The idea that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” or TNSTAAFL, is Econ 101; yet, government bureaucrats and bleeding heart liberals don’t seem to think that it applies to the National School Lunch Program.
The public school system is a precious jewel of the liberal establishment, and “free” school lunches are something of a sacred cow. In fact, liberals are quite proud that they have been able to increase the number of kids dependent on the government to 31 million. The website of the National Lunch Program boasts that 219billion lunches have been served since the program was created in 1946. The uninformed citizen might see this as a benevolent miracle performed by the mighty hand of the 21st century god called Government. Bread from Heaven! No more starving children! Who needs that magic sky-god of the ancient Israelites when we have Lord Government to feed us?
All of this is fine and dandy until we put our thinking caps on and apply a little reason to the situation. If nothing is free, then how much do these lunches really cost? Answer: a whopping $14 billion per year to the American taxpayer. The graph below shows the gigantic growth of federal expenditures on school lunches since 1977.
