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You are here: Home / Politics / GOP Death Cult / Open Thread: TANSTAAFL! — It’s The Latest GOP Zombie Fad

Open Thread: TANSTAAFL! — It’s The Latest GOP Zombie Fad

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There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch! — the recurring rejoinder from people who’ve never missed a meal in their lives, towards any suggestion that might make *other* peoples’ lives less difficult.

Ben Shapiro seems to be Patient Zero for the latest in-group tantrum:

Reader Interactions

72Comments

  3. 3.

    Jeffg166

    I love the look on the kids faces in the photo with Huckabee. They see their grim lives unfolding.

  6. 6.

    Roger Moore

    A critical tenet of conservatism is that rich people only respond to rewards and poor people only respond to punishments. That’s why it’s important to starve poor children. We must teach them that poverty is bad, and starvation is the best way to do it.

  8. 8.

    eclare

    @Jeffg166:   Those faces…kids know what the truth is.  Compare to kids’ reactions around Obama, they were happy to be around him.

  10. 10.

    AntiCliche

    could someone post some context regarding Moira’s “We’ll make it illegal for your girlfriend to break up with you” pseudo quote?

  11. 11.

    trollhattan

    From “It does not take that much to feed a child” to “spend hundreds of millions on disproportionately unhealthy lunches” in 5.2 seconds. He’s like the Civic Si of konservative talkers.​

  12. 12.

    Raoul Paste

    Given the loaves and fishes story, I’d say, Jesus was in favour of feeding people

    Edit:  And  for free

  13. 13.

    Elizabelle

    @Roger Moore:   Meanwhile, you cannot get a CEO to show up for work without meeting their extortion demands.

    They fail at your company, and then move onward and upward.

  15. 15.

    rikyrah

    Them being against free lunches for children…

    while trying to loosen child labor laws….

     

    fits them to a tee.

     

    They disgust me.

  18. 18.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    There was literally a person in the Twitter replies to @figgityfigs’ Tweet saying, “Sounds like a great coffee and a resilient young person!” to the hypothetical of a 9y/o Starbucks barista. I can’t fucking even. I can only hope it was dishonest trolling and not unironic sincerity

  20. 20.

    Scout211

    TANSTAAFL was literally one of the textbooks for my college Econ 101 class, lo those many years ago.

    I didn’t really get it then either, being a Sociology and Social Work major. I just don’t get these people who want to harm so many.

    ETA: I linked to the original edition, but Amazon had a newer edition that was described as “libertarian economics”.

  22. 22.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Raoul Paste:

    That came up in Baseball Boy’s thread. Y’know what his response was?

    Hint: the answer is not “demand the Romans collect more taxes and use them to buy lunch for rich kids.”

    It’s funny that he thinks he’s making a good point. Means-testing is costly and stupid

  23. 23.

    Anne Laurie

    @AntiCliche: could someone post some context regarding Moira’s “We’ll make it illegal for your girlfriend to break up with you” pseudo quote?

    I assumed it referred (at least in part) to the increasing number of GOP-controlled states where men get preemptive veto power over their female partners’ choices around abortion.

    There’s a dude in Texas suing women in another state for telling his ex-girlfriend where she could get mifopristone pills… per Texas law means he can’t actually punish his partner, but conservatives found this kewl loophole they hope will intimidate women nation-wide.

  24. 24.

    Old School

    Andrew Wortman @AmoneyResists
    · Sep 25, 2022

    I’m gonna vote for the party that wants to give fourth graders free school lunches instead of the one that wants to force them to have their rapists baby.

  25. 25.

    Elizabelle

    “Richest country in the world.”  Hmmm hmmm hmmm.

    I wonder if that canard is still true.  Looking at Americans as a whole, and dropping the billionaires and gazillionaires who skew the numbers out.

  27. 27.

    davecb

    The phrase “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” refers to bars offering free snacks, paid for by raising the price of drinks.

    The only reason you’re hearing it in this discussion is to trick people into associating something they already know with an unrelated lie the speaker is pushing. One might call it argumentum ad distractum, or “oh look, a squirrel” (;-))

  30. 30.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    What’s wrong with child labor? They’re the perfect size for crawling down a mine shaft and digging for coal.

  31. 31.

    Anoniminous

    @Elizabelle:

    “Richest country in the world.”

    Company has an owner and nine employees.  The company pays $1 million in salaries and the average salary is $100,000/year.  The employees each get $10,000/year and the owner gets $910,000/year.​

    Isn’t mathematical analysis wonderful?

  33. 33.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @WaterGirl:

    It’s been said many times: if it were a script for a TV show, it would’ve been rejected in the writers’ room for being too on the nose

  35. 35.

    Elizabelle

    @Anoniminous:   That’s what I am thinking.

    @Baud:   Thank you.  US at number 5, although no universal healthcare, and you can lose your house (and your job) if your bills are too high.  So,  median income might be relatively high, but actual financial security is not.

    We are not like those EU countries, or Canada.  Interesting the UAE is in there at #2.

  36. 36.

    gwangung

    There Ain’t No Such Thing As a Free Lunch—

    And if you don’t feed kids, a) you get physically undernourished recruits for the army, b) you waste the money in education by not allowing kids to focus properly, and c) you get an undernourished work force who are going to be outcompete by healthier work forces elsewhere in the world..

    That’s BAAAAD news for whatever side of he political spectrum you sit on.

  38. 38.

    sab

    @David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: My husband’s grandfather went to work in the coal mines of Pennsylvania when he was 12. He left a few years later when he got too big (although he never got above 5’4″.) So he moved to Ohio to work in the factories there as a tire builder. The main lesson he learned from the mine was get that mule out safely. The mine had to buy the whole mule. They only rented the people by the hour.

  39. 39.

    Another Scott

    @Roger Moore: +1

    Plus, government can never work properly at any level.  Therefore, we shouldn’t spend money on public schools and therefore taxes can be cut and school funding should be directed elsewhere worthy, like private schools and for-profit online “institutions”.

    “Government doesn’t work, and I’m here to wreck it to prove it…”

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  40. 40.

    jackmac

    Ben Shapiro? Has he done anything significant in his life besides whine, grift and write books that quickly end up in the remainder bin at Barnes and Noble?

  41. 41.

    JustRuss

    @Roger Moore:That’s why it’s important to starve poor children. We must teach them that poverty is bad, and starvation is the best way to do it.

    Boy do I wish you were kidding.

  43. 43.

    JoyceH

    Watching the news and just have to say – I don’t hang out with lawyers all the time, but I’ve had dealings with lawyers on a number of occasions… and NONE of the lawyers I’ve ever met have behaved in any way like the kind of lawyers Trump winds up with.

  44. 44.

    Ken

    The Republicans have their heads so far up their, er, media bubble that they think going after Social Security and Medicare is a winner, so this really shouldn’t surprise anyone.

  45. 45.

    Roger Moore

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): ​
     

    Means-testing is costly and stupid

    Yes, it’s costly and stupid. More importantly, though, it creates winners and losers. If you make a system that everyone benefits from, they’ll eventually decide they like getting the benefit and will want to keep the system running. If you leave some people out through means testing, they’ll resent that they’re paying in and getting nothing out and be a natural constituency for getting rid of the program.

  46. 46.

    Splitting Image

    Reagan used to say that the scariest words in the English language were “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.”

    This has long been superceded by “I’m a conservative and I’m here to protect your children”.

  47. 47.

    Almost Retired

    Alright then.  Sarah Huckadickens can staff the poultry plants with Explorer Scouts.

  49. 49.

    Matt McIrvin

    The “perpetual childhood” attack kind of doesn’t work when you’re talking about LITERAL ACTUAL CHILDREN.

    What, you’re afraid that children are being treated like children?

  50. 50.

    cain

    @gwangung: When you’re only looking at short term profits, those long term problems are just long term – in the end, they’ll just move more jobs over there.

  53. 53.

    If a Tree Falls

    No free lunch for school children, but it’s perfectly okay to offer tax deductions on fancy meals with business clients. Because as we all know, it’s simply impossible to make any sort of deal without both parties shoving expensive food and drink down their gullets.

  54. 54.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Roger Moore: Charles Murray wrote a book where he argued that the important thing was to make the labor of fathers meaningful. If children were protected from starving by the state, their fathers’ work would become meaningless, which was what caused men to fall into anomie, crime, drug addiction, etc. (Men, specifically. It was very gendered.)

    I remember David Frum reviewing this with horror–the same guy who had inspired John Holbo to speak of “Donner Party conservatism” based on similar stuff that he’d written a couple of decades earlier. Maybe Frum learned something.

  56. 56.

    prostratedragon

    @gwangung: ​ Bah! Who ever heard of “soshul costs?” (I have heard people with ample reason to know better try to argue me out of thinking that there can be externalities.)

  60. 60.

    Bill Arnold

    @Ihop:
    A work acquaintance grew up on a large canola [1] farm in Canada (his parents were the farmers). He said he or maybe his brother or both were sent into combines and other equipment to clean them out or clear jams. He was not obviously joking.

    [1] or maybe rapeseed, but this was Canada after the canola name was introduced

  61. 61.

    lowtechcyclist

    @gwangung:

    There Ain’t No Such Thing As a Free Lunch—And if you don’t feed kids, a) you get physically undernourished recruits for the army, b) you waste the money in education by not allowing kids to focus properly, and c) you get an undernourished work force who are going to be outcompete by healthier work forces elsewhere in the world..That’s BAAAAD news for whatever side of he political spectrum you sit on.

    Exactly. From a purely cynical, who-gives-a-fuck-about-the-kids POV, making sure our kids are fed is an investment that pays for itself many times over.

    And if you’re not a totally cynical creature, you think, who the fuck would want children to go hungry? Who would be that fucking heartless??

    Crazy that it’s the party that thinks it’s on God’s side. So here’s the prophet Isaiah, speaking what they themselves believe are God’s words, clearing things up for them:

    Is this what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?
    Is not this what I require of you as a fast:
    to loose the fetters of injustice, to untie the knots of the yoke,
    to snap every yoke, and free those who have been crushed?
    Is it not sharing your food with the hungry,
    taking the homeless poor into your house,
    clothing the naked when you meet them…?
    .    (Isaiah 58:5-7 for anyone keeping score at home)​​

  62. 62.

    EarthWindFire

    @Matt McIrvin: That “perpetual childhood” business made me wonder just how much time Dan McLaughin spent in elementary school. I mean, does he say this from experience?

  64. 64.

    Matt McIrvin

    @lowtechcyclist: Jesus says “suffer the little children to come unto me,” so we better make ’em suffer good.

    And besides, he also says “it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven”, so, really, we’re doing these kids a service by making sure they’re as poor as possible.

  66. 66.

    Freemark

    @prostratedragon: ​
      Mention ‘externalities’ to a Libertarian and you’ll just get a quizzical look. I mean dumping sewage in a river is always free and has no economic cost.

  67. 67.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Matt McIrvin: ​

    And besides, he also says “it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven”, so, really, we’re doing these kids a service by making sure they’re as poor as possible.

    God said it’s good to be poor, good men must not be secure,
    so if we steal from you, it’s just to help you stay pure.
    –    “God Said,” Leonard Bernstein’s Mass

  69. 69.

    Juju

    One thing the anti free school lunch for  all students seem to be missing is that children are not stigmatized for being from a low income background. I’ve worked in schools that listed parents who hadn’t paid lunch fees in morning announcements, and listed children who’s parent/s needed to update the financial assistance information the same way. It was the kind of thing that made me want to bang my head on the desk until I passed out.
    From a personal perspective, it would have been nice to have the option of a school lunch if you forgot your lunch, had an embarrassingly weird lunch that left a huge greasy spot on the lunch bag and wanted to avoid the embarrassment and had no money to buy lunch, or just wanted pizza on pizza day, but had no money for pizza day as well. I’ve had students who ate lunch in my classroom with me because they were embarrassed about what they brought for lunch. I could identify. I’ve had students with families that couldn’t afford daily lunch, but saw something wrong with getting the free lunch. They were more comfortable having their children come to school hungry. These types of situations make the child different or lesser. At school age sometimes nothing can be more embarrassing or worse. Free lunch minimizes that sort of situation.
    I know I’m late to this, it’s been a long day, but I’m with Watergirl, what is wrong with those people?
    I looked at that baseball guy’s Twitter thing, and he’s just an awful person up and down, side to side. Big bleh.

  70. 70.

    Nukular Biskits

    @Splitting Image:

    I think I’ll borrow this, if you don’t mind:

    Reagan used to say that the scariest words in the English language were “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.”

    This has long been superceded by “I’m a conservative and I’m here to protect your child

  71. 71.

    RevRick

    @WaterGirl: the Dan McLaughlins of the world are fundamentally miserable people who like making others miserable. They’ve convinced themselves of their moral superiority (completely unearned, of course), thereby arrogating to themselves the right to beat others with a stick.

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