Congressman Louis Gohmert (R-Tex.) is a spectacularly unserious legislator, but Adam Serwer finds him pitching a solution to the unemployment crisis that tips even his decidedly screwed-up scales:
We have people on welfare and I know there's some that just don't wanna work, but there's some that do. How 'bout if instead of the welfare, we give 'em an alternative. We'll give you so many acres that can provide land where you can live off of it, make a living and we'll give you seed money to start, but you have to sign an agreement that you'll never accept welfare again. How 'bout that? We got plenty of land.
One doesn't know where to begin. I don't know how you seriously get any kind of economic growth through this sort of ridiculously inefficient allocation of resources, where people who lack the skill set to farm are dumped on parcels of land and told to work the earth for their income. Speaking of, where are we getting all this land from anyway? Are we buying up parcels of land to give away to people, or are we giving away assets that are already taxpayer-owned? Seems complicated and expensive to me. Why not just do more to help struggling Americans avoid foreclosures on the properties they already own?
But beyond that, he'd ask these people to forswear welfare? There's no way on earth that I'd agree to become a farmer and simultaneously cut myself out of that sweet, sweet government subsidy action. How do you think some of these Tea Partiers are getting paid?
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40 Acres And A Fool [Adam Serwer]
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