Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit, reminds us of something others have called Reynold’s Law:
The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people.
But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.
With the result that the first time there is an economic downturn, as in 2008, those subsidized faux-middle class individuals end up right back in the lower classes, mostly worse off than before.
The just-expired moratorium on eviction for non-payment of rent is an example of such subsidies. That tenants couldn’t be evicted didn’t mean the rent was forgiven, it kept accruing and now amounts to more than these individuals will ever have at one time in their entire lives.
Not only will renters be evicted, they’ll be bankrupt, have no credit and be stigmatized as bad risks. Expect the homeless population to explode.
Government puts metaphorical Band-Aids on serious wounds and the unintended consequences just keep piling up. And Biden ‘invites’ hundreds of thousands of non-citizens to come in and join the dispossessed in their Hoovervilles. There is no cure for stupid.
