There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch: South Korea Edition
You’ve heard it before, if not from Milton Friedman, then surely from a proselytizing grandparent or a macro econ professor: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch (TANSTAAFL). Of course, that’s not exactly true. Some 31 million low-income public school children in the U.S. get just that every year: a free or reduced lunch.
As Western countries tighten their belts and look to reduce social welfare spending, the city council in Seoul, South Korea is considering expanding free lunches beyond just the “proven” underprivileged, to all 810,000 of Seoul’s elementary and middle school students at a cost of $378 million annually.