TBE:
Imagine our food distribution system worked like our public schools do. Prompted by that very question in a Reason article comparing how private schools are responding differently to the COVID-19 virus than public schools, I began thinking what a public grocery system would look like.
The food would be “free,” except for the fact that you would pay higher taxes to support the grocery store, and the tax dollars would be paid directly to the store. Key decisions, such as what food products to offer and how many grocery clerks were needed to staff the meat counter, would be made by an elected Grocery Board. A grocery superintendent answering to the board would hire and fire the grocery store managers. If you didn’t like the store but still wanted “free” food, you would be out of luck. You would be assigned to your neighborhood grocery store. The Grocery Board would draw the grocery boundaries. What you ate would depend upon where you lived. Only higher income earners would have the luxury of foregoing the free food and shopping at stores that didn’t accept tax dollars.
What do you suppose would happen to the cost and quality of public food in such an arrangement? As the consumer, you would have zero power. You couldn’t patronize a different store. You couldn’t withhold your money. You would have to take what you got. Oh, for sure, you could show up at Grocery Board hearings and speak your mind. Maybe you could organize a movement to elect a board member who would go to bat for selling only free-range chicken. But that would entail a huge amount of trouble with no guarantee of a positive outcome. read more
The guy who represents the local UFCW union on their propaganda commercials looks like a union thug. If grocery stores were run like public schools we’d all be like the Kulaks in the Ukraine who were starved to death by the communists in the 1930’s. I hate the UFCW, and all govt. employee unions.
For those of you that do not know what it is like to stand in line for hours at a food pantry and then go through their “free food” line you have just read a VERY accurate description of what you will encounter.
Since I got cancer and survived it a decade ago it left me unable to work and with a host of side effects that plague me to this very day.
Since the shamdemic began my wife’s job was furloughed in March and by June her job was deemed “unessential” and was permanently laid off after 15 years of loyal hard work with ZERO notice while newer (and lower paid) employee’s hired many years after her kept their jobs. Then, in an act of pure hatred, they fought her unemployment benefits claim and dragged out the process for 6 VERY long weeks while we suffered.
I get a SS check once a month because I worked my entire adult life until the cancer got me but that did not stop our life savings, house, and everything else of value we owned eventually going away due to my never ending medical bills and medicare’s infamous “donut hole”.
So that left us living paycheck to paycheck until the scamdemic came along and ruined that too so now I stand in line so I can still feed my family and get to experience what the above article describes until they run out of donated food…. then its too bad, so sad, sucks to be you time.
If it was not for our local church we would have starved and been kicked out of our tiny apartment that we now live in, but even they run things the same way.
Take it from someone who has suffered greatly and continues to suffer:
If you have the means to do so put cash money under your mattress and stockpile whatever you can because once TSHTF it will be too late and you will end up like my family did.
end of rant and the PSA.
Dems would say ‘Don’t ask “what if”. Ask “Why not?” ‘
@ cslamer JULY 20, 2020 AT 5:08 AM
I don’t know what to say. Please contact BFH for my email address and send me an email. Let’s talk.
The makers will pay the higher taxes. The professional takers not so much because they’ll be subsidized like always. The political hacks will guarantee it because subsidies = votes.
Ask Cuba.
Ask Venezuela.
Ask Ethiopia under Mengistu Haile Mariam.
Ask Sudan.
Ask Chad.
Ask Nicaragua under the Ortega brothers.
Ask China under Mao.
Wherever you find gov’t-run food chains, you find famine and starvation.
“Bad Harvests” and “Bad Weather” – forever.
I remember as a kid seeing films of the “Bread Riots” in Russia and thinking (to myself) why aren’t they rioting outside of Safeway or Giant? It was only later that I learned (without any help from the Public Schools) that their gov’t ran the food chains as weapons against their citizens.
izlamo delenda est …
Good Lord, don’t give them any ideas.
I think the teachers think there’s a giant golden cornucopia of money that will constantly flow to them. The private schools already know they have to deliver what the parents want for their money. After the teachers’ unions decide the schools can reopen, lots of parents will have been forced to find alternative schooling, and will find it superior and never go back. Having been given the opportunity to homeschool, parents, who otherwise would never have had the opportunity, discovered that it wasn’t as hard as they had imagined. Homeschool and private school are now looking better and better to parents. There’s ONE silver lining to all of this BS.
I have a minor change to the story. No, the taxes would not go directly to the store, it would first get about 30% siphoned off to various government bureaucracies and the rest would then go to the store.
@ The-Mamomma July 20, 2020 at 8:30 am,
Don’t forget that you still get to pay the taxes for those “great” public schools……..
AND @ RogerF July 20, 2020 at 8:35 am,
I think you messed up your math a tad….. The various government bureaucracies would siphon 70% and ……
Same idea, years ago:
http://www.illinoisloop.org/if.html
If The World Were Like the Public Education System
by Kevin C. Killion
If the computer industry were like public education …
If food stores were like public education …
If a school administrator ran a Rotary club …
If the highway system were like public education …
If soccer were like public education …
@Crackerbaby You are not wrong, but hopefully that will change, too. (IF we can quell the rebellion and re-elect PDT)