Tim Harford on the Side Effect-s of Govern Ment Free Lunch policies. Free roads make Street Traffic problems, Free Public Schools raise Real Estate prices in areas where those schools are actually decent. Government policies to subsidise important services such as roads and education usually make no more sense than IKEA inadvertently organising an opening-night riot. Sometimes the benefits are dispersed by overcrowding, as happens in the case of the roads. In other cases, as with education, the benefits are simply misdirected, going not to poor parents but to homeowners selling property close to good schools. This is not to say that subsidies must be abolished. With real political leadership, it is possible to direct them fairly accurately at the poor. In many instances, the right way to do this would be for the government to let competing companies charge what the market will bear, and give cash or vouchers only to those who cannot afford the fees.

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