyzing a private economy are being borrowed and inappropriately applied to collectivist looting schemes.
What is the "demand" for Jaguar motor cars in the Vegas Valley? Bob Kane tells me they move about 350 new cars per year out of Gaudin Jaguar-Porsche. And "No, we don't have much trouble meeting demand; there's no waiting list."
So only 350 people in a valley of millions would like a new Jaguar? Not quite. They start at $30,000, see, and can cost as much as $85,000 if you want one of the fancy convertibles.
Still a good buy for all that British hand fitting and finishing, in my book. But clearly a lot of folks decide to spend less on a car -- or to invest in something more suitable for hauling hay bales through the mesquite -- leaving local Jaguar "supply and demand" pretty much in balance.
But let us suppose that some politician took it into his head that it was a travesty for so many of his worthy constituents to do without Jaguars, instead hauling around their precious children -- our nation's future! -- in flimsy Japanese sheet-metal jalopies.
Emergency legislation would be enacted, requiring Mr. Kane and company to give out free Jaguars to anyone who wants one. When both the dealership and eventually the parent company went belly-up trying to meet this "demand," the government would simply nationalize Jaguar U.S.A. and put government bureaucrats in charge of handing out the free cars.
What would Jaguar "demand" look like, then? To meet this "demand," quality would quickly be cut -- the new government managers would start welding Jaguar hood ornaments onto any sheet-metal contraption they could manage to throw together.
"You dare complain about the quality of your new, government -issued 'Jaguar?' Don't you understand the problems we face?" the superintendent of the County Jaguar Distribution District would whine. "We can't get enough quality raw material; we're having to train non-English-speaking workers straight out of the celery fields ... Besides, if you don't like it, you can always go spend your own money on a private-sector car."
"Gee, not many of those old for-profit dealers left around any more, now that you guys are giving away stuff for free."
"Aha. Not much 'demand' for what they offer, is there?"
Government can similarly never meet the "demand" for free food and beds for the shiftless winos we're now instructed to call "the homeless." Spot 12 hungry hoboes downtown this week and set up a table to give away 12 free sandwiches for lunch. Tomorrow 50 people will line up for your free sandwiches, and by next week 500, including courthouse secretaries in high heels. Start applying a "means test" to limit your expenditures and you'll only end up servicing a new class of skilled government form-filler-outers, while the 12 hoboes you started out trying to help will end up washing down Ring Dings with Old English 800 back under the overpass -- with no fixed address and no writing skills, they can neither fill out nor satisfy the requirements of your new "free food" forms, see.
It's the same with the "demand" for free welfare schooling.
No one seems to know what it really costs to run a child through 12 years of government day care, any more, what with the expenditures scattered around in so many budgets.
Let's conservatively call it $6,000. Want to eliminate the "teacher shortage" overnight? Just start billing the parents that $6,000. (Heck, make it $6,700, admitting 10 percent of each class on full scholarships for poor kids who can do best on competitive entrance exams.)
Competing private schools charging less for more would spring up like mushrooms, rescuing an entire generation from the clutches of the current "reproductive organs of the welfare state."
With a new emphasis on "getting what you pay for," they'd probably pay higher salaries for the best teachers, driving up average teacher pay while attracting many new recruits from among folks who actually majored in something other than "Education" -- while two thirds of the unemployables currently holding down such jobs could be fitted for new uniforms at Wendy's. (Remember, de Tocqueville found this "the most literate nation on earth" in the 1830s -- 20 years before Horace Mann & Co. opened the first tax-funded "public school" on the Prussian model, in Massachusetts.)
The union seeks to increase average teacher pay while solving the current "teacher shortage"? Be careful what you wish for.
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Subscribe to his monthly newsletter by sending $72 to Privacy Alert, 561 Keystone Ave., Suite 684, Reno, NV 89503 -- or dialing 775-348-8591. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at 1-800-244-2224.
Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
