And a Free Lunch for All
SPEAK OUT!
And a Free Lunch for All
Art DeJong
When my wife returns from grocery shopping with stories of weekly price increases and when I pay fifty dollars to top off our Honda’s gas tank, I think about the three banknotes from a small collection of family China mementos on our mantel.
They are a slightly used 10 Yuan note and two 5000 Yuan notes printed issued by the Central Bank of China in 1945. These small amounts had rapidly become useless as the Chinese government ran the presses hot to pay its creditors with worthless paper. By Christmas, 1948, when our family scrambled aboard a US Navy liberty ship to be evacuated from Shanghai, it took 3,000,000 Yuan to equal one American Dollar.
We escaped to paradise America with its secure border, sound dollar, intact families, and great schools, schools that began each day with the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord’s Prayer and taught kids respect for God, family and neighbor, in that order. “Enjoy your work--there is no free lunch,” teachers warned.
There was no escape for the Chinese people who couldn’t flee to Formosa (Taiwan) or Hong Kong when the Republic of China collapsed in 1949. The victorious communists shot the landowners and capitalists. seized all property, broke up families, and set out to create a brave new, agrarian world, free from capitalist greed and patriarchal gender roles, a world of lone individuals, loyal only to the state leader who promised to provide a free lunch for all—a 1949 style woke fantasy. Millions starved, froze, or worked to death, but still there was never quite enough free lunch to go around.
I reflect on this sad history and wonder why Democrats now are destroying our own economy by flooding it with worthless paper. As I watch parents drive by to pick up their children’s free lunch, even in the summer, at neighboring Grant elementary School, I conclude that this suicidal printing is rooted in the idea of “free lunch.”
Our grown children who now control all three branches of government are printing trillions to provide more free lunch, for everybody--including every person on the planet who can climb aboard our sinking liberty ship. For just a few trillion more they promise to throw in climate control. Think of it—no more hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, or droughts—all this and free lunch too.
It’s time for sensible adults to step in. The American Dream is rapidly becoming just a dream, and I see no liberty ships standing by.
Art DeJong,
Sheboygan, Wisconsin