EDITORIAL

There’s nothing free or magical about free money. On Tuesday, thousands of people lined up in front of banks, check cashing establishments and any other financial outlets that handle EBT (Electronic Benefits Transfers).

They were there to collect $200 per child, courtesy of Gov. David Paterson; billionaire George Soros of the Open Society Institute; and the federal government.

Ideally, the money is intended to provide for the purchase of school supplies, but who knows if it will?

Soros, who is a heavy contributor to the Democratic Party, at least put up $35 million of his own money in what he views as payback for having received assistance in his younger, poorer days.

However, the money that Paterson so generously distributed came from $175 million of federal stimulus funds— a handout of your tax dollars for every child who is in a family on welfare or receiving food stamps.

Is this what stimulus money was intended for?

According to figures released, it is earmarked for an estimated 185,444 city children on welfare and another 806,931 on food stamps.

It’s not enough that the working stiffs’ tax dollars pay for the city’s welfare system. Now, there’s a summer bonus, too—a disgraceful move by a governor who fell into his current job through the same kind of dumb luck that gave magic money to the holders of all those electronic benefit cards.

Everyone knows times are tough. No matter what kind of spin politicians want to put on it, there are still 30 million Americans out of work and there are no quick fixes.

How many will end up on welfare is unknown. But they and countless others will be hard pressed to avoid falling beneath the millstone that has been grinding for some time.

In an op-ed article that appeared in The New York Times on Tuesday, Bob Herbert recalls something that he had written about the economy in March 2007: “The simple truth is that millions of ordinary workers are in an employment bind. Steady jobs with good benefits are going the way of Ozzie and Harriet. Young workers, especially, are hurting, which diminishes the prospects for the American family.”

Herbert notes that since he wrote those words in 2007, the official jobless rate, at 9.4 percent, is now more than twice as high. While last month’s 0.1 decrease may have seemed like good news, the harsh truth is that it had nothing to do with people finding jobs. In fact, it was just the opposite.

According to Herbert, the decrease resulted from the 450,000 people who withdrew from the job market.

“They stopped looking, so they weren’t counted as unemployed,” he writes, making a frightening point.

The government and misguided philanthropists may think that tossing around free cash will make things better.

In truth, working to bring back the manufacturing backbone that supported millions of families with decent, wellpaying jobs would do more to benefit the city’s children than a sudden windfall of magic money.