Our Labour government seems to love wasting money. So nothing should surprise me at this point. But what I heard today when driving home had me shouting “That’s crap!” at my car radio. Here’s the offending statement.
One of the best ways to boost our immunity against COVID-19 and protect ourselves from getting really sick is a booster.
In addition, I, and no doubt all New Zealanders received a colour flyer from Mummy government in my mailbox nagging me to get my flu vaccine and covid booster.
Does anyone actually still believe this foolishness? Who is actually getting the boosters? I know plenty of people who had multiple boosters and have had terrible immunity since. Stories of getting COVID-19 3 times amongst these people are not something unusual. Meanwhile, my unvaccinated friends seem to be soldiering on pretty well thank you very much.
My trust in the health authorities is at an all-time low. Their senseless masking protocols (and I don’t just mean the physical masks) and their one-eyed approach to what must be one of the worst vaccines in history are pathetic and suggest they are beholden to interests other than public health. On covid, I don’t think they know what they are talking about, and I’m starting to think that on the basics my common sense is going to be more helpful than listening to government health bureaucrats.
Not only are these advertisements a waste of money, but they highlight how slow centralised systems are at responding to new data. I guess at least we’ve moved on from the lies that if you get vaccinated you won’t get or transmit covid, or that you won’t get sick or die. Credit where credit’s due, our dim-witted system has finally admitted in this advert that there are other ways of protecting yourself against covid such as keeping active and eating good nutritious meals, something seemingly forgotten when South Aucklanders were bribed with KFC to get vaccinated despite evidence clearly demonstrating that apart from age, obesity was a key reason covid 19 proved fatal.
Those who are regular readers will know that we at The Sojournal are opponents of statism. We believe the state has a legitimate role. It is indeed a minister of God, but it has rebelled against God’s role for it and has arrogated more and more power. We have theological reasons for opposing much of its spending and regarding it as theft. However, we understand that not all Christians are yet theologically convinced of our position. After all, most of us have grown up in an environment of statism. It is only natural for us to assume it is normal and right. It’s an unquestioned assumption in our lives. It’s hard to see our cultural blind spots.
However, let me appeal to the pragmatists among you. State control of things outside what we at The Sojournal consider to be their God-given realm tends to be inept and incompetent. You know this. Accountability matters. And when you can’t take your business elsewhere, there is no accountability, and therefore there is always wastage. Today let’s consider the much-vaunted Ka Ora, Ka Ako Healthy School Lunches Programme.
On the Ministry of Education website, we are informed that school lunches will be provided at a maximum per child, per day cost of $5 per Year 1-8 student and $7 for high school students. Now any parent with a few kids living on a budget knows that you can feed your children a healthy lunch for under $5 easy. But even this amount seems mild compared to the actual cost to the taxpayer.
A screen capture from the MOE website on 28 August 2021. Highlighting is mine.
According to the Treasury budget at a glance document for 2021, we are allocating $527,000,000 toward the school lunches programme. According to the document which is dated 20 May 2021, there are currently 144,000 students receiving these ‘free’ lunches. Now let’s do a little basic arithmetic. $527 million, divided by 144,000 students should give us the amount it costs to feed one child lunches per year. Then let’s divide that number by the number of school days in a year (190 in 2021). This gives us a figure of $19.26 per child. Now let’s be generous and assume that there is going to be an increase in the number of children being fed. Let’s #be kind and assume that they managed to get this up to 200,000 students. That would reduce the cost to $13.87 per child.
What does it actually cost to feed a child? I feed my children 2-4 slices of bread for lunch, with their favourite spread and provide them with a piece of fruit as well. Sometimes they’ll get a homemade biscuit. How much does that cost? Around $1. I am almost 14 times more efficient than the government at feeding my children. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I am a grumpy old scrooge-like curmudgeon who is half-starving my children, and I ought to spend double what I do on their lunches. That still makes what the government offers nearly 7 times less efficient than me. Furthermore, because I know what my children like, they will actually eat the lunches I provide while “thousands of taxpayer-funded school lunches are being left uneaten by students each week.” Imagine for a moment the good that all this wasted money, confiscated from citizens through taxes, could be used for if its owners were able to choose how to spend it themselves.
Having thus appealed to the pragmatists, I urge you to consider why this is so. Why is it that the government seems to be so incompetent at as simple a task as providing a child with lunch? Why are its attempts at providing welfare, housing and education so bungling? Is it possible that God has so ordered the world that blessing tends to follow cutting along the grain, and cursing and difficulty follow cutting against it. God has ordained the world with different spheres of authority that are charged with different roles. It is not the role of the government to provide food for children. It is the role of parents. God has ordained that the family is to provide food for itself. The father is the God-ordained protector and provider of the family. He is to provide for his children (Genesis 2:15, 3:19). When the family is functioning as it should, it is going to be far better placed to provide food for children.
